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Let's be real: they don't care about VR per se. They care about it only insofar as it gets you to use a Facebook account. This is what I see as the biggest ove

by Gunax 6y ago

Let's be real: they don't care about VR per se. They care about it only insofar as it gets you to use a Facebook account. This is what I see as the biggest overlooked consequence of web advertising--it's become so lucrative, that there is very little reason to invest in real/hard problems. All of the profits (and thus jobs, investment) is in how to tune the ad algorithm. Making hardware is hard and risky. Selling hardware is hard. Writing games is hard. If you're lucky, a user buys 2-3 games per year, Oculus takes a royalty and earns $15-$30. Which is probably about the ballpark amount they earn just from each Facebook user anyway.

jbay808 6y ago
This is a good point, and also kind of amazing. Advertising is so lucrative that there's no need to earn money from the kind of products that everyone else is paying to advertise.
- Gunax 6y ago
  Well, I suppose I was just a bit harsh. There definitely are opportunities outside of ads. But some industries are more cut-throat than others. The problem is of course not unique to software. Eg. it may be more lucrative for drug companies to research hair-loss or acne drugs than something like cholera.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    > Eg. it may be more lucrative for drug companies to research hair-loss or acne drugs than something like cholera. This doesn't seem especially unreasonable; hair loss and acne, to the extent they are problems, are unsolved problems. Nobody disputes that cholera is a problem, but it is very much a solved problem.
    - bleepblorp 6y ago
      Cholera is mostly a solved problem, but the point stands in relation to other diseases. There's much more interest from Pharma in hair-loss, acne, Viagra competitors, and in $1,000,000-per-treatment cancer drugs than in mundane but vital tasks like finding better treatments for mental illness, finding better treatments for migraine headaches, or finding new antibiotics before our entire current spectrum of antibiotics stops being effective.
      - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
        Pharma spend a lot of money on mental illness drugs, because rich people will pay for them, just like hair-loss and acne. I completely agree with you that this causes a misallocation of resources, but mental health is probably not the best example you could have chosen.
- bleepblorp 6y ago
  The supremacy of advertising is also a very small example of the much larger picture of the entire western economy degenerating from something that made actual stuff[0] into a zero-sum game that leeches economic value from productive purposes and transfers it to non-productive middlemen who do nothing other than enrich themselves. The other big example of this problem is the massive overgrowth of the FIRE sector, which has largely eaten the US economy whole while accomplishing nothing other than its own enrichment. [0] For the purposes of this argument, 'actual stuff' does apply to intangible goods, like software, that expands the production possibilities curve.
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  I've noticed while listening to podcasts that the most frequent ads I hear on ad supported podcasts are for other podcasts. It always makes me stop and think that the podcaster is paid by podcasters who want to attract my attention so other podcasters will pay them in the hopes of attracting an audience for their podcasts.
  - ludocode 6y ago
    This is also true of mobile games. In-app advertising is so lucrative for popular games that it has mostly replaced microtransactions, and yet every ad is for some other mobile game. It makes the whole thing feel like some kind of pyramid scheme.
    - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
      Like, you must know this isn't true, right? I have worked in this industry on and off for almost a decade now, and in general, advertising is only used for users who will never pay. I mean, it makes sense right? You can get $5 for one IAP, and if you are incredibly lucky $5 CPM which is 1000 impressions. In-app advertising is a tiny, tiny percentage of revenue for most mobile gaming companies. That being said, everyone spends on it because the best way to find people who'll play mobile games is to target people who play mobile games.
      - jiofih 6y ago
        > at least 70% of the revenue in hyper-casual games is driven by ads
        disgruntledphd2 6y ago
        That is an entirely different claim.
  - shajznnckfke 6y ago
    Maybe what you’re encountering is cross-promotion on a network of podcasts? They want to sell ad spots, but they also want you to spend more time listening to their podcasts so they can sell more ad spots. Cross-promotion also exists in just about every other media format (books, TV, movies...).
ricardo81 6y ago
What with VR becoming more mainstream and COVID rules, I'd guess FB sees huge potential in VR, most so when there'd be some prime real estate in VR land with some ads on it.
slg 6y ago
It is reminiscent of the old story about an AI that is put in charge of optimizing widget production and ends up killing all life in its pursuit of raw materials to build more widgets. Unrestricted capitalism is like an AI that is never taught that it shouldn't harm humans. It just keeps on vacuuming everything up that provides even the tiniest increase in marginal profit.
- bleepblorp 6y ago
