PSA: If You Don't Want Targeted Facebook Ads in Your Oculus, Don't Log Into Your Oculus Via Your Facebook Account

Huge scoop from Ian Hamilton of Upload VR just dropped -- confirming the fears of many, Facebook is now indeed using Oculus as a targeted ad platform:

The company is updating its privacy policy and rolling out new social VR features backed by your “Facebook identity” with the intention of “clarifying how Oculus data is shared with Facebook to inform ads when you log into Facebook on Oculus.”

With this most recent change “If you choose not to log into Facebook on Oculus, we won’t share data with Facebook to allow third parties to target advertisements to you based on your use of the Oculus Platform,” according to Facebook.

... Facebook suggests that for those who log into the account it will target “relevant content” based around “Oculus activity” including “which apps you use” with examples given including “Oculus Events you might like to attend or ads for VR apps available on the Oculus Store.”

The company says this “won’t affect your on-device data” which, based on our previous reporting, Facebook says is the location where “3D maps of your environment” are kept.

To be crystal clear, if an Oculus Quest user only uses their separate Oculus account to log-in, they are safe from Facebook ad targeting. (Unless or until Facebook updates its terms of service again, of course.)

This move is sure to be controversial, especially among the VR community who have been posting warnings like this one from virtual reality pioneer Ari Bar-Zeev about the massive potential for abuse via virtual reality usage data.  

Ian speculates that Facebook feels it needs to do this to maintain engagement across its platforms:

"Ads targeted based on your Oculus activity is clearly just a part of their broader consolidation strategy," as he puts it to me. "I believe Facebook sees VR and AR as the future of its platform in every sense. I dunno what the Facebook experience has been for everyone else over the last many years, but I stopped being comfortable sharing much on there a long time ago.

"Facebook took way too long to realize how much people were feeling truly — deeply — uncomfortable sharing text and photos and videos that pop up at unexpected times and in unexpected ways. Now they are consolidating around more private forms of communication while enabling new ones with VR and AR, and, in Mark Zuckerberg’s eyes, it all needs to be backed by your real identity to create trust and safety."

So if you're concerned about this but haven't yet taken any action, now is probably the right time to start. Ian, for instance, created a new Facebook account for use with Oculus that doesn't contain his past history on the social network.

Comments

[seph]

Worth noting having multiple personal Facebook accounts is against Community Standards and can get your account(s) banned https://www.facebook.com/help/975828035803295

Facebook earns 99% of it's revenue from ads. Targeted ads more than any other kind. It's probably not worth trying to avoid Facebook integration and ad-related content, they're going to monetize the way they know how.

[camilia fid3lis nee Patchouli Woollahra]

Facebook algorithms have become advanced enough that if you don't have an account with them, you will still have a me-shaped hole in their data graph based off what few bits of data matching they can still perform anonymously as well as based on your interactions on social media. It's patently disturbing really.

[Alexander the Great]

@ seph , fuck that , civil disobedience all the way. I have 3.

[Adeon]

I assumed that was a given. Why would you log in via Facebook? Do you even read the TOS? Don’t know why people are surprised.

[Adeon]

(You don’t need to make a separate Facebook account to use oculus. A Facebook account isn’t required at all.)

[FlipperPA]

I wouldn't buy anything Oculus makes, specifically because of the FB association. I had an original HTC Vive, and recently upgraded to the Valve Index.

I do have an account with Oculus, however; to play exclusives like Vader Immortal through Revive: https://github.com/LibreVR/Revive

Get LastPass or 1Password, and avoid using third-party login whenever and wherever possible.