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They have a brand problem. Absolutely no way I buy anything from Meta.
by JKCalhoun 1y ago
They have a brand problem. Absolutely no way I buy anything from Meta.
- mgh2 1y agoWhy do you think they rebranded? They are chasing after Gen Z, brainwashing that clean slate.
- AvAn12 1y ago"rebranding" takes more than saying "oh, now we are 'meta'" FB launched with great positive repetitional aura, but, at least to me, they have worn that away bit by bit over the years to the point where it becomes hard to earn back,.
- xnx 1y ago> FB launched with great positive repetitional aura As a site that ranked how hot girls were?
- AvAn12 1y agoOk, I was trying to give as much benefit of the doubt as possible. You are 100% correct of course...
- mortenjorck 1y agoThe vast majority of users knew nothing about Facebook‘s origins until The Social Network. In the mid-to-late 2000s, the perception was of simply a much better designed, much more exclusive alternative to Myspace. Hard to imagine nearly two decades later, but for a brief moment in time, it was cool to be on Facebook.
- bigiain 1y ago> The vast majority of users knew nothing about Facebook‘s origins They are all <checks notes> "dumb fucks." -- Mark Zuckerberg, 2004 personal correspondence documented in https://www.theregister.com/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/ https://www.theregister.com/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/
- fkyoureadthedoc 1y agoBro we get it. It's been done ad nauseam. It's now the equivalent of putting the dollar sign in Micro$oft. Probably the most relatable thing he's done anyway.
- brandall10 1y agoTo the larger public they were the opposite of that... a clean, uncluttered alternative to MySpace that had none of its social baggage, in spite of its DNA which was clearly unknown during the early phases of social media.
- vasco 1y agoThe most popular dating apps do basically the same now but since there's no leader board and they aren't side by side it's all good I guess. All the same except for the UX
- ethbr1 1y agoYou'd be amazed how many <25s have no idea Meta owns Instagram and WhatsApp.
- pchristensen 1y ago> 25s have no idea either!
- dymk 1y agoThe big “From Meta” at the bottom of the splash screen doesn’t tip people off?
- mcintyre1994 1y agoI suspect it’s more that they don’t know who Meta is and because it’s meaningless they don’t link the “From Meta” between the two apps, if they even use both of them.
- ethbr1 1y agoThe inability of most people to notice 11 fingers should have adjusted our estimate of the average person's attention to detail.
- metabagel 1y agoThey rebranded because Facebook is a limiting name for branching out into new markets. Clean slate is a bonus.
- dhjilop 1y agoI would buy something from them, but until I know I could wear them safely at work while developing, using the bathroom, driving, and watching TV at home, and that I’d want to do that without being distracted all day by texts, etc., I wouldn’t wear them. I have to wear glasses, so they’d have to be clear, prescription glasses with reasonable small and stylish frames. This product isn’t for me, and I don’t see how it makes sense to continue spending money on this boondoggle, which is effectively a massively expensive human-testing project to help them develop reasonable-looking glasses. I love Ray-Ban glasses, but not this style or size, and not with these features.
- al_borland 1y agoThis is my #1 issue. I simply don’t trust them and I don’t know that there is a realistic path to build that trust at this point. They’ve been violating my trust for decades. I’m happy to let them prove out the tech, and if/when a company enters the market with a compelling product that I can trust, I will consider that competing product.
- throwoutway 1y agoOP is taking videos of his baby with these when Meta's page here doesn't event mention data privacy or security of the user's information or how it protects them
- vasco 1y agoAll babies look the same, out of anything private you could film by mistake, a baby seems pretty harmless.
- jahsome 1y agoYeah and stupid babies are too stupid to consent anyway
- dweekly 1y agoFace recognition is uninuitively good. Google Photos was able to pick out faces from my baby photos pretty easily.
- KPGv2 1y agoGoogle's face recognition can't tell the difference between my 5yo and my newborn. And, most hilarious, my 8yo could unlock my wife's iPhone with face recognition when she was 2yo.
