8 ms·

Oculus 'Always On' Services and Privacy Policy May Be a Cause for Concern

• hacker_9 11y ago
  "We use the information we collect to send you promotional messages and content and otherwise market to you on and off our Services. We also use this information to measure how users respond to our marketing efforts." "Virtual reality offers an unparalleled level of access to data for advertisers. Before metrics were measured in how long someone watched a video or how many times a link was clicked, but with VR you can get far more granular. An ad executive at Coke, for instance, could tell just how long you stared at the Coke bottle cleverly placed inside your favorite game as an in-game ad and use that data to better place it in the game for you next time." It amazes me that before this technology is even out and proven to work, and be a success with consumers, Facebook have already set up monitoring software to develop even more targeted advertising. At least Microsoft had the decency to wait a few versions with Windows first...
  • stesch 11y ago
    A lot of people feared that something like this could happen after Facebook acquired Oculus. It would have been a nice move if they would have respected the users privacy this time just to spite the critics.
  • spdustin 11y ago
    This is why Facebook bought it to begin with, IMHO. They've got some smart people there who are prescient enough to take their web-based intent-oriented analytics and figure out that head tracking (similar to eye tracking used in UX studies sometimes) would be immensely valuable to track a lingering gaze.
  • onewaystreet 11y ago
    That Coke paragraph isn't from Facebook, it's the article's author speculating.
    • nitrogen 11y ago
      It's the first paragraph that is far more concerning anyway. The Coke is just a mild example of something that can get far worse. If this is VR, VR must die.
      • onewaystreet 11y ago
        It's not a mild example when the truth is that they are collecting basic usage data for app recommendation and promotion just like everyone else does.
        • nitrogen 11y ago
          No, not everyone else does. That's the worst excuse ever. If I buy a new monitor it's not telling Asus or Dell or HP what apps I'm using or what I look at for how long.
          • sudojudo 11y ago
            Thank you. onewaystreet touched on something that's quite bothersome to many of us: End-user apathy via argumentum ad populum. Using (or buying) adware, malware, and spyware is not normal, and everyone isn't doing it. When that ugliness rears its head, people need reminded that it's not normal, it's abusive. These companies aren't poor startups trying to make ends meet, they're corporate empires who are exploiting their users in every way possible. Apologies for being preachy, this topic really gets under my skin.
          • cududa 11y ago
            No but it tells Microsoft that, or Apple. And they've been collecting data like that since XP. You're just being an alarmist. I for one don't really care if VR ads are tracking information like that, I kinda figured it was a given. In game ads on consoles have existed for 10+ Years, and guess what? Tracking how long the ad is on the screen was already included.
            • 11y ago
  • raverbashing 11y ago
    At least using Facebook is free Paying for the Ad Machine? This is ridiculous
    • nivla 11y ago
      Well to be fair, you are not paying to use Win 10 and also its a free upgrade. On the bright side, unlike FB, you can actually install 3rd party apps and setup firewall to gain that privacy back.
      • pdkl95 11y ago
        > install 3rd party apps and setup firewall to gain that privacy back. Yet you're still paying for Win 10 with either money or market share, thus signaling your acceptance of that spyware. MS will continue adding exploitative features until it starts to hurt the only things they care about: revenue or market share.
        • nivla 11y ago
          You are also paying for the Oculus hardware while having no recourse to privacy even if you wanted. I am not saying Windows 10 doesn't have privacy issues, but when compared to Facebook's approach, it is far better.
      • ionised 11y ago
        > Well to be fair, you are not paying to use Win 10 and also its a free upgrade. Some people got a free upgrade. Others will pay for Windows 10.
• vrfcodf 11y ago
  From the Facebook shareholder conference call after the Oculus acquisition 2 years ago https://soundcloud.com/highway62/internal-facebook-conference https://soundcloud.com/highway62/internal-facebook-conferenc... (Note that this is an public call, those are their official statements.) At time stamp 29:19: There might be advertising in the world, but we need to figure that down the line. That is probably where the business will come from... And at time stamp 29:50: If we are successful in building the kind of platform that we think we can build here, there should be lots of different monetization opportunities, it is too early to make any concrete plans in terms of exactly what virtual will be. Facebook is building the first virtual world. Think about that.
  • iammyIP 11y ago
    > Facebook is building the first virtual world. Think about that. No, Facebook is a glorified chatroom with constant surveillance and ads. The only thing unique it did was to aggregate enough gravity to become the first stop for digital peasants of all ages. Facebook is not building anything virtual first here.
    • nitrogen 11y ago
      I think they are talking about the Metaverse.
  • TrevorJ 11y ago
    No, Facebook is putting billboards up on an uninhabited island and betting on the idea that people will want to live there. Good way to ensure they don't.
  • Animats 11y ago
    There are lots of virtual worlds. There, Second Life, etc. None have become really successful, but they continue to work. Second Life supports the Oculus development unit, although not the production product. (The production Oculus is locked down; only apps from Facebook's store or with Facebook-issued "Oculus keys" will run.)
• Scirra_Tom 11y ago
  They are entering a new market and trying to win market share, I'm surprised at this vulnerable time they are doing this so early. I think a big segment of their target market will be more sensitive to this stuff as supposed to general population at this early stage as well.
  • stesch 11y ago
    I'm expecting this to blow up in Germany. We are already very critical of Facebook and like our privacy. (Google Chrome here still hasn't fully recovered from the rough start.) My employer doesn't care about people's privacy. But when there's no market share then there's no need to support the product.
