I now have an Oculus paperweight
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Now they have a photo of my face, my legal name and date of birth, my verified email address and phone number, and I cannot exercise any control over this data, only download it, which is obviously illegal under GDPR.
Facebook engineers from Wit.ai are ignoring my request for help and the app APIs remain operational, I just can't log into the dashboard.
If you're a developer who considers using Wit.ai, be careful. You could receive an automated block from Facebook and an overworked contractor will rubber-stamp the bot's decision, while Wit.ai staff will ignore you.
In addition to that, most of the GDPR laws don't actually create a direct right of action. In many cases only the ICO is allowed to take action. And they may not bother.
Which is why the UK's Open Rights Group is taking the ICO to court to get them to enforce GDPR: https://www.openrightsgroup.org/press-releases/privacy-organ...
(I don't know where this 100 person number comes from?)
First step is to file a complaint with your national DPA. List see here: https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/board/members_en
So everybody who buys a Quest has to create a Facebook account, which subsequently gets banned for inactivity. To be able to use a Quest, you actually need to be active on Facebook.
Basically only buy a Quest if you really like Facebook.
I'm surprised they don't just treat the Oculus usage similarly, and count that usage as "activity" in the context of considering an account active/inactive.
Honestly we need laws in many countries that say: if a provider bans your account, you need to be able to download all your data for 30 days and you need a 100% refund of all purchases. Period.
So that leaves me a bit insecure on buying it, and ending up getting banned and have an expensive paperweight.
I also really like my Oculus. It's helped me escape a bit, and gotten me moving around more. It's a fantastic little device. I'm not looking forward to the day it becomes a paper weight.
The only positive in all of this is I've started upgrading my PC to get it to the point where it can play VR games, and deciding which VR rig I want to go with. It won't be as great as the Oculus, even if the tech is better, since I love the untethered nature of the Oculus, but a cable-tether is worlds better than a Facebook-tether, at least to me.
the vive / valve’s headset all cost in the 1k and adding 349 to that is not appealing to get a heavier setup.
I was able to sign up for oculus, not Facebook.
I got emails about a change in account stuff & I was able to keep my oculus account and not sign up for Facebook.
Can new customers only sign in through Facebook???? Seems like a very bad idea...
I'm in the same boat you are, but:
> If you choose to continue using your Oculus account, you’ll be covered by our updated Oculus Terms of Service and Oculus Privacy Policy, which we previewed last month. After January 1, 2023, we will end support for Oculus accounts
That boat will finally arrive at Facebook in two years. Two years is a long time for a bit of tech, but for me, the bigger deal is any money I've sunk into the Oculus ecosystem will go up in smoke then.
That was the primary reason I started gaming mostly on Steam via Rift, and am looking to replace the headset completely now.
(Helping this decision were things like downloading custom songs in Beat Saber is just easier on the desktop.)
It's a shame because I wanted to get into VR at the beginning of lockdown and everything I've read about Oculus seemed positive except the facebook account.
The literal worst case here for FB is that a few people don’t buy a Quest II, which isn’t even core to their business success.
And, while it's not core to their current business success, it was intended as a strategic decision, to have a path into VR social networks, I suspect. But I can easily see short term business decisions and priorities dominating that consideration, yes. Businesses are not know known for their long term planning skills.
I've decided to just leave them "open" forever instead of giving them my info.
I'm thinking about getting an Oculus for the same reason. What software would you recommend? Are there any good titles with just scenery (e.g. beach, mountain, etc.)? Are the YouTube VR channels any good? (I sure hope they don't get interrupted by 3d advertisements).
Beyond that, there's an entire category of "Travel the World" apps out there. I'm a big fan of the Ocean ones, but look around in the category to see what sparks interest.
YouTube is also a great source of videos. I'm a fan of the "360 Walking Tours" of various cities. Even the ones of the city I live in are great, though I gravitate to the big bright cities like Tokyo and Hong Kong. And of course, there are plenty of more fast paced videos, like 360 videos from the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels that are pretty fun. Some performers are also have concerts (or even do live concerts) in 360 if that's your thing.
