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Any user of any Facebook property needs to understand well in advance that the company engages in active psychological manipulation and experimentation on its u

Any user of any Facebook property needs to understand well in advance that the company engages in active psychological manipulation and experimentation on its users and then decide if this clashes with their personal autonomy. Remember them talking about how they engaged in experiments on their users by trying to influence their mood via intentionally showing their various groups different types of content algorithmically on their news feed? Or when they intentionally kept crashing their Android app to see what’s their user retention rate even on faulty software? Or just open up the app on two phones of the exact similar make and model and see the app menu? My personal anecdote and experience with this is that they also use random errors to disguise bans. I have a personal and a dev account which I made the first time I accidentally got banned for 24 hours because it also reset OAuth app keys, the next time I got banned I logged in to my dev acct. and tried to make a post, since they managed to associate the two accounts, I ended up banned on that one, too. But it didn’t say that, it kept throwing random errors as if it was only a backend issue. These disappeared once my main ban was gone. So all in all my point is, people should understand that the platform outright does these kinds of things and use or find alternatives based on that

mark_l_watson 5y ago
I agree with you. I feel caught in a trap though: I really like the Oculus VR platform. I use it everyday to play quick games if ping pong or racket ball when I need to move around after sitting in my desk chair. Sometimes I spend more time on the Star Wars games, etc. But, as you say, I try to use their VR platform with some awareness of their business model.
- beezischillin 5y ago
  I'm no better. I use it to keep in contact with friends, most of whom have moved to other countries but I try to maintain a backup. I also own an Oculus and have given credit for the Quest in the past as the closest thing to mainstreaming VR to date, it's unfortunate that it operates under Facebook but it's probably the only hardware business they'll have that'll hold any interest to me. I have a separate account for mine because I don't trust or like them (and I really dislike "social" features in games). That being said, I expect it to get caught up and destroyed eventually so I hope at that point the hacker community will have an answer to keep it working outside of the Facebook ecosystem. (There may already be one, I have not checked.)

mark_l_watson 5y ago

I agree with you. I feel caught in a trap though: I really like the Oculus VR platform. I use it everyday to play quick games if ping pong or racket ball when I need to move around after sitting in my desk chair. Sometimes I spend more time on the Star Wars games, etc. But, as you say, I try to use their VR platform with some awareness of their business model.

beezischillin 5y ago
I'm no better. I use it to keep in contact with friends, most of whom have moved to other countries but I try to maintain a backup. I also own an Oculus and have given credit for the Quest in the past as the closest thing to mainstreaming VR to date, it's unfortunate that it operates under Facebook but it's probably the only hardware business they'll have that'll hold any interest to me. I have a separate account for mine because I don't trust or like them (and I really dislike "social" features in games). That being said, I expect it to get caught up and destroyed eventually so I hope at that point the hacker community will have an answer to keep it working outside of the Facebook ecosystem. (There may already be one, I have not checked.)