Image via Upload VR
Surprising nearly no one, Oculus recently added injury to the insult of requiring Facebook log-in to use the Oculus Quest. Not only will VR users need to log in via Facebook, they are now required to keep using Facebook on pain of losing their Oculus content:
If you’ve linked your Oculus account to Facebook and decide you want to delete your Facebook account, your purchases on Oculus will be lost as well... Conversation surrounding the account deletion policy continues to unfold and there was a recent House subcommittee report which seemed to suggest Congress should view policies like Facebook’s as anticompetitive.
That last line is especially on point, given the upcoming election, with a heavy likelihood of Democrats -- highly critical of Facebook's monopolistic behavior -- taking both the Senate and the White House. Up until very recently, Congress has seemed too out of touch with technology to sufficiently confront Big Tech, but that's changed quite a bit -- especially now that leading Congressmembers are actual, genuine gamers.
At this point, the Electronic Freedom Foundation may beat Congress to the punch, with the venerable digital rights organization firing a shot across Oculus' bow last Summer with this statement:
Logging into Facebook on an Oculus product already shares with Facebook to inform ads when you logged into a Facebook account. Facebook already has a vast collection of data, collected from across the web and even your own devices. Combining this with sensitive biometric and environmental data detected by Oculus headsets furthers tramples user privacy. And Facebook should really know—the company recently agreed to pay $650 million for violating Illinois’ biometric law (BIPA) for collecting user biometric data without consent. However, for companies like Facebook, which are built on capturing your attention and selling it to advertisers, this is a potential gold mine. Having eye-tracking data on users, for example, can cement a monopolistic power in online advertisements—regardless of how effective it actually is. They merely need the ad industry to believe Facebook has an advantage.
Facebook violating the trust of users in its acquired companies (like Instagram and Whatsapp) may not be surprising. After all, it has a long trail of broken promises while paying lip service to privacy concerns. What’s troubling in this instance, however, is the position of Oculus in the VR/AR industry. Facebook is poised to shape the medium as a whole and may normalize mass user surveillance, as Google has already done with smartphones. We must make sure that doesn't happen.
Emphasis mine, because it bears emphasizing. The future of VR depends on Oculus Quest, by far the leading standalone VR device line, succeeding. But that success is unlikely, nor even desirable, if a single company maintains such a stranglehold on the technology. So now thanks to Oculus' draconian policies, the future of VR may therefore depend on Congress or the EFF successfully interceding.
The EFF is a great organization. However, as much as they stand against Facebook, unless they have the right lobbyists in DC, Facebook will simply run them over like a deer on the highway. It's my opinion that Zuck has reached "F*ck you, we're doing this" momentum. He's been personally subpoenaed enough times that he really doesn't give a rat's ass anymore. Unless Facebook's board removes him, this isn't going to end well.
Posted by: Joey1058 | Tuesday, October 27, 2020 at 06:18 AM