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Comment by zmmmmm | Hacker News Reader

I really think for the Oculus side of this, they should be on the hook for refunding a significant portion of the cost of the user's Oculus library when they ban the account.

This would put the cost of a ban to Facebook for real users in the order of hundreds of dollars which is more than enough to have a support person do a realistic evaluation of the situation. It also reflects the non-recoverable portion of the cost to most users - you can sell the headset, but you can't transfer the value of the library to anybody. That is a straight up and very significant financial loss.

While other aspects of the ban policy are obviously still very problematic, the fact that an arbitrary ban that is caused by actions outside the user's control can result in hundreds of dollars of losses sits at a whole different level and should be legally problematic for Facebook.

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> refunding a significant portion of the cost of the user's Oculus library when they ban the account

This incentivizes abusive behavior by users who want refunds, and cheapens the cost of abusive behavior. This mechanism was discussed in relation to OnlyFans somewhat recently -- creators that wanted to ban abusive "fans" had to refund them. (Unfortunately, I don't have a link handy.)

The problem here is that Facebook couldn't tell OP had been impersonated by an abuser -- as you say, "actions outside the user's control."

Ok, so the scenario is I buy a headset, create a fake account, load up on games, then abuse the account to get all of it refunded so as to effectively have free use of the games for the period of time.

But I still had to buy a headset, put in a real credit card, pass Facebooks initial "real identity" checks etc. With real human review and some basic policies to prevent repeat abuse this doesn't seem like something that would really open a wide level of abuse. Perhaps sporadic situations where the headset breaks the user decides its the easiest way to get all their purchases refunded.

It doesn't have to be planned abuse. Another possibility is "I don't use this much anymore and there's no second hand market for my game purchases so I think I'll just get my library refunded." You were going to lose value anyway on not using it, now you get something back.

"there's no second hand market for my game purchases" is an integral part of that reasoning. Why don't we just fix that too.

Even if there were a 2nd hand market, prices would likely be lower than the brand new price paid days after release.

It's that brand new price Facebook would be refunding after a ban.

So the same perverse incentive exists even with a 2nd hand market.

Doesn't seem likely that they'd be refunding the full price to me.

It would still be simpler to go bulk rather than selling piecemeal. But yes, fixing it would be nice regardless.

Then they need to stop claiming to "sell" you something when clearly they are renting it

Of course no one in their right mind would pay the retail prices for a "rental" so screws the business model, but honestly, they need to pick one, either they are selling products or renting them

This mixed model where they try to have the best of both has got to stop, if you ban my account you need to refund me, done want to refund on ban well do not sell me things, rent them to me under a service

FWIW Amazon has had to deal with and figured would bear the costs of refund

Any system that wants to identify a pattern will have false positives and negatives.

In this case we can’t accurately identify cases where a user has legitimate cause for refund without false positives letting through a few abusive users.

The decision to be made is whether we skew the system to be in favor of the corporation or the consumer.

In this age where we no longer own the software we run I find it strange when people advocate for less protection of the digital goods they use.

An easy way out would be to ban the account from everything except accessing the purchases.

yes ... that's what I hope and expect would be the outcome if this was enforced on Facebook. They will try to claim that the social features are essential to the platform and therefore cannot be disabled but it would not hold up based on current Oculus ecosystem.

Even if it did their options should be to either

1. Allow the user to play it's purchases, just without social features.

2. Refund the user

If this was the law they'd figure it out I promise you that.

This is pretty much the simplest path. "You posted bad stuff on Facebook, so you can't post stuff on Facebook. Or like, or whatever. Have a nice day."

this is not enough, you will still end up with a piece of hardware that you paid for and can not fully use.

it’s their decision to introduce this account, when there is really no need for it, let it be their problem to fully refund everything when this affects you. the solution is simple: quit forcing people to use the account nobody asked for.

They should decouple Facebook and Oculus from each other. They could share the login but should be separate services. I am sure he violated FB terms but did he violate Oculus terms?

There's not really an "abuse" reason to stop people from playing single player games though. What malicious thing would they do with them?