Beyond that, don't rule out the games. Aircar VR technically has goals, but it doesn't enforce them, and it's great fun to fly around a Blade Runner inspired world. Beyond that, some of the story games are really good. Ghost Giant is a fairly easy puzzle game, and while the story was a little saccharin for my tastes, it was really well done and fun.
Beyond that, a lot of my friends seem to love the Theater apps like BigScreen. This has never really worked for me, perhaps because I don't have lots of great memories of theaters for whatever reasons, but for those missing that side of life, it seems to be a good option. I got more out of the social side of that, but only when using it with friends, when entering the public rooms, it's too hit-or-miss if you get a griefer or not for my tastes.
And of course, I think there's a law that every VR owner tries out Beat Saber. I really like it, but beyond that, it's a great app to show off to friends, since it's trivial to get started in.
Of course, don't take my word for any of these, I recommend you dig into reviews and see what floats your boat.
Some questions that popped into my mind:
- Does the reduced viewing angle bother you?
- In games like BigScreen, I suppose you can't play your own .mp4/.mkv files? Or can you?
- To be honest, I mostly want to use Oculus to find a little bit of tranquility on top of a mountain or on a beach. Would it be worth it? Do you know of a more open product which can perhaps deliver the same experience, and also allows programming/hacking?
Never bothered me. I got used to the reduced field of view and such pretty quickly.
> - In games like BigScreen, I suppose you can't play your own .mp4/.mkv files? Or can you?
Yep, you absolutely can. I've pointed it at an SMB share I have for such things, but you can also load it up with videos on the deviec. It's a little annoying to deal with DTS, but once you put the random .so it needs to decode it on the device, the hard work is done.
> tranquility on top of a mountain or on a beach. Would it be worth it?
Personally, I think so. It's mostly what I used mine for. It might not literally be a beach or whatever, but I really like the more tranquil apps like the VR painting ones or whatever that let me zone out and ignore the world for a bit. Also, I forgot to mention Derail Valley. I have many hours in that game, which for me is mostly about enjoying the train rides as I move cargo around.
As for more open: I'm looking into the HP Reverb, but I'm not yet that familiar with the desktop side of things. Given some of the quality of apps available, I'm guessing the programming side is pretty easy. Getting 3rd party stuff on the Quest is a bit like an iOS device. You need a developer account, then you can sideload packages (or use "SideQuest" to act as a third party store). No clue what FB plans for that side of things, of course.
Scene: Driving my Apple iCar
I send an emotionally charged tweet about Vegetarian militants fighting in the Mongolia China war.*
Car - "I'm sorry your Apple account has been deactivated for thought crimes against the Tencent-Alibaba republic of China. Disabling braking and steering features on your Apple iCar."
Car - "Seatbelts decoupled"
The car crashes into an automated Tesla Truck full of zero gravity fidget spinners on shipment to Amazon fulfillment centre, just in time for christmas.
A week later, an unrelated Tesla has an unfortunate camera glitch and takes off the side mirror of an Apple executive's car. Two weeks later, the Road Wars begin.
And since you're in the middle of the highway in rain, you don't get out. "Your license to use this car has been terminated. You are now trespassing. The authorities have been alerted.". And then the police show up and shoot you because their data mining software says it's mostly black people that have such low social score, so the iGlasses the cops have say you are black.
"Thank you for using Brakes. You have 0 free pumps available this month. Get 1 more by watching this 30 sec ad."
From what I've heard, one big reason for the arbitration clauses is just so that the CEO won't get dragged off to small claims court all the time.
(Otherwise, you just need to convince a sympathetic judge that the CEO or some other senior official is important to the case, and they'd need to show up or risk contempt of court.
Not very likely for any individual case, but the chances add up with bigger numbers of claims.)
I can’t find the story now, but there was a case in I think California of a company suing to get out of an arbitration clause, wanting instead to move to a class action lawsuit. Thousands of arbitrations became time consuming and costly. So I think there is still big potential for a coordinated effort to make this difficult for Facebook, even if a class action suite were off the table.
