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This is a bait and switch. There's no reason to believe that Facebook will remain benevolent in the future. They will switch back to requiring some thing they c

This is a bait and switch. There's no reason to believe that Facebook will remain benevolent in the future. They will switch back to requiring some thing they can use to collect and sell your personal data even if it's not called Facebook. That was the point of them buying Oculus. They never tried to make money on the hardware.

vkou 4y ago
> That was the point of them buying (and ruining) Oculus. The point of them buying Oculus is because MZ thinks that VR might be the future, and he wants to own that space (Lest Facebook fade into irrelevance as a one-trick pony). I'm of the opinion that the data they could slurp up from mining your VR usage is of limited use, because it won't meaningfully improve ad targeting. And if it doesn't improve ad targeting, there's no reason for advertisers to pay FB more.
- everyone 4y ago
  I was so pumped for Oculus. I was following them way before Carmack joined. I had a DK2. What facebook did to Oculus is a good enough reason for me to hate them intensely forever.
  - marrone12 4y ago
    What exactly did they "do" to oculus besides give them a ton of funding and try to bring them into the mainstream?
    - kyboren 4y ago
      By way of analogy: They took a precocious, promising young child and assimilated her into the Borg.
    - superkuh 4y ago
      They broke the emerging VR software ecosystem into the open side which many companies supported and a Facebook only proprietary one they asserted ownership and control of. Before Facebook bought Oculus there was cooperation and native software interoptibility between Vive and Rift. Then they stopped supporting desktop head mounted displays for the most part and switched to building face mounted VR computers that happened to have an initially janky, and always higher latency, passthrough mode to support acting as a display for a real computer.
      - JoshTriplett 4y ago
        This has been what I've found frustrating about most past VR headsets or attempts to build one: I don't want a VR headset to be like a phone or laptop and have its own computer and app ecosystem; I want a peripheral that attaches to my phone and laptop.
        WrtCdEvrydy 4y ago
        but you can't create lock-in and an app store out of that.
        filoleg 4y ago
        You can connect any oculus quest device to your desktop and use it just like Vive with steamvr aka peripheral. It is an officially supported functionality. They didnt remove it by creating Quest, they just added standalone mode in addition to the "peripheral" mode.
        camdat 4y ago
        If anything FB has greatly improved this. Airlink is a literal step-change improvement to VR that allows the user to have a totally wireless PC VR experience, something that was assumed to be very difficult/impossible over existing wireless standards.
      - LordDragonfang 4y ago
        >They broke the emerging VR software ecosystem into the open side which many companies supported and a Facebook only proprietary one What? There used to be a bunch of different VR platforms, and only recently has the industry settled on a single open standard, OpenXR[1], and Facebook was (or at least claims to be[2]) one of the major contributors to that open standard. There are a lot of things you can criticize Meta for doing with Oculus, but opposing open standards isn't one of them. [1] https://www.khronos.org/openxr/ https://www.khronos.org/openxr/ [2] https://developer.oculus.com/blog/openxr-for-oculus/ https://developer.oculus.com/blog/openxr-for-oculus/
      - marrone12 4y ago
        The second point doesn't make sense at all. Consumers vastly prefer standalone VR, and it was always the future. For the first point, I'll give you that they prefer playing on their own platform. But they haven't "broken" anything. While yes you do need a software layer, e.g. Revive, you can still play steam games on oculus and oculus games on an index. And you have no idea whether that would have happened anyway as one of these companies got bigger. Google used to say "do no evil" and now they don't, and they didn't get acquired before they changed. These things just happen.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  > I'm of the opinion that the data they could slurp up from mining your VR usage is of limited use, because it won't meaningfully improve ad targeting. Facebook is going to get lots more data than they get from you on desktop and mobile. “…one of the things I’m really excited about for future versions is getting eye tracking and face tracking in.” — Mark Zuckerberg https://uploadvr.com/zuckerberg-eye-face-tracking-quest-3/ https://uploadvr.com/zuckerberg-eye-face-tracking-quest-3/
  - jdminhbg 4y ago
    This quote seems to be about using face/eye tracking to improve the VR itself, not something about ads or data mining.
    - LordDragonfang 4y ago
      Yeah, many VR consumers are interested in face/eye tracking as well, because it's the logical next step for improving social VR (which a social networking giant is obviously interested in). No need to read further sinister motives into it.
    - dieselgate 4y ago
