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Comment by eugeniub | Hacker News Reader

Well this is horrifying. I bought a Quest for a relative. He loves it, but he doesn't have a Facebook account, and has no interest in signing up. I have a Facebook account, but I don't use it, and I certainly don't want to connect my Oculus account. I guess we'll both have to sell our Quests. That means we'll lose all of our game purchases.

I came to Oculus with eyes wide open knowing it was a Facebook company, but this news still sucks.

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If you make a Facebook account and never touch the Facebook aspect of it, is there any material difference between that and an Oculus account?

I'm sure this just changes which pipe usage data goes down, but this means Facebook directly gets to use your VR usage/purchases to market to you, and they will follow you around the web, because they know. I think that's the main reason folks generally dislike FB connect in the first place, but I don't want to speak for everyone :)

> this means Facebook directly gets to use your VR usage/purchases to market to you, and they will follow you around the web

Only if you use or log into your bogus FB account.

Having your IP address is identifiable enough (combined with all the other joys of big data) to Facebook and its marketing wing, so don't feel too confident, but if you don't care, then that's kind of the point.

Wondering if creating burning accounts for everything would prevent any tracking. Basically

- create burner gmail

- create burner oculus name/account

- create burner Facebook account

- always use a VPN

It seems like you could completely remain anonymous and provide Facebook with data they could never correlate to a real person.

Did you try to make a burner Facebook account? I tried doing this since my client needed something to be verified through FB and I don't have an account.

After initial login I was asked to verify myself by either providing ID (sic!) or a phone number.

Well, seems that after 2023 I'll just trash my Quest.

Whoa really? I deleted my Facebook in 2014, so I had no idea they actually did ID verification. If this is the case I guess you could spin up a burner number on Twilio, but this seems like a lot of work to go through. I have a Quest and will likely try these steps, but no way will I ever give Facebook my real identity.

Yep, I’ve had exactly the same thing happen to me. You might be able to delay it slightly if you use an email address they have in their records from other users (i.e. an email address some of your friends have stored for you in their contacts they’ve shared with Facebook). Set up a new gmail / Hotmail account they have no trace of existing before, the red flags go up and it will almost certainly get you to verify with some form of government ID, real phone number or possibly both.

I’ve supported Oculus since DK1 through every single iteration of hardware. This change by Facebook has just killed the brand entirely for me. I simply won’t sign up / back into Facebook (killed my account around 2011 as I found it overwhelmingly toxic and have never looked back) to use a piece of hardware I already purchased.

I had reason to try to create an FB burner account not so long ago, but I couldn't get through into any worthwhile practical use without providing photo ID, despite giving them actual pristine phone numbers on every try. My guess is they force it upon every identity where they don't already have linkability from phone books they've snooped through, and the like.

What do VPN help if you have Facebook firmware on your computer? You also need to never play with friends with the Rift online, or let them borrow your Wifi, etc. If you have Facebook apps or hardware you leak fingerprinting bits. The Rift has bluetooth for the controllers right? Better put it in a Farradays cage because your neighbors will rat on you to Zuckerberg.

There is no having a tiny bit of Facebook. If you give them a finger ...

I mean at this point... seeing ads on VR instead of toothpaste might be a win

If you're logged into the account on your computer, sure. Just make sure you either make all purchase on-device, or log into Oculus in a private window.

Facebook tracks you even when you're logged out btw.

You'll need a separate ip address for each device then correct?

Not sure, does facebook just assume that everyone connecting from behind a NAT is the same person?

That seems like it could go poorly, like if one person in a household had been buying a secret birthday present or an engagement ring or researching divorce lawyers and then the targeted ads were associated to everyone in the house.

The definitely assume it's the same person. I get advertising clearly targeted at other people on my internet connection (eg. ads for property in a certain suburb, when I don't even actively look at property while another family member does).

There's much more than IP adress that's used to track you. Companies like facebook use all the forms of browser storage, browser fingerprinting, etc.