Something like 62000 drivers at last count invoked the arbitration clause, which got mighty costly.
Can't say I feel sorry for them.
Is there anything unlawful about offering to cover legal fees for everyone wanting to pursue good-faith legal recourse (including arbitration) against a particular company?
For example, suppose I'm a mega-billionaire who simply finds Facebook's conduct abhorrent. So I offer to pay for the Binding Arbitration fees of every Facebook user who has a plausible claim against Facebook.
And would the legality of that change if I was majority stakeholder in one of Facebook's competitors?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champerty_and_maintenance#Unit...
https://www.thewrap.com/silicon-valley-billionaire-peter-thi...
(IANAL)
The summary is DoorDash agreements with its dashers demanded arbitration, which costs both parties an amount, but thousands of dashers invoked the clause which cost DoorDash millions in fees.
DoorDash then tried to get out of it and opt-out or arbitration, but they couldn't.
A full refund and a switch from a Rift-S to something like a G2 seems like an amazing deal to me.
Uber and Lyft had their mass arbitrations handled by a specific law firm that deals with consumer as well as employee issues, perhaps they are worth reaching out to.
I don't want to create a fake new Facebook account. I want my own back.
What I have learnt is in a world run by monopolies/oligopolies there is little room for mistakes and even if you don't commit a mistake your livelihood can be at the mercy of corporations.
How much do you think a single support case costs? It could easily be the lifetime profit of a single average user.
A counterexample: I had my Overwatch account stolen by a third party. While the financial cost was neglible I still issued a note to Blizzard's helpdesk - expecting nothing to happen. They answered in LESS THAN 24 hours and reverted everything bad that had happened. That's good service.
Since Facebook links Oculus to their services they absolutely should be prepared to offer similar quality service for account problems.
You shouldn't be getting banned from VR gaming due (including offline single-player games) due to a completely unrelated drunken political rant on social media.
Have you stopped to consider that might very well be the goal? It’s like an abusive relationship.
Act out, make our jobs hard & that stupid camera you call your parents on is toast!
Act out & your VR headset is toast!
Act out & I won’t let you talk to your family and friends on WhatsApp!
I also dropped Oculus immediately after seeing the FB integration, and now have a HP on the way.
As it was developed "in Collaboration" with MS, for their "Windows Mixed Reality" thing... guessing No?
Which makes sense, they also partnered with Valve on this headset as well. It's fluffy marketing-droid speak, but from the sounds of it the headset should work with Steam.
https://www.connection.com/product/hp-reverb-g2-virtual-real...
* It says "OS Required: Microsoft Windows 10" and "Operating system: Windows 10 May 2019 update or later".
* It's common for non-IT-clueful consumer marketers to only consider Windows, completely ignoring everything else (even macOS)
* They don't mention Linux at all
So without explicit mention of Linux, I'm more assuming "No".
Quest is a standalone headset, and this is most likely the reason why it's one of the most popular.
So, if no other company competes in the standalone headset market, Oculus and FB will still be major players in the VR industry, and a lot of people will still keep buying it. Regardless of how shitty FB is.
Perhaps I need to make a stronger distinction in my mind between their printer and non-printer organizations.
The trick is that they basically render a skybox/sky-dome. If you turn (rotate) your head, that is computed locally, you just get shown a different part of the picture that's already on your device (if you turn too fast, you may get a black cut-off edge until the viewport is updated from the remote machine.
If you move (translate), it needs to re-render for paralax etc. and that's when you notice it and potentially get VR-sick. So games where you have to move your head a lot are probably not a good match, but e.g. Fallout works great.
Preemptive nitpicking "this is piracy" - no it isn't, it falls under "right to repair". Fight me!
In fact they might be "firing the customers" who might not be monetizable anyhow.
People buy sony and microsoft game consoles every day with the same sort of onerous shenanigans.
My natural inclinations trend toward AR too.