      I can reply to this comment now but will repost the previous reply: Not sure why I can’t reply to the sibling comment here but I still cannot trust Meta/MZ for anything - even if the stated goal of eye tracking is to “improve the platform” “They trust me - dumb fucks” Mark Zuckerberg
    - scrose 4y ago
      Having worked very briefly at a company that survived on ad-sales, I can assure you that face/eye tracking will definitely be used as a way to sell more or charge more for ads on the platform. At the very least it will be a way for a marketing team to go back to their bosses about how sticky their ad was. Ie ‘People looked at our ad for an average of 10 seconds!’
    - CharlesW 4y ago
      Yes, and there’s value to that. “Better avatars” is a central part of Zuck’s public sales pitch. But the actual endgame is that Meta has been building a portfolio of patents that leverage eye and face tracking to better target you with ads and other content. “The next patent really gets into it…It’s called ‘Techniques for emotion detection and content delivery’. This one is a straight up flowchart for capturing the user’s image via the camera to track your emotions when viewing different types of content. [Meta] could tie your emotional states when checking out videos, ads or baby pictures and serve up content in the future just by reading your initial state of emotion.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/curtissilver/2017/06/08/how-facebook-wants-to-capture-your-emotions-facial-expressions-and-mood/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/curtissilver/2017/06/08/how-fac...
- altarius 4y ago
  If VR takes shape as imagined by Meta, though I personally don't believe it will, they will absolutely be in an excellent position to market to and profile you. I think the vision is that everyone spends most of their online time in VR - so interacting with all of one's interests/hobbies/discussions, online contacts, searches. All very valuable for monetization through advertisement and profiling.
neodymiumphish 4y ago
I'm positive they will still correlate activity from your Meta account with your FB. One possible point of this is to keep Meta users with access to their purchased content while Facebook maintains their ability to block/restrict user access on the platform.
- izzydata 4y ago
  But I don't have a Facebook account so what is there to correlate?
  - groovybits 4y ago
    Facebook indeed collects data on non-users https://www.howtogeek.com/768652/what-are-facebook-shadow-profiles-and-should-you-be-worried/ https://www.howtogeek.com/768652/what-are-facebook-shadow-pr...
    - mahastore 4y ago
      It is deeper than that. After I google for anything , I generally see advertisements in my Facebook app for the specific thing. There is certainly some invisible link between Goog and Febu.
      - kmeisthax 4y ago
        The word you're thinking of is remarketing.
  - sstephant 4y ago
    None that you know of.
  - suscialmadia 4y ago
    You may not have an account on Facebook, but Facebook has an account on you. It gets populated with data uploaded by other people, JavaScript widgets on random web pages that you visit, etc.
  - 4y ago
dntrkv 4y ago
> That was the point of them buying Oculus. They never tried to make money on the hardware. They're not trying to make money from the hardware just like most gaming console companies don't make money from the hardware initially. Meta is trying to dominate the VR app market and make money from the Oculus Store. They'll probably take a similar approach to the App Store and Play Store.
lacker 4y ago
It's a bit pedantic, but Facebook does not sell your personal data. They use it to target advertising. And at this point, every large tech company does the same thing. Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft. They all make significant revenue from advertising and they all use data they collect from you to target ads. So, not that targeted advertising is so great, but it's looking like pretty much any hardware device from big tech companies in the future is going to work this way. I don't think Facebook is any different from the others any more.
- ElectricalUnion 4y ago
  > It's a bit pedantic, but Facebook does not sell your personal data. They use it to target advertising. But they also leak personal data. A lot. At this point, I'm willing to believe that the other adtech-corporations are more likely to be interested and capable in maintaining your data out of the prying eyes (of competing adtech-corporations).
  - camdat 4y ago
    > But they also leak personal data. A lot. Some examples please. In recent memory I can only think of examples where services violated TOS (which I'm not sure how FB could prevent) or got authorization from the end user (as in the Cambridge Analytica case). Any examples of them leaking data as a result of their own processes?
    - antiviral 4y ago
      Already posted this above “We do not have an adequate level of control and explainability over how our systems use data,” Facebook engineers say in leaked document. https://www.vice.com/en/article/akvmke/facebook-doesnt-know-what-it-does-with-your-data-or-where-it-goes https://www.vice.com/en/article/akvmke/facebook-doesnt-know-...
      - camdat 4y ago
        And? I'm not sure what this has to do with actual leaked data. I'm sure that many companies do not have a high quality data monitoring system, but very few actually leak data to the public.

