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There's a bit of a story behind this. Oculus is owned by Facebook, but the Facebook website and the Oculus headsets/software are by different teams working in d

There's a bit of a story behind this. Oculus is owned by Facebook, but the Facebook website and the Oculus headsets/software are by different teams working in different states. When Facebook bought Oculus, they decided to get rid of the Oculus-specific account system and use only Facebook accounts. The Facebook account requirement took effect with the launch of the Oculus Quest 2, which launched in October 2020. October 2020 was the month before the US election, and the peak of both disinformation/influence campaigns, and of Facebook-the-website's efforts to combat those campaigns. So the spambot detector sensitivity was turned up to max that month, and if you tried to create a new account, there was a large chance you'd be mistaken for a bot and banned immediately. So a bunch of people who weren't Facebook users got fancy new VR headsets, tried to create Facebook accounts in order to be able to use them, and got immediately banned. The support department for Facebook-the-website was not at all up to the task of dealing with this. This kind of wrecked their product launch; instead of the press coverage and public reaction being about how great their hardware was, it was about all the people who couldn't use their hardware because of account issues. So now Oculus has a completely separate support department for Facebook account issues, which acts less like it's supporting a free website and more like it's supporting a $300 piece of hardware. And if you have an account issue with the website, and you want to use that support department instead of the bad one, then buying a Quest 2 is not such a bad idea.

greenie_beans 5y ago
Is this supposed to justify FB’s poor support for hacked accounts? Or are you just telling stories? It’s a good story, at least.
- rincebrain 5y ago
  To me, it seems more like "this is how this isle of happiness exists despite everything" than "this is why the ocean of sadness exists".
sonofhans 5y ago
That’s funny, it’s just too late for me. I just returned two Quest 2s because we couldn’t create Facebook accounts. Ironic. I’ve spent years not even wanting one, and when I do, it was impossible.
MikeUt 5y ago
So FB can take over the VR market by over-moderating FB, and making Oculus a requirement to get support. Looks very anti-competitive and illegal.
- gruez 5y ago
  >making Oculus a requirement to get support. Looks very anti-competitive and illegal. Intent matters a lot in law. Based on gp's description it definitely doesn't sound intentional, so it's probably fine from a legal point of view.
- eru 5y ago
  Huh? Facebook could even should down the Oculus stuff, if they wanted to. Facebook making Oculus worse might be bad for customers, but it's great for Oculus' competition, ain't it?
  - LukeShu 5y ago
    Given the headline FB users buying Oculus VR headsets to get customer service prioritization, the parent post is accusing FB of abusing their market position in social networking (by having an intentionally over-eager ban hammer coupled with intentionally poor remediation for it) in order to sell more Oculus headsets (as owning an Oculus gets you access to a better support channel).
    - eru 5y ago
      Oh, that makes more sense. Thanks!
- Shorel 5y ago
  I think both the Valve Index and HP Reverb G2 are better headsets, and also better purchases by not having anything to do with Facebook. So, no risk of a Facebook monopoly here.
  - nimazeighami 5y ago
nrp 5y ago
Just one point of clarification. We (the Oculus team) were based in Irvine, CA, but we were well under 100 people when we relocated to the Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park in 2014. Organizational barriers came and went, but there wasn’t a meaningful physical barrier.
- mcblirple 5y ago
  You ain’t kidding. Getting interviewed by an Oculus computer graphics software person who had never touched SSH in his life was quite an experience coming in as a potential production engineer circa 2015. And, on top of it, he was quite rude about it and held me responsible for not understanding anything I was saying even though he was basically interviewing a lumberjack or a fireman from his perspective, anything but a colleague. Clearly a barrier that should have been there. He had no business being in the room and didn’t know how load balancing worked, even though he was asking me about it. Four strong hires and one no hire, which I know because the recruiter told me, so I could do the math. Also expressed no desire to fix it, so I sense it was an intentional move. That was the last time I ever spoke to Facebook though I do appreciate the annual “hey, want to try again? for realsies this time?” email that tells me accept rate hasn’t recovered from the big crater I heard about. I’m glad it worked out the way it did but I wonder how many people got to experience that type of skillset mismatch as your orgs were merged.
  - Griffinsauce 5y ago
    > computer graphics software person who had never touched SSH in his life I'm not near this kind of graphics but would you ever need SSH for that job? It seems unrelated.
    - darkwater 5y ago
      GP said he was interviewing for Production Engineer which is the SRE/DevOps role in Facebook lingo. So, the issue there was having a CG software person interviewing someone for a completely different role.
    - alibarber 5y ago
malandrew 5y ago
I pay for a cold calling service that lets me look up emails and phone numbers for many professionals of import. These days customer service gets two shots to get it right before I start calling the personal cell phone numbers of the C-suite, board of directors and everyone with the word director in their title. I'm absolutely over shitty customer service and it's not fair to subject customer service representatives to well deserved vitriol. Well paid execs getting the big bucks and making the decisions to under-invest in customer service and driving down defects? Fair game. With the last company whose customer service messed up badly, I reached out to the head of e-commerce for the company. I was nice and pleasant and explained the dilemma, but then he tried to pass the buck back to support which did not have the resources to solve the problem to which I replied "You're the head of e-commerce for company X, the buck stops with you. This is your problem to resolve. If you don't take ownership, I'm perfectly capable of escalating this issue myself, first to A, your CEO (personal cell number (xxx) xxx-xxxx and personal email foo@bar.com), then to B (...), C (...), or D (...) on the board of directors, then E, the CEO of the company that owns your company (...), and then F, who is on his board of directors (...) and happens to live 2 miles from me.". ...boom, problem resolved immediately. Not just for me but for other customers. Changes were made to their website within days. When warranted, you just have to go absolutely nuclear and make it clear as day that solving your problem personally is far cheaper than you escalating the the issue to anyone and everyone with power at the company whose customer service is jerking you around. You have to make the cost of not providing customer service well the first time around so expensive that they don't see any other option than to invest in doing things right the first time.
- ChrisKnott 5y ago
  Is there a techbro version of "Karen" because this is that. I mean, seriously... buying people's personal contact details??
  - malandrew 5y ago
    I mean, seriously... wasting the time, patience and goodwill of your paying customers by under-investing in quality customer support and driving down defects?? I know it's popular to diss the "karens" of the world, but a lot of them keep in check businesses that will abuse their customers if they can get away with it. They can be a useful corrective force just like class action lawsuits can be.
hippari 5y ago
What a convoluted solution to a convoluted problem, they should stick to the separated account thing from the start.
sandworm101 5y ago
At least someone has finally come up with a business model to bring about widespread adoption of VR. The next stage will be to force buyers to actually use VR: occulus/facebook support only availible through the headaet. The final stage will be to randomly changing facebook passwords of anyone who doesnt currenlty have an occulus 4 on thier head.
oauea 5y ago
It's nothing new that Facebook has been destroying their VR platform due to their awful account integration. This part is just hilarious.
- esyir 5y ago
  Reports of their death are as usual overstated. Even looking at the steam hardware survey shows this, with quest 2s eating up almost all the market share.
raxxorrax 5y ago
I disagree. I bought a Rift S before Facebook spit out their new requirements. I really had doubts as to what the ownership of Facebook would mean, but I was naive enough to still buy it. I don't even care about the money so I won't sell it and probably will just throw it away. This killed this VR generation for me. Technically it is awesome, would recommend everyone to try it at some point. But maybe spend a bit more for Valve or other hardware. There is lock-in too, but they don't make money with user data and have the superior environment. The Quest series makes the cables go away and that is a big plus. While you can use the Steam VR while the Oculus environment is open, you will never get rid of the Facebook baggage. Hardware is indeed great, but hardware isn't everything.