- SchemaLoad 1y agoI was thinking about that a while ago and came to the conclusion that it's likely massively helped out by the narrow search space. They aren't trying to match between every single person, just the ones in your photo library which is an extremely small group compared to what most facial recognition is doing.
- bigyabai 1y agoWell, your loss. My Oculus Quest remains the best $400 I ever spent on consumer tech.
- mupuff1234 1y agoAlmost everyone I know who got a quest stopped using it after a week. It's a fun toy, but gets boring pretty quickly.
- bigyabai 1y agoI use mine for flight simming. The screen looks great for the price, and lets me stream games like DCS World from my desktop. Far as fun toys go, the Quest sits head-and-shoulders over my Nintendo Switch.
- wkat4242 1y agoFor me too, I use mine for hours every week
- FergusArgyll 1y agoFor flight simming it really is much better. Being able to look to one side while "feeling" the offset (I can't explain it but you know what I mean) is a huge deal
- samplatt 1y agoMeanwhile I have a friend group (mostly build from real-life relationships) that gets together once a week for the last ~3 years to play VR games. YMMV :-)
- fidotron 1y agoAt one point it told you everyone on your friends list that had also got one - and in my case it was basically everyone I knew from work over the years. Literally the only people that used it more than two weeks were those working on VR. Even if you try to stick with it you grow to dread all interaction with their app or OS. They have some superb technology but the product management is atrocious.
- JSR_FDED 1y agoMeta has a Musk/Tesla problem
- Handy-Man 1y agoNot even close to that level lol
- notpushkin 1y agoI would probably buy a pair once there’s some progress on an alternative firmware for those. The price is (hopefully) subsidized, so putting Meta in the red while getting some cool tech would be nice. (Same reason I own a Quest 3.)
- mavamaarten 1y agoHah, same reason I bought my Quest 2. Figured I could buy a device that is subsidized by them, and then buy zero games on their platform and stream from my PC instead. I was very angry though when they suddenly took away my USB debugging and had to go through another round of "verification".
- jlarocco 1y ago100% They couldn't pay me to use it. I fully expect it's violating the user's privacy in every way they think they can get away with.
- paxys 1y agoMeta has close to 4 billion people worldwide using one or more of their products. Their brand problem doesn't extend much further than the HN comment section.
- bitmasher9 1y agoInstagram or WhatsApp are absolutely critical for daily functioning in certain circles of humanity.
- jachee 1y agoYeah, but facebook^WMeta didn’t develop those… they bought them to stifle competition.
- splatter9859 1y agoWhatsApp I can buy due to the communication factor, but Instagram you're really going to have to sell me on fitting into the category of 'critical for daily functioning'. Instagram. Critical to life. Naah.
- xeromal 1y agoI kind of agree but a lot of modern american small businesses run completely on facebook. At least in the 4wheeling community they do
- crossroadsguy 1y agoWhatsApp. Instagram not really. WhatsApp has unfortunately become "official" (not in a figure of speech) mode of communication in certain countries, one of which has more than a billion people in it.
- SchemaLoad 1y agoDepends on who you are. Quite a lot of careers require you to market yourself on social media now. You can hate Meta with a passion but acknowledge that you still have to reach customers who are on Instagram.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- splatter9859 1y ago100% this. I'd love to have some of these features in eyewear, but there is no way in hell I purchase anything like this from Meta. Less those bastards get of anything I control (data, finances, time) the better.
- mdhb 1y agoYou’re about to be in a world where your consent is totally out of the picture with Meta releasing this product and people will be recording you all the time now and sending that data directly to Meta where they can then build models about where you are, who you’re with, what you’re doing and what you are talking about and all without providing you and way to opt out other than breaking the glasses when you encounter them in public.
- brazukadev 1y agoYou are expecting meta to succeed and that's won't be happening.