How is that different from an Oculus account, though? FB could keep the accounts separate but still funnel data in from Oculus to FB (as I'm sure they'd already been doing). If you create a throwaway FB account just for your Oculus device, the only material difference is which DB the entry is in.

when you sign up to facebook i bet their ToS is much different than Oculus'

That's my point around changing the pipes. I think it's still meaningfully different though, because there are probably some first party benefits of going directly through FB, but that's speculation.

I'm not sure if you mean "an oculus account owned by Facebook anyway" - but in general terms I'd be somewhat surprised if a "real" game/software/service company (eg: Nintendo, gog.com) kept quasi-/il-legal shadow profiles that they actively tried to pair with your account.

Forcing users to violate their personal moral principles, upon which the decision of never using anything related to Facebook rests, is a big enough difference for many--myself included.

EDIT: I didn't know that Facebook bought Oculus some time ago, back in 2014--for some reason I thought it happened far more recently. I would make the case above for someone who had bought an Oculus device before Facebook's acquisition and now would be forced to use its platform, then. I don't have anything to do with Facebook, personally. I don't even use WhatsApp, so there's that for my moral integrity.

Then you already have a problem with using an Oculus device regardless of what sort of account you can sign in with, they've owned Oculus since 2014

That's right, I didn't know. Well, rephrase that to a less radical standpoint, then: "upon which the decision of not wanting to use Facebook rests".

In any case, I personally have never owned an Oculus or anything related to Facebook.

At the point that you've given money to facebook when you bought their product, haven't you already done that?

>haven't you already done that?

Fortunately, I haven't.

So what if they'd buy Vive next?

You burn your Vive device to the ground and implore the Gods to rid humanity from the Zucc.

Can you do so without accepting their terms of service? They use every data source they can to build profiles for people so accepting the ToS is going to approve use of your information for as much as they can get away with.

What if you are not allowed to make a FB account due to their TOS? Not everyone can be on FB.

A better question: why does a VR headset require an account at all? Should my monitor require an account? Should my keyboard?

It's a peripheral, not a platform.

You want it to be a peripheral, Facebook wants it to be a platform.

Maybe FB wants to collect data from sensors, and other type of usage?

They can do that without an FB account, Instagram and WhatsApp certainly funnel data into a shared storage that FaceBook can read too without me specifically connecting the accounts.

Not sure if you know what device you're talking about. The Oculus Quest is very much a platform, not a "peripheral". There's no device that the Quest connects to to be used as a peripheral. It's a completely stand alone computing device that serves as a platform for third party software, the same as your phone which requires an account.

I know the blog post refers to "Oculus devices" and does not in any way imply that the account is required only for the Quest. I agree that the Quest is not the same as their other headsets. I disagree that any of these should require an account.

Nothing in the announcement limits this to the Quest. It says Oculus "devices" including peripherals. What is the justification for requiring an account to use a peripheral that you plug into your computer?

Even if it were just the Quest: How is it reasonable to require an account to use a "stand alone computing device"? I have many stand alone computing devices in my home without the need for an account with their manufacturers.

I was already skeptical of my Oculus Rift when after buying it I learned I needed to create an account just to download drivers (WTF!) No other device on my computer requires an account to obtain drivers. I would love to hear the justification.

I'm not sure I follow this line of thought. Without an account, what would all the game purchases you make be associated with? What about friends lists? Support requests? The Oculus, and the vision for the product, is more akin to consoles than it is your run-of-the-mill PC.

I disagree.

Take oculus Rift as an example. You own a game (on a different platform) which supports VR (including your device). You plug your Rift in, calibrate the sensors/room and start playing the game. You shouldn't even need internet connection.

For support requests, use the serial number, like everywhere else.

Consoles work offline just fine.

>I would love to hear the justification.

"We require you create an account so that we can protect your personal data."

Not the OP, but I was wondering the same thing. I also don't know which devices I'm talking about.

The thing is: to sell me stuff, you don't need to know my name. You don't need to keep tabs on me. You may offer it, but I may decline. Plenty of mortar-and-bricks-stores work this way: there are loyalty cards for tracking, but customers who forego them do not have to register to make a purchase.

Point in fact: there are also internet shops that allow such options. Sure, they need a bit of data to send the parcel and the confirmation/invoice/etc. But that doesn't require everyone to create a username/password combination - and some internet shops blissfully do not require that. They get paid and ship the purchase to the address specified, and that's it.