To be perfectly fair, it being excessive may be warranted somehow.
VR is super immersive. And trends toward a disconnect with reality.
Now both are the point of it all, and I am not saying that's bad.
I am saying it can be. Maybe a high degree of personally identifiable use is warranted somehow. Just thinking out loud.
What I do know is I don't need any of it and am happy for things to play out some.
With multiple account the FB could still mine your data and show personalized ads. Still they insist on single account backed with real ID. This shows some deeply ingrained totalitarian ambitions. Luckily I still have my Oculus account so I can still enjoy Quest 1 without FB BS.
It wouldn't just be risky to purchase an Oculus; that risk would continue the entire time we'd own it. Having that kind of worry built into a product makes it less fun.
In the end we bought an HTC Vive. We've been quite happy with it.
I'm not a FB hater, and I think the social integrations could actually be very useful in the future - especially in a post covid world.
There is no "getting past the forced FB integration", which is what makes it a paperweight to the author.
Sadly, the forced Facebook login sucks for a lot of people. I also don’t see any consumer benefit from it. A complaint I’m seeing is that everyone has to manually re-friend their Facebook friends for Oculus.
If it wasn't the case that the "social integrations" are required for you to use a product, post-fact from when you bought it.
Changing the rules of the game for people who spent money in a product is slimy at best, complaining about it doesn't make one a "FB hater".
It should also be up to the developers of apps. Some may not care (ex: beat saber), or someone just want an ability to ban from their app specifically for bad behavior in their app, or have cool off periods instead of perma bans or whatever else.
One potentially error-prone part of moderating any site with community content is handling users evading bans by creating new accounts. If you don't have any mechanism to prevent that, you have a much larger amount of offensive or troll posts, and react slower because you don't have the history of the user because you treat each account as a different person. But any mechanism trying to detect if a new user is potentially a sock puppet of a troublemaker is acting on rather few bits of information. So false positives are not that unlikely.
(A ban from multiplayer modes or just voice chat would be more appropriate, perhaps?)
Just don't engage with their products, they are a thoroughly toxic company, boycott and encourage everyone you know to as well.
The sooner FB's market shrinks the better off we will all be.
There is no need to be "connected" with people on demand 24/7.
> There is no need to be "connected" with people on demand 24/7.
It's the the other way around. I'm not after the 24/7 connectedness, but rather for the on-demand information polling about some of my friend's status/life events. This includes messenger and instagram.
I have a hard time imagining facebook winning that lawsuit especially because they threatened in a separate unrelated lawsuit by the Irish privacy watchdog "to pull out of Europe"[2]
If you combine this with the blocking of accounts for infractions unrelated to the use of the oculus, I can't see how this will go well in court for facebook.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/09/facebook-halts-oculus...
[2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/facebook-warns-d...
But what seems to be the main issue here is that it must be an active Facebook account.
I don't think any judge could call that a fair policy.
That, and the fact their whole product lineup is effectively spyware.
As much as the Oculus hardware is fairly good I would highly recommend seeking alternative providers of VR hardware.
Surely this is a glitch, probably happening in small numbers, that'll get sorted soon enough?
Why on Earth would they want to ban active users of their VR headset? Every active VR user, even if they don't use the Facebook site, is surely a precious asset. If Facebook continues to move into VR and AR, then surely many of its future users may only be interacting with its services exclusively in those mediums.
There aren't many spam/influence campaigns that'll make sense at $400/account.
Allow attaching a headset to unlock the account?
Or just don't require connecting to FB at all to use it, I mean... shrug.
I certainly won't create an account and for me this gen of VR failed like the last ones. It is an experience, but not that good to warrant this customer hostile behavior.
Interesting consequence of Facebook using a device account and is a social network identity.
I wish this was compulsory before posting. So people actual have to think first. With the important bonus they will improve their critical thought and confidence.
Having said that, I don't know that the above hypotheses are enough to matter. There's a difference between "de-platforming" people and destroying their property. Perhaps if the redditer is omitting the fact that there's a solution but they just don't like it (e.g. using their "real" account instead of this fake one that got suspended or something).