  • qrendel 11y ago
    Perhaps it's a sign that they see the battle as already won. The widespread acceptance of Facebook et al in spite of all the bad publicity about tracking is taken as tacit approval of the surveillance economy.
• justinclift 11y ago
  "As we shift into a constantly connected state... " That's a scary thought, if people are generally assuming that's the direction things will go. People need time out, to disconnect and re-energise. A "constantly connected" state seems like it would generate massive burn-out and/or mental issues. :(
• Sir_Substance 11y ago
  I just wanted to buy a computer monitor for my face. I'm paying you $600, can't I just have that? :(
  • jkestner 11y ago
    Software mentality is eating the world. Investors expect recurring revenue from hardware now. I hope there's still demand for no-strings-attached hardware. I'm not sure it's a viable marketing point for enough people.
    • pdkl95 11y ago
      The solution is liability. If you collect data about people, you are responsible for what happens to it. Additionally, If your product fails to work as intended because you intentionally added something separate from the intended purpose (like network spyware for VR hardware), then the product is defective.
  • Silhouette 11y ago
    We're seeing similar moves in other areas of technology, such as modern cars -- ever more connected, dubious phone-home behaviour, and so on. The "Internet of Things" hype will surely make it much, much worse. This is not a healthy trend for customers/users, but if entire industries go in that direction because the $$$ signs are too attractive, the practical solution is likely to be statutory regulation. When it comes to strengthening privacy and data protection in today's highly connected world, I personally have no problem with imposing that regulation. But until more normal (non-geek) people understand the implications and potential abuse of modern data collection and mining practices, until people realise it's not just annoying and slightly creepy ads they have to worry about, I doubt we're going to see a critical mass of popular concern for politicians to act.
  • karpathy 11y ago
    Might be easiest to think of your privacy as a currency similar to $. The real cost is 800. They can offer you $600 and 200 in privacy, or they could offer you $800, which people would throw a fit over and not buy. This is also not entirely accurate because the raw price is a one-time purchase, while privacy is hard to upper bound and can even become more valuable later on. Facebook operates on this extreme: it's completely "free" to use, except you have to count your privacy, which in fact turns out to be quite valuable currency. And unfortunately I think we've established several times that at least for social media or even web or apps in general that the other extreme of "pay us more of your normal$ and less of your privacy$" doesn't work well at all. So it looks like you can't have a "monitor for your face and that's it" because human psychology.
• ajmurmann 11y ago
  Well, this makes it easier for me to decide which VR headset to buy.
  • iammyIP 11y ago
    what are the alternatives?
    • USANEEDSHELP 11y ago
      Do not buy this product. You don't need it. Wait until holographic tech. is implemented without a VR headset. OR you could block specific outgoing traffic that is related to VR software on your router.
    • pearle 11y ago
      HTC Vive is one alternative but it's not out yet.
      • hanney 11y ago
        The HTC Vive is released to the wild April 5th (tomorrow!)
• pier25 11y ago
  So you pay $600 and you can't even turn that off? And I thought free to play was bad...
• maxander 11y ago
  Its a preposterous move in a new market and borderline insulting for a $600 product, but on one level it makes sense; if there's any demographic that's worth aggressively advertising to, its the demographic of people with the money and unrestrained enthusiasm to immediately shell out almost a grand on a first-generation luxury product.
• jimrandomh 11y ago
  Can we wait until they actually do or talk about doing something bad before making a stink about them doing bad things? This is kind of jumping at phantoms, and doing that too much will mean losing the ability to do it for real. Here's what's going on. OVRServer_x64 is, conceptually, a device-driver component for Oculus. It does things like handle the orientation sensor input and controls which app appears on the Oculus' display. This has been around since the very first prototypes, and since it is a piece of hardware, it's not like they could have gone without. None of the current titles in the Oculus store have in-game advertising. There's none in the first-party titles, nor in any of the third-party titles that I've tried. Instead, they use the traditional business model: pay up front. They're running a store, called Oculus Home, which competes with Steam. They know which games and experiences you buy on the store, and are probably measuring how many hours you spend in each, like Steam does. And that's it. This statement from the article is straight up false: > "An ad executive at Coke, for instance, could tell just how long you stared at the Coke bottle cleverly placed inside your favorite game as an in-game ad and use that data to better place it in the game for you next time." It's false because the Oculus Rift does not contain eye-tracking (only head-orientation tracking); because the software infrastructure for measuring that doesn't exist (though I suppose someone could write it); and because that isn't Oculus' business model.
  • Sir_Substance 11y ago
    >because the software infrastructure for measuring that doesn't exist (though I suppose someone could write it); What the hell are you talking about? The endermen in minecraft change behavior based on whether you are looking at them or not, and minecraft has hardly a bastion of bleeding edge game engine technology. The difference between making an enderman attack if you look at it for more then 2 seconds and firing a metric if you look at a coke bottle for more than two seconds is pretty minimal. A metric tool that sends data on how long you keep certain objects within the center of your FOV can be backed with off the shelf free software[1]. The infrastructure is commonplace, well tested and used daily for a myriad of metric related tasks all over the world. [1] http://grafana.org/ http://grafana.org/
    • wilg 11y ago
• venomsnake 11y ago
  Why does a gimmiky monitor needs internet access. And why any sane person will allow it to pass trough the firewall.
• Fuzzwah 11y ago
  Off topic: this is a horrible web design anti-pattern... a big long page in an iframe that somehow completely messes with my scroll wheel? No thanks.