  I'm not surprised this was downvoted. It is, however, inherently true. American corporations are legally required to maximize shareholder return. The entire public company system in the US is a paperclip maximizer that is designed to vacuum up every bit of economic value available on the face of the earth and give it to shareholders. With 80% of all US stock value owned by 10% of Americans[0], the emergent goal of the economy is to suck up every available cent and give it to people like Bezos and Zucker------. For people like Bezos and Zucker------, that's a good thing. For the rest of us? Not so much. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/02/perspective-on-the-stock-market-rally-80-of-stock-value-held-by-top-10/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/02/...
  - LordDragonfang 6y ago
    The first conception of a entity that is legally bound to continue growing in perpetuity, beyond the point of of prudence or reason, was, in retrospect, the final straw that put capitalism beyond redemption. It is quite literally a cancer on society, growing until it starves out the host.
  - 3np 6y ago
    > American corporations are legally required to maximize shareholder return. This is a myth. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-companies-legally-obligated-to-maximize-profits-for-shareholders#8177 https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-co...
    - bleepblorp 6y ago
StanislavPetrov 6y ago
>Let's be real: they don't care about VR per se. They care about it only insofar as it gets you to use a Facebook account. Not only to use a Facebook account, but to have access to even more intensive and intrusive monitoring and information harvesting from users. All sorts of biometric and behavioral activity that is integral to using VR will now all be available to Facebook to integrate into customer profiles. Then there is the possibility of behavioral influence through the use of AI. Just like Facebook can influence behavior and choices by tailoring news feeds and ads to users, they will be able to mold the user's VR experience with behavioral cues and advertisements (both subtle and integrated). Think about the effort they go through in order to track all of your digital movements now, and how valuable that is to them, and then consider how much more fruitful their efforts would be if you literally wore a headset that allowed them to monitor and influence your every perception in real time.
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  > Think about the effort they go through in order to track all of your digital movements now, Yeah, they care about tracking people so much that they supply JS code for non-technical users to put on their websites, and provide an ad platform which is vastly confusing to encourage this behaviour \s.
tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
I think they're hoping to become the equivalent of the OASIS in Ready Player One: The one VR platform where all virtual life happens. Out of all companies that could own such a world, Facebook is the one that I'm most worried about.
- numpad0 6y ago
  I wonder how they’re thinking about it internally. Clearly they wanted to build OASIS from the novel, paid for it, and got VRChat instead complete with armies of foxy ear maids and full-body tracked sleeping sessions(literally bunch of dudes in random nicks literally sleeping together at literally night literally hand in hand) Not a big difference in my book, humans are what we are. But with their emphasis on real name public face-book as their core business I suspect it could be.
  - aspaceman 6y ago
    Don’t worry. They’ll find the marketer friendly stuff they can put some super models’ face on, and run it into the ground. They just have to find the stuff that’s friendly to the normies.
an_opabinia 6y ago
The reason they are getting people to create accounts, which is obvious to anyone who has actually used an Oculus, is that the multiplayer matchmaking story right now is horrible, and it absolutely definitely needs to be replaced with something logical with cohesive friends lists. It is the exact reason Facebook is a nice way to login to mobile multiplayer games. > They care about it only insofar as it gets you to use a Facebook account. Right. Facebook acquired a niche gaming platform that posed absolutely no threat to any Facebook business not because it was cool and extremely risky and why not. They acquired it to grow user counts in (checks notes) the one app that has already possibly acquired every user it ever will in the entire world. I don't know dude. There are kids who use YouTube for years on the same device, easily and uncontrovertibly trackable without an account, who are bombarded with more advertising in a day than most high-tech-proficiency adults using Oculus, like me, using adblockers, see in a year. YouTube targets ads to users without accounts! Everyone tracks everyone without accounts, every day, every website you visit, all the time! And of course that includes demographic factors, as though watching kids YouTube material doesn't give away that a kid is watching. You don't need an account to tell you the user's demographics. Their friends and likes. You don't need those things. And then what? So what if game developers learn the demographics and friends of their users. People have been measuring stuff about who goes to movie theaters, who checks out books, who listens to radio, for decades. What's the worst they're going to do, make more video games that find diverse, niche audiences they did not otherwise serve? Oh the humanity. And then what the hell is some conventional brand going to learn from someone's Oculus play history? It's completely moronic, there's absolutely no economic value there. Next you're going to tell me, oh it's horrible they created a VR Chat clone. Nobody is going to force Oculus users to use their shitty VR Chat clone (Horizon). What then are they going to learn from people? There is nothing to learn from VR Chat. The user account story is just so absurd, it's so off the mark. Account or not they will be able to easily create quality, targeted advertising.