greenie_beans 5y ago

Is this supposed to justify FB’s poor support for hacked accounts? Or are you just telling stories? It’s a good story, at least.

rincebrain 5y ago
To me, it seems more like "this is how this isle of happiness exists despite everything" than "this is why the ocean of sadness exists".

sonofhans 5y ago

That’s funny, it’s just too late for me. I just returned two Quest 2s because we couldn’t create Facebook accounts. Ironic. I’ve spent years not even wanting one, and when I do, it was impossible.

MikeUt 5y ago

So FB can take over the VR market by over-moderating FB, and making Oculus a requirement to get support. Looks very anti-competitive and illegal.

gruez 5y ago
>making Oculus a requirement to get support. Looks very anti-competitive and illegal. Intent matters a lot in law. Based on gp's description it definitely doesn't sound intentional, so it's probably fine from a legal point of view.
eru 5y ago
Huh? Facebook could even should down the Oculus stuff, if they wanted to. Facebook making Oculus worse might be bad for customers, but it's great for Oculus' competition, ain't it?
- LukeShu 5y ago
  Given the headline FB users buying Oculus VR headsets to get customer service prioritization, the parent post is accusing FB of abusing their market position in social networking (by having an intentionally over-eager ban hammer coupled with intentionally poor remediation for it) in order to sell more Oculus headsets (as owning an Oculus gets you access to a better support channel).
  - eru 5y ago
    Oh, that makes more sense. Thanks!
Shorel 5y ago
I think both the Valve Index and HP Reverb G2 are better headsets, and also better purchases by not having anything to do with Facebook. So, no risk of a Facebook monopoly here.
- nimazeighami 5y ago

nrp 5y ago

Just one point of clarification. We (the Oculus team) were based in Irvine, CA, but we were well under 100 people when we relocated to the Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park in 2014. Organizational barriers came and went, but there wasn’t a meaningful physical barrier.