vkou 4y ago

> That was the point of them buying (and ruining) Oculus. The point of them buying Oculus is because MZ thinks that VR might be the future, and he wants to own that space (Lest Facebook fade into irrelevance as a one-trick pony). I'm of the opinion that the data they could slurp up from mining your VR usage is of limited use, because it won't meaningfully improve ad targeting. And if it doesn't improve ad targeting, there's no reason for advertisers to pay FB more.

everyone 4y ago
I was so pumped for Oculus. I was following them way before Carmack joined. I had a DK2. What facebook did to Oculus is a good enough reason for me to hate them intensely forever.
- marrone12 4y ago
  What exactly did they "do" to oculus besides give them a ton of funding and try to bring them into the mainstream?
  - kyboren 4y ago
    By way of analogy: They took a precocious, promising young child and assimilated her into the Borg.
  - superkuh 4y ago
    They broke the emerging VR software ecosystem into the open side which many companies supported and a Facebook only proprietary one they asserted ownership and control of. Before Facebook bought Oculus there was cooperation and native software interoptibility between Vive and Rift. Then they stopped supporting desktop head mounted displays for the most part and switched to building face mounted VR computers that happened to have an initially janky, and always higher latency, passthrough mode to support acting as a display for a real computer.
    - JoshTriplett 4y ago
      This has been what I've found frustrating about most past VR headsets or attempts to build one: I don't want a VR headset to be like a phone or laptop and have its own computer and app ecosystem; I want a peripheral that attaches to my phone and laptop.
      - WrtCdEvrydy 4y ago
        but you can't create lock-in and an app store out of that.
      - filoleg 4y ago
        You can connect any oculus quest device to your desktop and use it just like Vive with steamvr aka peripheral. It is an officially supported functionality. They didnt remove it by creating Quest, they just added standalone mode in addition to the "peripheral" mode.
      - camdat 4y ago
        If anything FB has greatly improved this. Airlink is a literal step-change improvement to VR that allows the user to have a totally wireless PC VR experience, something that was assumed to be very difficult/impossible over existing wireless standards.
    - LordDragonfang 4y ago
      >They broke the emerging VR software ecosystem into the open side which many companies supported and a Facebook only proprietary one What? There used to be a bunch of different VR platforms, and only recently has the industry settled on a single open standard, OpenXR[1], and Facebook was (or at least claims to be[2]) one of the major contributors to that open standard. There are a lot of things you can criticize Meta for doing with Oculus, but opposing open standards isn't one of them. [1] https://www.khronos.org/openxr/ https://www.khronos.org/openxr/ [2] https://developer.oculus.com/blog/openxr-for-oculus/ https://developer.oculus.com/blog/openxr-for-oculus/
    - marrone12 4y ago
      The second point doesn't make sense at all. Consumers vastly prefer standalone VR, and it was always the future. For the first point, I'll give you that they prefer playing on their own platform. But they haven't "broken" anything. While yes you do need a software layer, e.g. Revive, you can still play steam games on oculus and oculus games on an index. And you have no idea whether that would have happened anyway as one of these companies got bigger. Google used to say "do no evil" and now they don't, and they didn't get acquired before they changed. These things just happen.
CharlesW 4y ago
> I'm of the opinion that the data they could slurp up from mining your VR usage is of limited use, because it won't meaningfully improve ad targeting. Facebook is going to get lots more data than they get from you on desktop and mobile. “…one of the things I’m really excited about for future versions is getting eye tracking and face tracking in.” — Mark Zuckerberg https://uploadvr.com/zuckerberg-eye-face-tracking-quest-3/ https://uploadvr.com/zuckerberg-eye-face-tracking-quest-3/
- jdminhbg 4y ago
  This quote seems to be about using face/eye tracking to improve the VR itself, not something about ads or data mining.
  - LordDragonfang 4y ago
    Yeah, many VR consumers are interested in face/eye tracking as well, because it's the logical next step for improving social VR (which a social networking giant is obviously interested in). No need to read further sinister motives into it.
  - dieselgate 4y ago
    I can reply to this comment now but will repost the previous reply: Not sure why I can’t reply to the sibling comment here but I still cannot trust Meta/MZ for anything - even if the stated goal of eye tracking is to “improve the platform” “They trust me - dumb fucks” Mark Zuckerberg
  - scrose 4y ago
    Having worked very briefly at a company that survived on ad-sales, I can assure you that face/eye tracking will definitely be used as a way to sell more or charge more for ads on the platform. At the very least it will be a way for a marketing team to go back to their bosses about how sticky their ad was. Ie ‘People looked at our ad for an average of 10 seconds!’
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    Yes, and there’s value to that. “Better avatars” is a central part of Zuck’s public sales pitch. But the actual endgame is that Meta has been building a portfolio of patents that leverage eye and face tracking to better target you with ads and other content. “The next patent really gets into it…It’s called ‘Techniques for emotion detection and content delivery’. This one is a straight up flowchart for capturing the user’s image via the camera to track your emotions when viewing different types of content. [Meta] could tie your emotional states when checking out videos, ads or baby pictures and serve up content in the future just by reading your initial state of emotion.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/curtissilver/2017/06/08/how-facebook-wants-to-capture-your-emotions-facial-expressions-and-mood/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/curtissilver/2017/06/08/how-fac...
altarius 4y ago
If VR takes shape as imagined by Meta, though I personally don't believe it will, they will absolutely be in an excellent position to market to and profile you. I think the vision is that everyone spends most of their online time in VR - so interacting with all of one's interests/hobbies/discussions, online contacts, searches. All very valuable for monetization through advertisement and profiling.