They don't have fine grained banning because the abuse system was made for a user base that pays them no money, so it's a blunt instrument optimized towards cost savings. Steam I've heard is more fine grained, and might just do online gaming bans or communication bans.

Most games I’ve played on my Oculus have been paid, the same as Stream.

i belive (s)he’s talking about facebook, who’s system has been built for its free users. oculus is just something that they have added later on, without taking time and money to adapt it for the (small number of) paying users.

yup

That’s ok with me - FB has enough money.

The problem being described is not FB losing money, it's grifters and scammers gaining money.

That's preferable to non-grifters and non-scammers losing money.

That's ok with me - grifters and scammers don't have enough money.

As long as they don't get the full amount back then piracy will be the path of least resistance for that kind of abuse.

> This incentivizes abusive behavior by users who want refunds, and cheapens the cost of abusive behavior.

The status who incentivizes abusive behaviour from the company, and cheapens the cost of mistreating users

Why are we buying this account-linked physical shit. Just pretend the headsets are not a viable product to purchase if they can be remotely bricked by a company you have no leverage over. Get a competitor product or go without.

Do you use a smartphone?

Yeah smartphones are unfortunate since with COVID now you have to have one to check in in my country, but the second test is reputation. I’ve not heard of apple or android bricking a phone like this but FB/Google account bans and limitations are common.

I guess we can’t be purist anymore but being pragmatic is still possible and you can divert funds away from FB this way to a company that cares about the headsets they sell and the user experience

You can use a smartphone without linking to a faang account. Though it still has a device ID which it uses to talk to some infra if you keep the stock firmware.

My smartphone cannot be remotely turned into an overpriced wheel chock by someone in a call center.

Apple at least can absolutely do this, that's what the purpose of reporting a device stolen is.

OK but that's a very different story, one is stolen and at the request of the owner, the other is for some ethereal vague hard to pin down rule that was broken with no way to resolve it. My use of my property that I own should not be contingent on some behavioral rule on some website that could change at any time. Don't give money to companies that can remotely brick your property without your explicit request.

Apple also has phone numbers you can call with a human at the other end who can help resolve stuff like this.

You can disable Google services on Android. There's literally a button to do that if you know where to look.

because we’re, or at least I am, inherently lazy. i would rather pay a markup on a playstation digital download that would allow me to not move from the couch. i’m a pretty active person outside the couch. the bad news is that they know this :)

Pretend? They're NOT a viable purchase due to this garbage.

This is another good part of steam - even if your account is banned from the entire community for site-wide spam, you don’t lose access to your game library.

Edit: looks like, of course, they can ban you and lose access to your games, however it requires threatening legal action against Valve.

https://www.oneangrygamer.net/2020/06/steam-user-loses-game-...

Looks like this user received this message[0] after being banned from the community and only because he mentioned russian law did Steam suspend his account.

> Going to support and blalblab again my rights and the russian law, they slapped me with a perma community ban and 1 month ban to contact the support.

0: https://i.imgur.com/uciPvDC.png

Generally speaking, you don't lose access to your Steam library unless you defraud them, e.g. by charging back purchases. I don't buy that the Russian guy got banned for spamming. The only evidence that that was the ban reason is his own words. Considering that this story seems to have only been picked up by sites like "oneangrygamer", "riseupgamer", and the Daily Stormer, I'd lay money he's not being honest.

> It also reflects the non-recoverable portion of the cost to most users

And then people wonder why I'm never buying anything digital. That's the reason. Buying digital makes your continued access to the thing dependent on your account being not banned and the servers being up. In other words, even if you "own" it, you're still at the mercy of the seller. But if you bought something on a physical medium (or torrented), no one could take it away from you.

Just think of it as like paying to see a movie. I bought a $10 app once, used it for what it was for, and now several phones later, I don't know or care what's happened to it. I got my value out of it and don't need to hoard every possession I "buy".

Remember people who used to have a huge collection of video tapes or CDs? They hardly used them for anything except decoration of their living room. Hoarding old crap that you never use isn't the best use of money.