- dylan604 6y ago
  > the one app that has already possibly acquired every user it ever will in the entire world. Oh my me, please let this be true. That would mean anyone born from today forward will never sign up for Facebook. Eventually the billions currently using it will all just die off naturally, and the user base will shrink to zero because "possibly" nobody will ever use it again. beep beep beep beep beep. just my alarm clock waking me from a glorious dream.
mc32 6y ago
I disagree. I think they envision creating alternative worlds and virtual relationships and all that can be envisioned with VR. Unless it gets regulated, they will run with this to control people's behavior even further. People will obviously get their physical needs met in the real world but much of the emotional stuff can move into their realms. If you get people hooked on this, who cares what happens in the real world if you can control their perception of things.
giancarlostoro 6y ago
It's not the only VR game in town so it's hardly an issue honestly. I think it's just the more recognized name, but these requirements will limit it's use amongst an already niche group of PC gamers.
ehnto 6y ago
I don't want to detract from companies doing good work, but ad tech and social media taking up so much of society's resource capital is a tragedy in my eyes. So much human effort spent on technology and software designed specifically to sell you widgets.
- treis 6y ago
  It's just not true. Like saying all our athletic prowess is being spent on selling shoes. That's how they make their money but it's a small amount of effort from the athlete. Most of their effort is focused playing their sport. Similarly, only a small percentage of Google/Facebook's effort go towards ads. Most of it goes toward building products, languages, tools, and more.
  - ehnto 6y ago
    To clarify I didn't say all of the effort, just that it's a shame how much of the effort goes into advertising.
3327 6y ago
Just waiting for the DOJ TO file the suit.
TomSwirly 6y ago
This is beside the main point, which is that Facebook openly says they will steal your property (take back your game and make your headset worthless) if you close your Facebook account, or if they decide to close your FB account, which they can and do do for no apparent reason at all, and for which you have no recourse. It isn't OK just because they don't care. It's criminal.
KaiserPro 6y ago
> they don't care about VR per se. correct. Everything is a stepping stone towards AR. In their view VR is limited, where as AR is killer platform that will let them run their own platform, with users finally paying directly for services. > Making hardware is hard and risky. Selling hardware is hard. Facebook realised a long time ago that they are reliant on either apple or google's platform. this means two things: They are vulnerable to any policy change on those platforms AND they are not getting a cut of the profit from the hardware sales and apps store. > that there is very little reason to invest in real/hard problems Facebook are dumping _billions_ into developing AR. not millions, actual billions. Mapping, dense reconstruction, semantic scene understanding, actual fucking holograms. All of these are nowhere near solved, and facebook are gambling big that they can not only solve these, but fit them into a set of glasses that are practical. > If you're lucky, a user buys 2-3 games per year, Oculus takes a royalty and earns $15-$30. If its such a risk with such a tiny reward why do sony, microsoft & nintendo still bother making consoles? > Which is probably about the ballpark amount they earn just from each Facebook user anyway. https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average-revenue-per-user-by-region/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average... The problem with all of this discourse is that it misses the fundamental argument thats at the heart of VR and later AR: privacy. It doesn't matter if facebook fails, the problems still exist. AR is a fundamental threat to privacy regardless of who makes it. For AR to work you need always on hyper accurate location service. They will also need always on cameras. They will have detection, segmentation and reconstruction systems that have to be capable of understanding the context of a street, shop, work and front room. Even if we ignore the AI bit, the threat of an omni-recording head mounted camera is massive. (all password are recorded, every sound, every person you meed.) finally 6dof centimetre accurate glocal positioning, with facial recognition, you basically have a system that can locate any face within 50m of a wearer of one of these glasses. In conclusion: stop using facebook as a foil, and start to actually interrogate the technology.
- EricMausler 6y ago
  In the case of AR, you are willingly trading that privacy for power you would otherwise be completely unable to get. I have a government ID with my address on it, and I give out my address online to 3rd parties all the time because I understand I have to give up that private information if I am to expect packages to arrive at my door. Similarly, AR would be a significant piece of tech that can offer a user a lot of functionality. As much as I am also sad to see privacy take another hit, I dont see what the alternative is. We need to be able to consolidate the processing of all the information necessary to make AR functional. Always on cameras on everyone would also make you very safe in the streets. Which is necessary if we continue moving the country in a direction where there are few legal means for you to protect yourself