In this case, it seems purchases could be tied to the Oculus device specified during the purchase. While I can certainly imagine benefits to tying purchases to a user account (e.g., ability to use on multiple Oculus devices), I don't see a reason to require logging in. Am I overlooking something?

> In this case, it seems purchases could be tied to the Oculus device specified during the purchase. While I can certainly imagine benefits to tying purchases to a user account (e.g., ability to use on multiple Oculus devices), I don't see a reason to require logging in. Am I overlooking something?

If (when) the device fails, you would lose all of its associated software licenses and have to buy them again

Unfortunately things have been moving this way, even for peripherals such as mice:

https://insider.razer.com/index.php?threads/i-need-an-accoun...

The amount of people defending Razer is incredible. They fully buy the idea that internet connection and accounts are necessary to use a mouse, or simple features like changing the dpi.

I would call Oculus Rift as "just VR headset" but Oculus Quest would be reasonable to call as "standalone VR computer", not peripheral. Is requiring account for a "computer" reasonable is another question.

Well, both Linux and Windows let you have offline accounts (though the latter heavily discourages it, and I can’t speak for macOS), so there’s precedent in the desktop world for that functionality. Of course, why would Facebook bother to support it?

Considering how TVs can come with bloat, accounts and build advertising these days I wouldn’t be surprised if you ended up needing an account for your monitor.

I mean, my Nvidia card has had one for years because I didn’t realise I could’ve installed the drivers without creating one. What did a graphics card ever need with that? My mouse required one.

It used to work to start the Nvidia installer, let it unpack (other unpacking tools could most likely extract the archive as well) its contents, exit it and instead let Windows search the unpacked files for the correct driver by using the Windows driver selection dialog.

I'm not sure if this still works or if there are other things beside the driver that one would like to have installed nowadays.

I do not like the idea that I need a social media account to use a VR headset, regardless of the realities of using the oculus account data still ending up with facebook.

On Facebook you're required to use your real name. I don't know if the same is true of an Oculus account, but that's a major difference if not. Of course you can create a Facebook account with a fake name, but then you risk getting banned.

I have a quest and just used a handle in the Oculus account creation. There was no demand for a real name at all. So yes, it's a big change.

because every action you perform within the account that signs into the FB account becomes a parcel of information you're giving to FB.

If you sign in to one of their accounts, you are functionally signing into the facebook website.

As a VR developer I'm really sad to hear this news. I've always been against the walled garden approach. I feel like it's only a matter of time before they block SideQuest.

However - supposedly your oculus account will be valid until the end of 2022 [0]. At that point you could change to a newer hardware platform from another manufacturer.

[0] https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-facebook-account-required-ne...

He'll still lose access to all games he owns on the Oculus store.

Just make a burner Facebook account. You can do so with a burner email. Annoying, but not horrifying.

Sometimes Facebook requires a photo ID to be submitted before "approving" a new account. Seems to happen when they suspect the person isn't real (fake name, or whatever).

My grandpa accidentally used a phone number to register when he was trying to log in. His original account got promptly locked and for months they would periodically lock it. He had to provide ID proof every time.

I don't use Facebook, but I totally recognize how valuable it is for my grandpa. Sadly, Facebook does not allow any mistakes to be made on its site, which is what older people tend to do when faced with new tech.

FWIW it's quite simple to make fake IDs that pass FB verification. Not that I support making FB accounts, even fraudulent ones. I'd like to see a class action privacy suit, because in conjunction with their real names policy, FB is forcing identity disclosure simply to use hardware.

I just tried and failed: https://twitter.com/shazow/status/1295835462360338436

I used a realistic sounding name, I tried several email addresses that were rejected as blocked, eventually I landed on an email that worked and my account got immediately disabled.

I'm sure I could eventually succeed, but I don't believe that it's fair to brush this off as something that anybody could do easily.

