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Comment by loeg | Hacker News Reader

> 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."

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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

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