How exactly does Facebook lock these headsets down? And how would one go about “jailbreaking” one?
If you have an existing Oculus account, however, it is still valid for use until January 2023.
I've filed an FTC complaint, because we built an AR/VR research lab and invested heavily in Oculus, and it's not going to be usable in two years because our organizational policies prohibit registering Facebook accounts on behalf of the organization. If this had been a requirement prior to our buy-in to Oculus, we would have chosen a different platform.
Jailbreaks are in the works to bypass the Facebook requirement but aren't yet public. This will likely lead to permanent account bans, since like with Wii, the ability to sideload largely is used to run apps customers did not purchase from their store.
> Any recommendation that can truly replace Quest has to offer the same experience
> Disagree, to me that's like saying PS5 has to match an iPhone 12
You can't replace your iPhone with a PS5. Similar to how the Quest experience can't be replaced by the Index, and vice versa.
I got one to try to replace my Rift because of this FB account fiasco but sold it 2 days later as it was so disappointing. Horrible black levels, those horrible hovering headphones, also bad for porn since the controllers are not easy put on one handed.
Now hoping the HP Reverb G2 is the thing although HP has a horrible rep for being abusive to customers as well as waiting to see.
You can dislike them, but you are very much in the minority on that.
I don't care if my HP account gets deleted.
It is the same as bricked.
You'll also lose a lot of online progress and any purchases
Suing in small claims court is a) a massive ordeal (even without the lawyers) and b) a permanent, public record that you can legally be discriminated against for
In my experience your only real recourse is a chargeback (which, to be fair, will almost always work), but that only is an option for a few months after your purchase.
Are you sure you're talking about the same thing?
Also, the discrimination thing is a result that I've not (personally) heard anyone mention before.
I'm not sure how to respond to your second point about discrimiation, it becomes public record and "suing someone" isn't a protected class. Here's something I found after a brief google: https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/17917/can-companies-...
I guess it's just a difference in terminology. :)
But small claims isn't as difficult as you make out, at least in the UK. In some areas there are specialist law firms who do all the work for you and will to take the case no win/no fee (but often they will take a share of any award as well as full court-awarded costs in return). Their entire business model is to make the process as pain-free as possible for you.
This works because some companies have a policy of ignoring and/or fobbing you off continually but will immediately settle when you issue proceedings against them because the cost to them of any outcome which involves going to court (win or lose) is higher than the cost of settling (eg Ryanair is pretty notorious for this).
That said, you should be able to do whatever you want OUTSIDE of your game or game environment, which is the main issue for me.
Oh? What products would those be? Glancing around, I've got mice, trackballs, keyboards, laptops, desktops, assorted Android phones and tablets, routers, switches, bluetooth speakers and headphones, some lights, a Nintendo Switch, and a Chromecast. Of those, only the Chromecast would be affected if the manufacturer disappeared tomorrow. The desktop is from 2011, and the laptops span ~5-10 years old, not one running the original OS (and many with hardware upgrades). The phones did require bootloader unlocking (kudos to Motorola for making this painless) and aftermarket ROMs to stay up to date, but even without that they'd work without needing any company help. Likewise I'll concede that some routers/switches are a pain (I was grumpy at the hoops I had to jump through to switch my Edgerouter to OpenWRT) but it's fine and again even the default options didn't require an online account or any service from the manufacturer. I don't think this is a foregone conclusion at all.
I am totally ok with it being regulated what could be called ownership. I think the crappiest thing about FB is that a whole lot of early adopters thought they were becoming owners and only later realized that they were renters. Legal action seems possible over this. I went in with clear expectations so I do not have the same complaint. I also recognize this is still an early product category and that I take certain consumer risks to experience the future today.
Adding a FB account dependency renders the device useless after the fact, for some owners. This seems like a violation of First Sale doctrine, and hopefully gets smacked down in court rather than accepted as a dystopian new reality.