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Comment by kgwxd | Hacker News Reader

Valve won't collect data?

They might, but they don't have facebooks apparatus or motivation for turning it into ads on unrelated web pages.

Do they need to own the apparatus? I search for a product on Google, I click on a search result, navigating to a retailer's site. That site knows not only what I'm looking at but what I was searching for. By way of third party cookies it knows who I am and it sends that info back to FB and the next time I'm on Instagram I'm getting ads from that category. The retailer I visited didn't have to own the FB ad network to play a role.

I don't think valve does any of that, and even if it did it has access to way less data then FB (which owns instagram and whatsapp) which basically know your location, who you talk to and when, your centers of interest, political orientation, &c. Valve, at least for now, is mostly concerned about selling games. Collecting data in itself isn't bad, imho the issue is the centralisation and what the data is used for. I'd feel much more confident giving a little data to Valve than enlarging the humongous dataset of facebook.

> what I was searching for

I think you’re saying that Google sends the search terms to the site you visit? It doesn’t do that, at least not for a bunch of years now. As a site owner you can get aggregate ideas of what queries lead people to particular pages, but you can’t tie it to individual visitors.

Every company that has your data will either sell it or else they're in enough verticals that it makes more sense for them to monetize it internally. It amounts to the same thing.

Valve's main revenue stream is selling products to consumers (unlike Facebook), so at the very least it's a safer bet.

This quote is entirely unrelated but I thought of it and want to share: "Valve used to make games, now they make money."

The HTC privacy policy had some glaring issues in it years ago. Is the new vive different?

The new Vive is by HTC, the Index is by Valve? Different companies.

You may be confused by the fact that HTC previously had a partnership with Valve. The Index is independent from HTC.

> Valve won't collect data?

If your boyfriend beats you, the argument that "your next one might, too" isn't a good reason to stay with them.

Gabe has verbally explained the woes of pissing off customers on multiple occasions. It's why he replies to many of the weird emails people send him.

No. They won't. They have far more than proven it at every possible occasion.

Valve doesn't make money the way Facebook makes money. The incentives for how to use the data are much different.

Luckily the Valve Index is much superior to the rift lineup, so you’re not sacrificing anything to stay far away from facebook.

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