Oculus will sell a Quest 2 headset that doesn't need Facebook for an extra $500 | Hacker News Reader

Oculus will sell a Quest 2 headset that doesn't need Facebook for an extra $500

pcgamer.com

25 pointsstaz14 comments

>There's also an annual fee of $180.

It sounds like this model is targeted at business users. I expect most VR enthusiasts that care about privacy to the extent of $500 + $180 per year would never buy something from Facebook anyway.

I'm pretty sure it's priced to actively dissuade normal people from buying it.

I doubt charging $500 more to a business affects FB's revenues any meaningful amount.

I wonder if this is a firmware patch that can be applied to the cheap/evil version.

It is also interesting in that it places a dollar amount on privacy.

I think there's some confounding factors since this version comes with other features that the consumer version doesn't even (e.g. dedicated support)

This doesn’t place a dollar amount on privacy, the author makes that up for a headline. This is just differential pricing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination) targeting business buyers. It’s a bit of an embarrassing article for the journalist

Along with a $180/yr service charge.

Funny I just setup my Quest 2 today. Made a fresh facebook account with a new email and chose a fake name and birthday. Breaking the FB ToS is NOT a crime. Why would anyone pay an extra $500, and then $180/yr when the worst that can happen is the $300 headset gets bricked/banned? This is a stupidity tax.

Was your account not immediately banned? It seems like people had a lot of problems with that strategy in practice when the Quest 2 first came out.

I created an email alias on my domain to start the FB account. Works fine, not banned. If they get data to sell, probably they don't care. I can run credit card payments on the store as well.

Your FB account will most likely be flagged/ banned if you don't use it as a normal person, unless you are lucky. Not respectiing the TOS is not a crime but them enforcing them is also not a crime...

I don't think that's true. They don't have time to police billions of facebook accounts for 'normal' behavior. I'll friend a few random people. In the super unlikely worst case I'm out $300 but probably so is FB. It's in their interests to collect data and sell it under the fake name I gave. Only if I explicitly state to them the name is fake do they lose out. They don't ask and I won't tell and the advertisers will purchase shit. Win, win, win.

They don't need "time", it's automated, as part of the spam protection. A real profile is much more valuable to them than a fake one.

I'm saying that their automated tools can't tell the difference between 'normal' and 'fake' use. And the fact that I'm still using my dummy account is proof

So planes can't crash because I fly regularly and never crashed. There are enough people whose new account got banned exactly because the tooks can't tell the difference. If they decide you're account is a bot or fake you are done. It can happen to you anytime. The main problem is that you lose access to paid software if they ban you.

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