Your tweet indicates that you were stopped by the "government ID required" hoop. I've been there. I'm no graphics design wizard, but I foiled this by (1) taking a photograph of my actual government ID, (2) copying letters around to spell the name I'm known by, (3) applying some noise and blur filters (4) downsampling, and (5) redacting all PII except name & face. Compared to making an actual fake ID, I call this quite simple.

I imagine that you could use a plausible but fake name and a plausible but fake "random person" image, but I'm not interested in actually interacting with that website enough to try.

You might try a clean OS & browser install, to avoid trackers, and maybe if you've been banned a bunch already, use a VPN (or stop using a VPN) or use Starbucks wifi or something.

That is, admittedly, a lot of work, even if it does bypass this absurd requirement.

I don't recommend or use that shit website anymore, so the simple solution is stop doing the thing that's hurting you... but if you really need it for some reason then putting ~30min into making a fake id might be worthwhile.

You can make a burner email account that doesn't track you around the web, and other places.

Is it possible to do that with a Facebook account?

if you're not logged into it in the browser, it can't follow you around

Not entirely true. If you've logged in at all, and didn't purge your cookies and local storage, they might still be tracking you everywhere you visit.

third party cookies allowed means they can follow you around logged in or out. They can also follow you around by your fingerprint (IP+various browser info bits that uniquely identify you)

When you make a facebook account disconnected from a social graph (new email, or unused phone number) facebook shuts down the account.

Their position is clear. They’re fucking creeps masquerading any user experience they create as anti-spam.

Is this confirmed? I made a second account at one point with a new email and have had zero issues with both. Although I rarely log into the first one, maybe once a month or so.

It's still connected to the graph if you have another account accessed from the same IP. They know there's a connection from that account to yours.

Don't create a burner account. Facebook's TOS is to lock burners and require an ID to unlock, so you'd be locking all your games out of access.

They're going to lose their games if they don't make any account anyway. So if they feel strongly about not making a proper account, they might as well try with a burner one and see how long it lasts?

Again, I've had and technically logged into both accounts concurrently for at least the past 3-5 years. So unless this only applies to new accounts, I have yet to have either one locked out.

That's why I was wondering if it's officially confirmed somewhere.

This isn’t a 3-5 year old phenomenon.

I don’t think there are many people that are cognizant in how to break their social graph.

I’ve seen a few other hackernews comments corroborating it over the past year. But it isn't a common case so Facebook gets away with it.

You can sue them. I think this is what it will take. I've got an orphaned GOG account that they are not responding to me about, and I am definitely entitled to access those games.

True. It's all within your rights. I'm just trying to say they really don't like burners and won't make it easy to go that route. (If I had to guess)

You sue; they restore access to moot the lawsuit, but then tie your real info listed on the suit to your account, no longer making it anonymous. Win-win? /sarc

No, you could probably sue for access that does not need an account esp. if they have gravely changed the terms since you signed up.

Facebook has banned multiple burner account of mine, so I suppose it is confirmed.

They don't. You can have stand alone accounts. All you need to do is follow a few things like a beer company, car comapny or some other faceless corp.

Job done. raise the noise floor.

Yeah, if you forget to do that within a day you are locked out forever.

I've had a burner FB account for years and have never had an issue. What's your source for this?

I tried, in vain, to create a FB account using my work email address sometime after 2010 and FB demanded verification by SMS.

I ended up using my personal email address because that's how they want it.

So they're effectively saying you can't use Oculus gear if you don't have any friends (on social media).

I think for some service which for some reason had just FB signup I made a burner FB account and locked in all the privacy settings, I was thrown out of the account in under an hour. It kept asking for phone number which I didn't want to give.

Create a social graph of creeps only

In which case you buy a verified fake account and move on.

Just rewatching "Person of Interest" and came across "Finch" casually remarking that he invented social networking in order to increase the quality of data gleaned from his totalitarian surveillance machine... (specifically to fill in the social graph data...).

It makes sense... we've sold our data for the ability to tell 'Alexa set a timer'

The society at large was akin to natives of an undeveloped land being preyed upon by an advanced civilization. They were offered glass beads and trinkets, "a mirror to amuse yourself with, your highness!". And society at large behaved precisely as the historic natives.

