Guess if @Facebook disabled my account for no reason and there's no way to have it reviewed I won't be developing VR anymore? Good thing I haven't opened the shrink wrap on my Quest2. #VR
— Nicole Lazzaro #RBG #BLM #Harris2024 💪🏾🗳🌈 🥞 (@NicoleLazzaro) November 16, 2020
Nicole Lazzaro is an acclaimed game developer, named by Fast Company as among the top 100 women in tech and by Gamasutra as among the top 20 women working in games. But now there's one kind of game platform she currently can't develop on: The Oculus Quest. Which is a shame, because she was developing her quite impressive VR game "Find the White Rabbit" for Oculus, but it looks like there's going to be a delay (if not a permanent pause).
This is due, as you probably guessed already, to Oculus' recently imposed mandatory Facebook log-in policy:
The problem (as best as I can make out) is that her personal Facebook account was disabled, with the Catch 22 now being that she's unable to request a reactivation of this account from Facebook the company, because she has to log into her Facebook account to get the credentials. To make matters worse. to log into her Oculus VR Developer account, she has to use her FB account... which no longer accepts log-in via e-mail address as a backup.
Hopefully all this gets sorted out for Nicole soon (I've reached out to her to ask), but there are surely hundreds if not thousands of other VR developers dealing with similar problems with Facebook ID and Oculus. Which is not exactly a strong endorsement of the platform, especially so close to the holiday shopping season, with developers in a mad scramble to finalize their games for publication. And while there are far larger privacy concerns and ownership rights concerns around Facebook's mandatory ID policy for Oculus, this is an example of how it's also harming Oculus as a consumer product -- and for that matter, basically the whole future of VR as a consumer category.
"The Facebook login requirement for VR developers means that you are locked out of Oculus development, store, and hardware should your FB account get disabled or hacked," as she puts it to me now. And she's not just worried about her own account: "I'm concerned for the safety of women, people of color, LGBTQ and other marginalized people I support and mentor on FB. It's strikingly clear to me now that they are one security flaw away from having their private information exposed."
Assuming Facebook doesn't change its log-in policy for consumers, how can they at least make it easier for developers?
Niccole advocates that Oculus developers, at least, should be able to log into their account via e-mail, or at least a different Facebook account from their personal one:
"It would help protect marginalized developers from harassment if Facebook allowed email logins for professional developers or that we set up separate Facebook accounts. It's a huge risk that someone who's 'out' on Facebook connects their Facebook account to an in-development VR App at work. They are one security flaw away from having their private life spread to the whole company. Additionally, scraping my social graph gives bad actors ways to harass me not just on Facebook but inside VR as well where it will do more emotional harm."
Her concerns about personal security for Oculus developers are very valid, and it's somewhat strange that Facebook did not anticipate this issue, given the fact that they dealt with it around real names and the safety of the LGBT community just a few years ago.
UPDATE 10:50pm PT: After chatting with Nicole, I've corrected what happened to her Oculus account (above), added her concerns around Facebook's policy with vulnerable communities, and updated the post title accordingly.
Hat tip: Reddit's /VirtualReality.
Once upon a time in a land far, far away, I had a Facebook account. I think I logged in twice maybe ten years ago, but never again. I wish they would disable my account. Do you think if I posted something about free speech and the constitution that would get them to close my account?
Posted by: Luther Weymann | Tuesday, November 17, 2020 at 10:13 PM
@Luther: Nah, that won't work. I've blathered on about issues in Hong Kong and China, already, and the most that happened to me is that a couple of posts were deleted.
Posted by: Joey1058 | Wednesday, November 18, 2020 at 01:29 PM