mcblirple 5y ago
You ain’t kidding. Getting interviewed by an Oculus computer graphics software person who had never touched SSH in his life was quite an experience coming in as a potential production engineer circa 2015. And, on top of it, he was quite rude about it and held me responsible for not understanding anything I was saying even though he was basically interviewing a lumberjack or a fireman from his perspective, anything but a colleague. Clearly a barrier that should have been there. He had no business being in the room and didn’t know how load balancing worked, even though he was asking me about it. Four strong hires and one no hire, which I know because the recruiter told me, so I could do the math. Also expressed no desire to fix it, so I sense it was an intentional move. That was the last time I ever spoke to Facebook though I do appreciate the annual “hey, want to try again? for realsies this time?” email that tells me accept rate hasn’t recovered from the big crater I heard about. I’m glad it worked out the way it did but I wonder how many people got to experience that type of skillset mismatch as your orgs were merged.
- Griffinsauce 5y ago
  > computer graphics software person who had never touched SSH in his life I'm not near this kind of graphics but would you ever need SSH for that job? It seems unrelated.
  - darkwater 5y ago
    GP said he was interviewing for Production Engineer which is the SRE/DevOps role in Facebook lingo. So, the issue there was having a CG software person interviewing someone for a completely different role.
  - alibarber 5y ago

malandrew 5y ago

I pay for a cold calling service that lets me look up emails and phone numbers for many professionals of import. These days customer service gets two shots to get it right before I start calling the personal cell phone numbers of the C-suite, board of directors and everyone with the word director in their title. I'm absolutely over shitty customer service and it's not fair to subject customer service representatives to well deserved vitriol. Well paid execs getting the big bucks and making the decisions to under-invest in customer service and driving down defects? Fair game. With the last company whose customer service messed up badly, I reached out to the head of e-commerce for the company. I was nice and pleasant and explained the dilemma, but then he tried to pass the buck back to support which did not have the resources to solve the problem to which I replied "You're the head of e-commerce for company X, the buck stops with you. This is your problem to resolve. If you don't take ownership, I'm perfectly capable of escalating this issue myself, first to A, your CEO (personal cell number (xxx) xxx-xxxx and personal email foo@bar.com), then to B (...), C (...), or D (...) on the board of directors, then E, the CEO of the company that owns your company (...), and then F, who is on his board of directors (...) and happens to live 2 miles from me.". ...boom, problem resolved immediately. Not just for me but for other customers. Changes were made to their website within days. When warranted, you just have to go absolutely nuclear and make it clear as day that solving your problem personally is far cheaper than you escalating the the issue to anyone and everyone with power at the company whose customer service is jerking you around. You have to make the cost of not providing customer service well the first time around so expensive that they don't see any other option than to invest in doing things right the first time.

ChrisKnott 5y ago
Is there a techbro version of "Karen" because this is that. I mean, seriously... buying people's personal contact details??
- malandrew 5y ago
  I mean, seriously... wasting the time, patience and goodwill of your paying customers by under-investing in quality customer support and driving down defects?? I know it's popular to diss the "karens" of the world, but a lot of them keep in check businesses that will abuse their customers if they can get away with it. They can be a useful corrective force just like class action lawsuits can be.

hippari 5y ago

What a convoluted solution to a convoluted problem, they should stick to the separated account thing from the start.

sandworm101 5y ago

At least someone has finally come up with a business model to bring about widespread adoption of VR. The next stage will be to force buyers to actually use VR: occulus/facebook support only availible through the headaet. The final stage will be to randomly changing facebook passwords of anyone who doesnt currenlty have an occulus 4 on thier head.

oauea 5y ago

It's nothing new that Facebook has been destroying their VR platform due to their awful account integration. This part is just hilarious.

esyir 5y ago
Reports of their death are as usual overstated. Even looking at the steam hardware survey shows this, with quest 2s eating up almost all the market share.

raxxorrax 5y ago

I disagree. I bought a Rift S before Facebook spit out their new requirements. I really had doubts as to what the ownership of Facebook would mean, but I was naive enough to still buy it. I don't even care about the money so I won't sell it and probably will just throw it away. This killed this VR generation for me. Technically it is awesome, would recommend everyone to try it at some point. But maybe spend a bit more for Valve or other hardware. There is lock-in too, but they don't make money with user data and have the superior environment. The Quest series makes the cables go away and that is a big plus. While you can use the Steam VR while the Oculus environment is open, you will never get rid of the Facebook baggage. Hardware is indeed great, but hardware isn't everything.