Facebook halts Oculus Quest sales in Germany amid privacy concerns

So well it's a bit strange.

Through GDPR applies to any company selling to the EU, the fact that you can easily travel to Switzerland to buy a product due to more or less open borders and import it to the EU can matter in some cases. So to be "safe" I wouldn't be surprised if they would need to put geo-fencing in to be on the safe site.

Due to Facebook repeatedly intentionally breaching or trying to undermine EU (and member states) laws and regulations (because the penalties are lower then their profit) there isn't really much (any?) good-will left with the local and EU law keepers (except in Ireland, because money) .

So there is a good chance law keepers won't give FB any flex when FB is trying to sell a physical product, a think for which there are much more regulations then for FB itself (like health&safety, proper advertisement etc.). For example they will very likely need to put a clear readable "requires internet","requires a FB account" to be used note on their boxes (and internet sale descriptions). Because a large degree of the usability is restricted without a FB account. Which is something I believe FB doesn't like at all ;=)

The UK passed (implemented?) GDPR as a law while it was in the EU, and will retain that law after it leaves the EU. However, its interpretation of GDPR will be allowed to diverge. For one thing, the court case "Schrems II" is from an EU case post-Brexit, so it is not binding on the UK's interpretation of GDPR. This is going to be a pain point for the UK as it attempts to maintain data flows with the EU.

I overstated and got confused about Switzerland's relationship to GDPR. I for some reason thought they signed a treaty with the EU had materially similar terms as GDPR. It seems what's actually in effect is an Adequacy Decision, where the EU recognizes Switzerland's data protection laws as being "good enough" that all data transfers to Switzerland don't need extra protections.

Part of my confusion is that Switzerland also recognizes the US Privacy Shield framework, along with the EU and UK. So there's EU-Privacy Shield (dead), UK-Privacy Shield, Swiss-Privacy Shield, EU-GDPR, and UK-GDPR. I had thought there was also Swiss-GDPR, but there is not.

Personally I (unfortunately) do use WhatsApp while avoiding all other Facebook products. At least WhatsApp doesn't try to manipulate you and has some form of e2e encryption.

I recently deleted my IG (February) due to censorship issues, but still have a WhatsApp account on a burner device for talking to the few people I haven’t been able to get to switch to Signal.

I also know someone who wanted to change their last name (their current one is already fake) and the system didn't let them without sending an ID.

[0] https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=1016165...

My brother got one and loved it, he raved about how fun VR was. I had considered it for a while, but I wasn't ready to commit $1000-$2000 for a capable gaming rig + however much the VR headset was going to cost just to try it out.

Oculus Quest was the perfect way to try out VR for me, a couple hundred dollars for a pretty good VR headset. No need to have sensors on polls or anything. Super lightweight way to dip a toe into VR and see if the medium was a compelling experience for me.

I remember researching if I had to login with facebook and found that you could just make an Oculus account with an email address. Got it, enjoyed it, still enjoy it.

The decision to couple the Oculus Quest and your facebook account puts a seriously sour taste in my mouth though. I think that when that deadline comes up, I'll probably just sell it and buy something that doesn't have that requirement, it will likely be time for an upgrade anyways.

On a serious note, I see an opening for a new social network.

On certain pertinent internet forums you will find threads regularly where people are connecting with other's made-up accounts.

They're pretty much indistinguishable from real accounts, so unless Facebook starts implementing an ID requirement for all accounts, they'll never be able to stop this.

And even then determined people could be sending in fake IDs.

My recommendation for creating a fake account is, once you have seeded it with a few friends, just add most people facebook recommends you. Plenty of real people (the 900 friends facebook addicts) do this as well.

I think it's not wrong to be pre-emptively wary of that (and prepare arguments for it), considering the way F.U.D. about "cookie banners" [1] got many people worked up against a supposedly useless and clueless law that (again, supposedly) "forces" sites to show such banners -- because their desire to track, which is the first link in this causal chain, is being ignored or assumed as given and benign.

[1] banners sites put up because they would prefer to track everyone on the first visit, rather than having an opt-in link somewhere in the footer for example.