To be fair: You needed an Oculus account to use an Oculus, just like you need a Switch account or a Steam account. Hardware with a digital store requires an account.

A Facebook account is much more restrictive than say a Steam account. Facebook tries to get you to use your real name for example. Who in the world wants to use their real name playing a video game?

I thought you were kidding until I clicked through. How is this better in any way?

> Today we’re introducing Meta accounts: a new way for people to log into their VR headsets that doesn’t require a Facebook account.

Great. where can I not signup.

From Meta's point of view this doesn't change anything.

Your activities and interests on your meta accounts will all be part of the same profile meta keeps on grin your Facebook activity, internet browsing, and anything else they can attach or infer a tracking identity from.

Their "privacy" controls are outward facing - e.g., how your meta account is related to your Facebook profile outside meta, not inside.

This really doesn't seem to be getting to the meat of the matter.

Your neighbor and family may not know that "John Smith" on Facebook is "mariofan#1" playing VR games and "naughty69" doing VR porn, but meta sure will.

The problem isn't that you need a Facebook account, it's that Meta owns Oculus at all. Call the account whatever you want; if I'm a record in any of Meta's databases then I expect to be linked to a shadow profile and surveilled for their profit. The only control I have over the situation is to never agree to any ToS relationship with Meta. There's literally nothing they can do to change this short of selling Oculus to someone else.

The day Meta bought Oculus they killed the platform for privacy-conscious webizens. I say this as someone who would love to try the Soda Island VR experiences and often lament the acquisition.

I am super bearish on Meta:

- why would anyone trust Meta/FB on anything they say or trust them with your data

- FB became popular because it was easy to use, it was just about uploading and commenting on photos. I don't see any of my family members buying a VR device and connect in metaverse ... there is no way ..

- I don't think people will ever use VR devices for the sole purpose of having meeting, video works just fine

The metaverse does not make sense, what it makes sense is AR, and Apple will be the one dominating the space.

Just after leaks of a killer VR headset from Valve? No thank you, Meta.

For those not in the know, Valve is coming out with a successor to the Index headset called Valve Deckard. They'll probably announce it later this year. From the leaked information, it looks like an absolute beast of a headset.

How exactly does this address the privacy concerns underlying the previous model? They still require me to have a “social” profile. I never agreed to that when I bought my Oculus Rift back in 2016. In effect, my Rift remains bricked unless I agree to have a presence in their dystopian Metaverse. No thank you!

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.

It is an interesting growth play that Meta is doing (putting aside our feelings about it).

By putting out relatively cheap VR headsets and requiring a meta (Facebook) account to use it, they are getting young people signed up for meta. Those young people might not have signed up for Facebook/Meta otherwise. It's a sneaky way to reduce friction and maybe convert young people onto the social media platform.

It also reminds me of how google's social network automatically created profiles on their social media spot. That experiment failed. Will meta's growth play fail?

This is purely me trying to figure out the business angle.

Misleading title. Going from requiring a Facebook account to a Meta Account is a very minor move.

This looks like it's "just" follow-through from previous headlines.

s/Facebook/Meta/g

You'll still need to add an email address, your name, DOB, a phone number, and payment info. To retain your privacy, you can easily create an email alias and put in a fake name and DOB. A paid Twilio number should work. A privacy.com (or similar service) should also work.

This misstep cost them a heck of a lot of goodwill in their community.

Metaverse is Zuckerberg's wet dream. I always remember Virtual Sex Scene from Demolition Man[0].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3yARIfDJrY :)

Well correct me if I'm wrong but so far as I can tell you still need a 'Meta' account to use them so... Not so great as it sounds.

Can I now safely consume adult VR content without anyone watching me back?

I guess that removes one block from us buying Oculus devices. I still have no clear idea how we buy them for a classroom, but I guess this is a good start. It still sounds like its a Facebook account in another form.

> Your “Friends” will now become “Followers,” similar to Instagram’s existing model.

Don't see how this makes sense for VR, where you probably want to hang out with your friends and play games. Followers?

I will admit this is very tempting.

The Quest 2 is the only reasonably priced standalone headset.

I'll probably wait until the end of the year though, hopefully ANYONE else will release a solid standalone

I gave my Quest away when they announced they were requiring a Facebook account. I liked it, but ultimately decided it had been a mistake to use something owned by Facebook, and I should have seen where it would go. Maybe I did, but had been too excited by the idea of VR. I'm not going to buy another device now, expecting that their fundamental nature as a company will eventually win out. It's a frog/scorpion situation with them.

too late; already moved on.