by Gunax 6y ago

jbay808 6y ago

This is a good point, and also kind of amazing. Advertising is so lucrative that there's no need to earn money from the kind of products that everyone else is paying to advertise.

Gunax 6y ago
Well, I suppose I was just a bit harsh. There definitely are opportunities outside of ads. But some industries are more cut-throat than others. The problem is of course not unique to software. Eg. it may be more lucrative for drug companies to research hair-loss or acne drugs than something like cholera.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > Eg. it may be more lucrative for drug companies to research hair-loss or acne drugs than something like cholera. This doesn't seem especially unreasonable; hair loss and acne, to the extent they are problems, are unsolved problems. Nobody disputes that cholera is a problem, but it is very much a solved problem.
  - bleepblorp 6y ago
    Cholera is mostly a solved problem, but the point stands in relation to other diseases. There's much more interest from Pharma in hair-loss, acne, Viagra competitors, and in $1,000,000-per-treatment cancer drugs than in mundane but vital tasks like finding better treatments for mental illness, finding better treatments for migraine headaches, or finding new antibiotics before our entire current spectrum of antibiotics stops being effective.
    - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
      Pharma spend a lot of money on mental illness drugs, because rich people will pay for them, just like hair-loss and acne. I completely agree with you that this causes a misallocation of resources, but mental health is probably not the best example you could have chosen.
bleepblorp 6y ago
The supremacy of advertising is also a very small example of the much larger picture of the entire western economy degenerating from something that made actual stuff[0] into a zero-sum game that leeches economic value from productive purposes and transfers it to non-productive middlemen who do nothing other than enrich themselves. The other big example of this problem is the massive overgrowth of the FIRE sector, which has largely eaten the US economy whole while accomplishing nothing other than its own enrichment. [0] For the purposes of this argument, 'actual stuff' does apply to intangible goods, like software, that expands the production possibilities curve.
ALittleLight 6y ago
I've noticed while listening to podcasts that the most frequent ads I hear on ad supported podcasts are for other podcasts. It always makes me stop and think that the podcaster is paid by podcasters who want to attract my attention so other podcasters will pay them in the hopes of attracting an audience for their podcasts.
- ludocode 6y ago
  This is also true of mobile games. In-app advertising is so lucrative for popular games that it has mostly replaced microtransactions, and yet every ad is for some other mobile game. It makes the whole thing feel like some kind of pyramid scheme.
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    Like, you must know this isn't true, right? I have worked in this industry on and off for almost a decade now, and in general, advertising is only used for users who will never pay. I mean, it makes sense right? You can get $5 for one IAP, and if you are incredibly lucky $5 CPM which is 1000 impressions. In-app advertising is a tiny, tiny percentage of revenue for most mobile gaming companies. That being said, everyone spends on it because the best way to find people who'll play mobile games is to target people who play mobile games.
    - jiofih 6y ago
      > at least 70% of the revenue in hyper-casual games is driven by ads
      - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
        That is an entirely different claim.
- shajznnckfke 6y ago
  Maybe what you’re encountering is cross-promotion on a network of podcasts? They want to sell ad spots, but they also want you to spend more time listening to their podcasts so they can sell more ad spots. Cross-promotion also exists in just about every other media format (books, TV, movies...).

ricardo81 6y ago

What with VR becoming more mainstream and COVID rules, I'd guess FB sees huge potential in VR, most so when there'd be some prime real estate in VR land with some ads on it.

slg 6y ago

It is reminiscent of the old story about an AI that is put in charge of optimizing widget production and ends up killing all life in its pursuit of raw materials to build more widgets. Unrestricted capitalism is like an AI that is never taught that it shouldn't harm humans. It just keeps on vacuuming everything up that provides even the tiniest increase in marginal profit.