- jryle70 1y agoAre you using Chinese brands? Tiktok, AliExpress, ByteDance, Binance, Tencent? If you have no problems with them but with Meta, that's hypocrisy on your part. I myself don't really have problems with them, and neither with Meta. I don't think they have a brand problem other than in bubbles like HN.
- bitwize 1y agoOne of these options (Meta vs. Chinese brands) is in bed with a dangerous totalitarian regime. The other is the Chinese brands.
- JustExAWS 1y agoThe Chinese government can’t do anything to affect my daily life. I would much rather the Chinese government know everything about me.
- signatoremo 1y agoSo you wouldn’t have problems with Meta if they weren’t American? Do you think Chinese people should use Meta’s products, if they were available there?
- JustExAWS 1y agoThat kind of seems logically to me if Meta isn’t sharing data with the Chinese government.
- paul7986 1y agoI own two pair and love them yet hate them also because they are not durable and my 1st pair bought Oct 2023 stopped being smart in April so I bought a 2nd pair. After some big-ish water splashes the second paired died in June. Smart glasses are great for ppl who wear some type of glasses and use their phone to take pics. Also, when I was in Europe asking about my surroundings enhanced my trip per my learning of about many sights I explored in Berlin and Amsterdam. I do love and miss them but I’m not buying another pair til they are rock solid durable! Also the Ray Ban stores need to act just like Apple stores in terms of tech support but they do not ..and thus both Meta and Ray Ban are just selling a toy that easily breaks / doesn’t last. Even a Ray ban customer service rep said these things break I get so many calls.
- zmmmmm 1y agoThe brand on display here is Ray Ban. That's why they spent billions to lock in the partnership.
- ghostpepper 1y agoFacebook changed its name to Meta. Meta is the company with the brand problem, not Ray Ban.
- MengerSponge 1y agoIt's deeper than a brand problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Careless_People https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Careless_People Meta delenda est.
- mrweasel 1y agoWhich makes you wonder about Ray-Ban. Are they aware that their involvement with Meta risks hurting their brand? Those of us who are critical of Meta might be niche enough that it doesn't matter, but they must have factored that in.
- wickedsight 1y agoRay-Ban is part of EssilorLuxottica. They own pretty much every single (sun)glasses brand on earth. I'm sure someone in their organization has made the decision that Ray-Ban was the best fit for a brand in their portfolio to do something together with Meta. Also, you're right about the niche. A lot of 'normal' people probably don't even have a clue that Meta and Facebook are the same thing.
- brador 1y agoMark made the choice to go with RB (MIB inspired).
- mrweasel 1y agoThey probably had two brands that made sense, Ray Ban or Oakley, but just by listing those two, it's fairly clear that the products would be perceived vastly different, had they gone with Oakley. The rest of the brands are either luxury or fairly unknown brands. Picking a smaller brand would automatically flop the product and going with e.g. Burberry could limit sales or the risk to the brand would be to high.
- gausswho 1y agoHuh. I genuinely thought they were already acquired.
- mft_ 1y agoI doubt it is to any measurable extent. The (literally) billions of people around the world using Facebook and Instagram don't care.
- incone123 1y agoYou would avoid ray ban conventional glasses in protest at their association with meta? Don't forget to avoid the rest of Luxottica Group's products. I would bet (on Polymarket) against such a boycott gaining traction.
- mft_ 1y agoThis. The tech would have to absolutely world-alteringly amazingly unmissable for me to even consider using anything tied to the Meta ecosystem.
- unsupp0rted 1y agoOnly on HN do they have a brand problem. The vast majority of the world doesn’t care. Half don’t know that Meta and Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp are the same thing. And even if they know it’s no more concerning than that conspiracy video they just watched and 100% believed about Bill Gates, as they log into Windows or power on their Xbox.
- Aurornis 1y agoThis is why HN comments about personal preferences for Meta products aren’t informative. Meta really does have billions of users who don’t care in the slightest about boycotting the company. They just want to use their products because that’s where other people are.