Physical things can readily be taken away in divorces and debt recovery or less common things like police seizure if you're suspected of a crime. The world's richest man had half his wealth taken like that. Property rights aren't as secure as you think.

Wow, I really disagree with this. Or, with the implication / point?

Sure, if one buys a newspaper, chances are that one won’t hold on to it for long. But it is important that one can. If one wants to cut out a story from it and hold onto it, perhaps in a scrapbook, one can do so.

It is also important for archival and preservation purposes.

> The world's richest man had half his wealth taken like that.

If you're talking about Bezos, all of their wealth was made after they got married. The news can say it's "his wealth" but it always belonged to both of them. It's not "taking half his wealth," it's splitting their co-owned assets.

Well, yes, exactly. It's legal. An online service denying access to a movie you bought is just them acting on their right to do so because you never had a non-revocable license to use it. It was always their property. In both cases, people don't appreciate that what they feel is theirs isn't really theirs until it gets taken away. That's the whole problem.

So much wrong here

lets start with this

>The world's richest man had half his wealth taken like that

I assume you are talking Bezo's divorce, you might want to actually look into that if you believe that. he did not have half his wealth taken, far far far from it.

>Physical things can readily be taken away in divorces and debt recovery

That is not being "taken away" in the sense you are talking about in context, for debt recovery it is being "taken away" because you did not actually own it, the lender did, you do not own it until you have paid it off. I own my car, that means I have no debt on my car...

Divorce is not "taking away" it is splitting assets owned by multiple parties. Sure the process can been seen as unfair, however legally the assets is owned by both people, the courts then choose who the new owner of the asset is.

That is a far cry from what we are talking about in this context.

>Just think of it as like paying to see a movie.

But it is not, That would be like a Netflix Subscription, where I pay to access content, not pay to own the content. Ownership and Renting is different.

If they want to rent content there are methods to do that, however most people will not pay the prices they charge for a rental that is why they need to guise it as a "purchase" not a rental

>Remember people who used to have a huge collection of video tapes or CDs?

I used mine, then I ripped them (legally) to enjoy them on other technology... Sad you just used them for decoration. Probably should have spent money on something else you found enjoyable

> Sad you just used them for decoration.

Who?

You know, many people find collecting things to be a pleasant and relaxing hobby. Perhaps, for some people, having a large collection of tapes or CDs, displaying the collection is part of the point.

People gather enjoyment from different types of things. Not everyone aspires towards minimalism.

Then buy something that you can keep instead of a revocable license to use something on someone else's computer.

This depends on how it works.

It is perfectly possible for games to be sold digitally online with no drm, such that you could easily (without requiring uncommon technical know-how) copy it to a flash drive and run it on a computer with no internet connection.

Of course, games sold this way are extremely easy to pirate, because it is, essentially, pre-cracked. But one can distribute a product like this, and on occasion people do.

All games on gog.com are sold like this.

Or have ban groups. Ban someone from having a Facebook profile, buying ads, sending Messages, or having an Instagram profile based on their behavior on those respective sections of the site. Maybe disable a person's multiplayer capabilities if they have a reputation for harassment.

But let them keep their hardware running, and access their game library.

Seems good for business, tbh. You might not want neo-nazis posting whatever they want on their profiles, but who cares if they're buying video games?

Yes, Facebook really doesn't have a convincing argument why they will not just disable the social interaction features when the ban is made on that basis. They will say that they want to build social features into all their software as integral and therefore it is not possible but it doesn't pass muster to me .... it simply isn't that hard to make it conditionally available within apps and if it is that hard then it is Facebook's fault for engineering it that way.

Perhaps they're trying to avoid a situation where banned people get a better experience because they don't have to deal with the social features.

This is not a bad idea as long as Facebook is on the hook for the refunds, not the app developers.

Well it’s have to be both like any normal refund. Hopefully the % of refunds is small as it would be on way ebay or Amazon sales.

Why?

> they should be on the hook for refunding a significant portion of the cost of the user's Oculus library

If the purchases were < 6 months ago, I would do credit card charge backs...

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