neodymiumphish 4y ago

I'm positive they will still correlate activity from your Meta account with your FB. One possible point of this is to keep Meta users with access to their purchased content while Facebook maintains their ability to block/restrict user access on the platform.

izzydata 4y ago
But I don't have a Facebook account so what is there to correlate?
- groovybits 4y ago
  Facebook indeed collects data on non-users https://www.howtogeek.com/768652/what-are-facebook-shadow-profiles-and-should-you-be-worried/ https://www.howtogeek.com/768652/what-are-facebook-shadow-pr...
  - mahastore 4y ago
    It is deeper than that. After I google for anything , I generally see advertisements in my Facebook app for the specific thing. There is certainly some invisible link between Goog and Febu.
    - kmeisthax 4y ago
      The word you're thinking of is remarketing.
- sstephant 4y ago
  None that you know of.
- suscialmadia 4y ago
  You may not have an account on Facebook, but Facebook has an account on you. It gets populated with data uploaded by other people, JavaScript widgets on random web pages that you visit, etc.
- 4y ago

dntrkv 4y ago

> That was the point of them buying Oculus. They never tried to make money on the hardware. They're not trying to make money from the hardware just like most gaming console companies don't make money from the hardware initially. Meta is trying to dominate the VR app market and make money from the Oculus Store. They'll probably take a similar approach to the App Store and Play Store.

lacker 4y ago

It's a bit pedantic, but Facebook does not sell your personal data. They use it to target advertising. And at this point, every large tech company does the same thing. Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft. They all make significant revenue from advertising and they all use data they collect from you to target ads. So, not that targeted advertising is so great, but it's looking like pretty much any hardware device from big tech companies in the future is going to work this way. I don't think Facebook is any different from the others any more.

ElectricalUnion 4y ago
> It's a bit pedantic, but Facebook does not sell your personal data. They use it to target advertising. But they also leak personal data. A lot. At this point, I'm willing to believe that the other adtech-corporations are more likely to be interested and capable in maintaining your data out of the prying eyes (of competing adtech-corporations).
- camdat 4y ago
  > But they also leak personal data. A lot. Some examples please. In recent memory I can only think of examples where services violated TOS (which I'm not sure how FB could prevent) or got authorization from the end user (as in the Cambridge Analytica case). Any examples of them leaking data as a result of their own processes?
  - antiviral 4y ago
    Already posted this above “We do not have an adequate level of control and explainability over how our systems use data,” Facebook engineers say in leaked document. https://www.vice.com/en/article/akvmke/facebook-doesnt-know-what-it-does-with-your-data-or-where-it-goes https://www.vice.com/en/article/akvmke/facebook-doesnt-know-...
    - camdat 4y ago
      And? I'm not sure what this has to do with actual leaked data. I'm sure that many companies do not have a high quality data monitoring system, but very few actually leak data to the public.