This is really a big move from Meta, and very right one.

Consider how many countries can't directly use Facebook, they had to use a VPN to first login Facebook, then the headsets, its ridiculous. Many novice users have even no idea what is a VPN, so they have to put away the headsets just bought from the online.

I heard many stories of this, now finally changed.

Good job Meta!

Since I still login to Facebook at least once a month to see what my family is doing, I see no reason for me to switch.

If I was starting with a new device with no prior purchases of entertainment content, then I would create an Oculus account.

For me, Oculus is the one really great thing about Meta/Facebook. It is my favorite toy.

Only Mark Zuckerberg could possibly announce with a straight face (without apologizing for having made a Facebook login mandatory previously) this, as if he's doing us a favor. The man is a narcissist and megalomaniac

meta (heh): can’t view this page without accepting all cookies, including Facebook ad ones, which it says you can control on your cookie settings page (404 link) but if you don’t have a Facebook account you can’t access

- why would anyone trust Meta/FB on anything they say or trust them with your data

Because people don't care about what is done with their data, because it doesn't affect them. This is why FB is still the most used social media site in the world despite all the negativity. People just want a good product and that's what FB gives. That why Instagram and WhatsApp are also extremely popular despite being owned by FB. People just don't give a fuck. Google is still by far the most popular search engine despite many people trying to create search engine that don't track you. All of them failed to take any market share from Google because Google gives people a good product compared to the rest and that's all what people care about.

People just want a good product, they don't care how you do it.

Concur. AR's gonna be the next smartphone, as soon as someone launches successful AR glasses. I'm convinced that several major tech companies are seeing enough progress in their R&D departments (or in others'...) that they believe it's not far off. Dunno why else they'd all keep spending so much on AR features & tech when it's obviously a dead-end outside niche applications, so long as you have to hold a device up to use it. All I can figure is they consider it so beneficial to be ready to go when the hardware finally is, and are so sure that day will come in the not-to-distant-future, that they're willing to burn a lot of cash on it now to make sure they're not left behind.

VR's not gonna be mainstream until after AR is. When decent and non-hideous AR glasses can double as VR devices , that is when it might take off, as a secondary use for those. The current bulky power-sucking ones that look dorky, block your sight, and require a whole lot of open space if you want to use them for much—those are never gonna be mainstream.

> why would anyone trust Meta/FB on anything they say or trust them with your data

You should probably ask the ~4B people that use their services.

I agree with you.

Had an extensive conversation with my SO this past weekend about the use of VR tech in education. This was spurred by meeting an individual who was promoting VR for k-12 (I’m in USA) education and that “in 5-10 years kids will all go to school virtually with VR”.

Idk the whole thought of VR as a replacement for the “education system” gives me chills. I acknowledge the use of VR tech can be correctly implemented as a “tool” but IMO not a sole replacement for “real world” things.

VR to me just seems like tech searching for a use case rather than actually solving a problem - I personally argue this to be similar to crypto currencies.

10 years ago, did you see all your family members keeping a computer with a constant internet connection in their pocket? I think our predictive abilities of the future are often lacking.

The reason to be bearish isn't because of privacy, it's because their existing social networks are declining, and Zuck has hitched his cart to a niche gaming setup.

I didn't realize the Index was still being sold - it was unavailable so long that I thought they launched it, sold the initial batch, then never made more and abandoned the product. As a result, I wrote Valve off as "launches awesome tech demos but doesn't want to make consumer products".

(I thought they also launched then cancelled another hardware product, but I don't remember details and can't find anything, so my memory may be playing tricks on me? Maybe I subconsciously mixed up the Nvidia Shield and Valve?)

The Deckard seems to be standalone too. That's excellent. In practice, being standalone was a killer feature. You can just grab and use it like a phone, instead of having to boot a PC, mess around with cables, make sure the lighthouses are powered up, inevitably spend the first 15 minutes debugging the setup... (and of course having to own a gaming PC in the first place was also a significant hurdle).

Yes but for how much? The Oculus 2 is crazy cheap and more accessible to a wider audience. I doubt that will be. I imagine ~Facebook~ Meta took a loss on every headset sold.

Deckard Cain? Stay while and listen.

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.

> 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.

> 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.

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.