I made a burner account to be able to login into certain sites that requires fb login. After 2 months without a phone number they disabled it, and since my email was also a burner they removed it. I had then to create an actual email account, and give them my phone number (I don't have a burner number) to be able to activate the account again. Besides my phone number, nothing else is real in there, even my profile image is from one of those "this person does not exist" sites.

Your phone number is probably already verified by being caught in their net from your friends and relatives. I assume it'd be a different situation with a burner number.

yeah thats not actually true.

My mum has a shadow facebook account for a number of reasons. She only has one friend, its on a shadow email. It's still active after a good 6 months.

it didn't require a phone number either. I mean it asked, but I didn't give it one.

So long as the emails dont bounce, you're good.

> So long as the emails dont bounce, you're good.

Simply not true. I suggest you try yourself and see how long the account stays unlocked.

> My mum has a shadow facebook account for a number of reasons. She only has one friend, its on a shadow email. It's still active after a good 6 months.

I mean I don't know how I can make it any clearer....

Well this is a pointless discussion. I've tried it and can just repeat myself, try it yourself and see your new burner account locked. I've no insight to how and when your mom created her accounts.

just because she got on the left side of the A/B test doesn't invalidate our experiences

not good enough. maybe if you only play solo games, but once you play with others facebook will get enough data to get an idea, if not identify who you really are. you may get tagged by your friends or family, connected to a location, etc, many ways to leak personal information. the only way to stay safe is to not log in to facebook

Not possible. I tried doing that once, and Facebook demanded I give them my phone number, which I obviously denied.

No. I'm not going to give them what they want. There needs to be a lawsuit.

If you're in a country with half-decent consumer protections, you ought to be able to return the device, as it no longer functions as sold.

Which country is that?

Australia for one. I returned my Ring camera when they removed the customisable motion detection zones and it no longer worked as advertised (to this day, many months later) on their own website.

I think you'd have a pretty good case in the UK too - the device is no longer fit for the purposes for which it was sold, and a user could point towards Lucky's statement as a company representation as to what the product was sold for.

Or, if you bought it with a credit card, you can request a charge back. Depending on the card, doing that even 12 months after purchase is possible.

I've had a Rift for several years now. I haven't had a Facebook account in far longer.

I've also spent a bit of money on Rift games. This is angering.

That's exactly why I went for the Rift S instead and bought all my games through Steam. So I can sell that piece of plastic and get something not feom Oculus.

You don't have any contact info in your profile, but if you're serious, I already have a Facebook account that I use daily so I don't care much.

I'll buy one of them from you for $300 or the pair for $500. That seems like the going price? Contact is in my profile, let me know.

$300? Damn, why did I just buy a new one for $600 :(

EDIT: Oh, it's $399 retail in the US. Damn Europe.

> ... but he doesn't have a Facebook account,...

Not that he knows. https://theconversation.com/shadow-profiles-facebook-knows-a...

so here i am wondering if facebook would be challenged by a constant flood of anonymous [off graph] accounts constantly flooding in. how many 3card monte accounts per second would be required to keep the account verifier demon flooded

I'm interested in buying it from you if this is actually the case.

I'm in a similar boat. I purchase a Quest a while back (unaware of the Facebook affiliation), and really enjoy it. I can't see myself using it again after this, however.

Do we expect Joey Beercan to know who the explicit owner of any company selling us a product? Is it their fault for not knowing? Is that really fair if that is the expectation?

The parent's downvotes makes it seem like HN expects the purchaser to know about the FB affiliation

A tad hyperbolic, don't you think?

nope.

FB can not be trusted. I'd argue they should be dismantled.

Time after time they have not only expressed views that are downright alarming but they have been actively repeatedly caught out deliberately flaunting the law and fucking their customers. (not to mention their Russian connections and their part in the election tampering in the US).

Google are a naught boy compared to the actively evil FB org.

It may not take effect until 2023.

How hard is it to create a facebook account?

It's literally impossible, in case you haven't tried recently.

If you don't want to send them a government issued photo ID, you can make a new account that lasts 10 minutes and then is locked on you and holds any accounts linked to it hostage as you can't sign in.

> literally impossible

come on

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