bleepblorp 6y ago
I'm not surprised this was downvoted. It is, however, inherently true. American corporations are legally required to maximize shareholder return. The entire public company system in the US is a paperclip maximizer that is designed to vacuum up every bit of economic value available on the face of the earth and give it to shareholders. With 80% of all US stock value owned by 10% of Americans[0], the emergent goal of the economy is to suck up every available cent and give it to people like Bezos and Zucker------. For people like Bezos and Zucker------, that's a good thing. For the rest of us? Not so much. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/02/perspective-on-the-stock-market-rally-80-of-stock-value-held-by-top-10/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/02/...
- LordDragonfang 6y ago
  The first conception of a entity that is legally bound to continue growing in perpetuity, beyond the point of of prudence or reason, was, in retrospect, the final straw that put capitalism beyond redemption. It is quite literally a cancer on society, growing until it starves out the host.
- 3np 6y ago
  > American corporations are legally required to maximize shareholder return. This is a myth. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-companies-legally-obligated-to-maximize-profits-for-shareholders#8177 https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-co...
  - bleepblorp 6y ago

StanislavPetrov 6y ago

>Let's be real: they don't care about VR per se. They care about it only insofar as it gets you to use a Facebook account. Not only to use a Facebook account, but to have access to even more intensive and intrusive monitoring and information harvesting from users. All sorts of biometric and behavioral activity that is integral to using VR will now all be available to Facebook to integrate into customer profiles. Then there is the possibility of behavioral influence through the use of AI. Just like Facebook can influence behavior and choices by tailoring news feeds and ads to users, they will be able to mold the user's VR experience with behavioral cues and advertisements (both subtle and integrated). Think about the effort they go through in order to track all of your digital movements now, and how valuable that is to them, and then consider how much more fruitful their efforts would be if you literally wore a headset that allowed them to monitor and influence your every perception in real time.

disgruntledphd2 6y ago
> Think about the effort they go through in order to track all of your digital movements now, Yeah, they care about tracking people so much that they supply JS code for non-technical users to put on their websites, and provide an ad platform which is vastly confusing to encourage this behaviour \s.

tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago

I think they're hoping to become the equivalent of the OASIS in Ready Player One: The one VR platform where all virtual life happens. Out of all companies that could own such a world, Facebook is the one that I'm most worried about.

numpad0 6y ago
I wonder how they’re thinking about it internally. Clearly they wanted to build OASIS from the novel, paid for it, and got VRChat instead complete with armies of foxy ear maids and full-body tracked sleeping sessions(literally bunch of dudes in random nicks literally sleeping together at literally night literally hand in hand) Not a big difference in my book, humans are what we are. But with their emphasis on real name public face-book as their core business I suspect it could be.
- aspaceman 6y ago
  Don’t worry. They’ll find the marketer friendly stuff they can put some super models’ face on, and run it into the ground. They just have to find the stuff that’s friendly to the normies.

an_opabinia 6y ago

The reason they are getting people to create accounts, which is obvious to anyone who has actually used an Oculus, is that the multiplayer matchmaking story right now is horrible, and it absolutely definitely needs to be replaced with something logical with cohesive friends lists. It is the exact reason Facebook is a nice way to login to mobile multiplayer games. > They care about it only insofar as it gets you to use a Facebook account. Right. Facebook acquired a niche gaming platform that posed absolutely no threat to any Facebook business not because it was cool and extremely risky and why not. They acquired it to grow user counts in (checks notes) the one app that has already possibly acquired every user it ever will in the entire world. I don't know dude. There are kids who use YouTube for years on the same device, easily and uncontrovertibly trackable without an account, who are bombarded with more advertising in a day than most high-tech-proficiency adults using Oculus, like me, using adblockers, see in a year. YouTube targets ads to users without accounts! Everyone tracks everyone without accounts, every day, every website you visit, all the time! And of course that includes demographic factors, as though watching kids YouTube material doesn't give away that a kid is watching. You don't need an account to tell you the user's demographics. Their friends and likes. You don't need those things. And then what? So what if game developers learn the demographics and friends of their users. People have been measuring stuff about who goes to movie theaters, who checks out books, who listens to radio, for decades. What's the worst they're going to do, make more video games that find diverse, niche audiences they did not otherwise serve? Oh the humanity. And then what the hell is some conventional brand going to learn from someone's Oculus play history? It's completely moronic, there's absolutely no economic value there. Next you're going to tell me, oh it's horrible they created a VR Chat clone. Nobody is going to force Oculus users to use their shitty VR Chat clone (Horizon). What then are they going to learn from people? There is nothing to learn from VR Chat. The user account story is just so absurd, it's so off the mark. Account or not they will be able to easily create quality, targeted advertising.

dylan604 6y ago
> the one app that has already possibly acquired every user it ever will in the entire world. Oh my me, please let this be true. That would mean anyone born from today forward will never sign up for Facebook. Eventually the billions currently using it will all just die off naturally, and the user base will shrink to zero because "possibly" nobody will ever use it again. beep beep beep beep beep. just my alarm clock waking me from a glorious dream.

mc32 6y ago

I disagree. I think they envision creating alternative worlds and virtual relationships and all that can be envisioned with VR. Unless it gets regulated, they will run with this to control people's behavior even further. People will obviously get their physical needs met in the real world but much of the emotional stuff can move into their realms. If you get people hooked on this, who cares what happens in the real world if you can control their perception of things.

giancarlostoro 6y ago

It's not the only VR game in town so it's hardly an issue honestly. I think it's just the more recognized name, but these requirements will limit it's use amongst an already niche group of PC gamers.

ehnto 6y ago

I don't want to detract from companies doing good work, but ad tech and social media taking up so much of society's resource capital is a tragedy in my eyes. So much human effort spent on technology and software designed specifically to sell you widgets.

treis 6y ago
It's just not true. Like saying all our athletic prowess is being spent on selling shoes. That's how they make their money but it's a small amount of effort from the athlete. Most of their effort is focused playing their sport. Similarly, only a small percentage of Google/Facebook's effort go towards ads. Most of it goes toward building products, languages, tools, and more.
- ehnto 6y ago
  To clarify I didn't say all of the effort, just that it's a shame how much of the effort goes into advertising.

3327 6y ago

Just waiting for the DOJ TO file the suit.

TomSwirly 6y ago

This is beside the main point, which is that Facebook openly says they will steal your property (take back your game and make your headset worthless) if you close your Facebook account, or if they decide to close your FB account, which they can and do do for no apparent reason at all, and for which you have no recourse. It isn't OK just because they don't care. It's criminal.

KaiserPro 6y ago

> they don't care about VR per se. correct. Everything is a stepping stone towards AR. In their view VR is limited, where as AR is killer platform that will let them run their own platform, with users finally paying directly for services. > Making hardware is hard and risky. Selling hardware is hard. Facebook realised a long time ago that they are reliant on either apple or google's platform. this means two things: They are vulnerable to any policy change on those platforms AND they are not getting a cut of the profit from the hardware sales and apps store. > that there is very little reason to invest in real/hard problems Facebook are dumping _billions_ into developing AR. not millions, actual billions. Mapping, dense reconstruction, semantic scene understanding, actual fucking holograms. All of these are nowhere near solved, and facebook are gambling big that they can not only solve these, but fit them into a set of glasses that are practical. > If you're lucky, a user buys 2-3 games per year, Oculus takes a royalty and earns $15-$30. If its such a risk with such a tiny reward why do sony, microsoft & nintendo still bother making consoles? > Which is probably about the ballpark amount they earn just from each Facebook user anyway. https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average-revenue-per-user-by-region/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average... The problem with all of this discourse is that it misses the fundamental argument thats at the heart of VR and later AR: privacy. It doesn't matter if facebook fails, the problems still exist. AR is a fundamental threat to privacy regardless of who makes it. For AR to work you need always on hyper accurate location service. They will also need always on cameras. They will have detection, segmentation and reconstruction systems that have to be capable of understanding the context of a street, shop, work and front room. Even if we ignore the AI bit, the threat of an omni-recording head mounted camera is massive. (all password are recorded, every sound, every person you meed.) finally 6dof centimetre accurate glocal positioning, with facial recognition, you basically have a system that can locate any face within 50m of a wearer of one of these glasses. In conclusion: stop using facebook as a foil, and start to actually interrogate the technology.

EricMausler 6y ago
In the case of AR, you are willingly trading that privacy for power you would otherwise be completely unable to get. I have a government ID with my address on it, and I give out my address online to 3rd parties all the time because I understand I have to give up that private information if I am to expect packages to arrive at my door. Similarly, AR would be a significant piece of tech that can offer a user a lot of functionality. As much as I am also sad to see privacy take another hit, I dont see what the alternative is. We need to be able to consolidate the processing of all the information necessary to make AR functional. Always on cameras on everyone would also make you very safe in the streets. Which is necessary if we continue moving the country in a direction where there are few legal means for you to protect yourself