Oculus Quest is removing the Facebook account requirement
gamerant.com
gamerant.com
1. I read the terms of service that I originally agreed to. Found a requirement to first negotiate any dispute with their general counsel in good faith. So I wrote to them explaining that I declined the change in ToS terms, and asked for a refund of everything I'd purchased in connection with the headset, plus the dollar amount that it added up to. Sent by registered mail. Waited a few months, got no response. This was summer 2020.
2. Filed a support ticket basically saying the same thing. I got very prompt responses but of course they were templates -- sorry, 30-day return window has expired, please create FB account, etc.
3. Drafted up the small-claims complaint. This is actually a very easy and short form in California.
4. Sent a courtesy copy of the complaint to Oculus general counsel. This can sometimes get their attention and resolve things right away without involving the courts. No response.
5. Filed the complaint, then served Oculus/FB at their Sacramento address for their registered agent for service of process. This cost something like $100 (filing + service).
6. Got a summer 2021 court date.
7. Sent them another courtesy reminder that the court date was approaching and asked to resolve before trial.
8. In the late spring of 2021 got some activity on the support ticket saying sorry for the delay, please dismiss the case, we'll send you the $$$ plus a box to ship back the goggles.
9. I accepted their offer, shipped the stuff back, got the $$$, and filed a dismissal of the case.
Total wall clock time > 1 year. Actual human time on the case probably 5 hours. Out of pocket expenses about $100, which I added to the settlement demand, and which they paid. So I ended up back where I started before the Oculus Quest purchase, except for the time I lost writing the court papers and support/legal communications. Which is what I wanted and expected.
As I hope you can tell, I wasn't angry or out for revenge. I just didn't want the FB account requirement, and I especially didn't like that they tried to change the contract terms after we had a deal. It was just a business deal to me, and that takes pretty much all the emotion out of it, which can make many legal cases easier to resolve.
There may come a day where the world is utterly broken for the unaugmented, just a confusing sterile landscape camouflaged in QR codes. Getting kicked off the Metaverse will be a terrifying form of exile. But it will all be a private company's decision, so that will make it OK.
Big tech companies are pushing for a 360 approach where all you media, entertainment, work and even finance happens on their platform.
But what happens when one of their "AI" bots flags you for some arbitrary reason or they simply don't like you? Google is notorious for automatically banning accounts and it's virtually impossible to get a resolution. Bots ban you and bots "answer" you plea for resolution "We've looked into the issue and you're still banned. Bye."
So yeah, facebook bundling all their services under one account is not acceptable.
When losing your account just meant not being able to look at a few emails or social media their attitude was (almost) acceptable, but when losing access to your account could mean not being able to pay for things (apple pay, google pay), not being able to access stuff you've paid for (any digital content purchases through the account), possibly not even being able to access your phone; then it becomes a more serious responsibility and just suspending an account for arbitrary reasons is no longer acceptable.
Unfortunately, the tech companies don't seem to have got the message and still regularly ruin people's lives by banning accounts for no discernible reason and giving no recourse to getting them back.
I think if they are going to continue on the course they are on there needs to be some sort of campaign to force them to take more responsibility and to give people a proper channel to get bans investigated. Enforced by some sort of ombudsman or something.
Another option could be that if an account is banned for ToS violations the account holder can still log in and access "essential" services such as payments, plus have read-only access to stuff like emails and photos so they can still rescue their lives.
I would say a mix of both will be essential.
In some countries (France?) requires that online purchased products are transferable like in the real world. Mostly this is used for game resale, but it should enable you/the company to transfer purchases to a new account. "You banned me, but give my wife the games I bought"
Edit: Thread discussing the Apple ID suit https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26890055
Zuckiness, if you will.
I deleted my account specifically cause I felt like "why am I still looking at this stuff?"
I would love to be able to use oculus or instagram (which i can now) without an FB account. Recently I created an account to use ad manager for my job and it's been really annoying how many friends (from the past) I get suggested and how much the algo seems to want to rebuild my old account...
Having an Oculus account was pretty much like having a Steam account. It keeps track of your devices, your purchases, and you get emails or notifications (if you enable it)about products it thinks you want. Not perfect, but an a tradeoff I will accept for great devices and a good service.
Having to log into FB means you have to create an FB account, and they try to stop you from setting up a fake one not connected to your real phone number and emails. Using your device will mean that sometimes you have to log into FB which can be a real hassle on your home browser or phone. You have to think about leaving cookies, not leaving certain apps on your phone, particularly if you are on Android, and if you are a Quest 2 developer you are an Android developer so all the security questions are x2.
Plus, FB probably keeps this account you set up just to use your Oculus device and they post to it every time you buy a game or maybe every time you get an achievement. I have no idea if anyone actually has the misfortune to see those posts, but I wonder if they collect money on ads that are served to the accounts that have no other activity than automated Oculus posts. Someone here would know.
I love the Quest 2 and I am really happy FB is doing this. Thank you FB for this.
Maybe some fun startup like Magic Leap or maybe Snap rebrands to Antimeta.
We are going to have to strike some balances. It's really annoying to have FB (or anyone) mandate that you join a multi-platform surveillance ecosystem to use their hardware. On the other hand, a platform with a digital library-- like say a kindle-- requires a login and some personal info. We just need to set some limits so that companies don't abuse these relationships.
the balance is easily reached before the advent of facebooks' policy - you buy the hardware, you get to run _any_ software on it.
Some software require an account, but only because that software's specific needs (like VR chat would require some sort of account to identify a user).
Steam lets you use steamvr without having a steam account. The only reason facebook didn't is because they saw an opportunity to pull in people by force into the facebook ecosystem.
NSFW
https://www.patreon.com/meshedvr
http://www.illusion.jp/preview/honey2_dx/
This is also a reason I will personally never buy an adult game from Steam. I don't want my gamer account and my sexual preferences to be linked.
Let me also add that inside out tracking means effectively the device is filming me in various states of undress and I have to trust that they aren't collecting any of that data for "quality assurance" etc...
And with FB/Meta, that same data is data that's used to connect me with my Mom and family on FB. No, just, no!
How about ... no accounts.
If they drop me having to associate my Quest usage with my FB account I'll be happy to go buy one again.
It's still a win if you don't have a facebook account. For everyone else: I would assume that they will identify your accounts reliably.
Yes. If you lose access to one, you can keep the other.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/p8dasg/ive_bee...
That's making the assumption that Facebook isn't just going to eventually force everyone to a "meta" account that spans all of their properties. Which is exactly what I expect they're going to do.
I was just trying to comment about what this means right now for people invested in hardware and on the fence.
I think both Google and Facebook have pushed their luck recently and found the edges of their domain and their user's complacency. I imagine they'll just keep pushing and we'll eventually cave, but there has at least been some sensible backlash.
So I think the end state is a single-log in Meta account with discrete FB and Oculus accounts to accompany it, logged in through Meta?
Yes, it is what “begs the question” as a transitive verb phrase means (though the colon was superfluous, there.)
It is different from what “begs the question” as an intransitive verb phrase, which is older, means, but it also serves as something of a generalization and rationalization of the older phrase that makes the dubious and at best quite outdated translation from Latin have the appearance of some sensible relationship to the common definitions of English words in the phrase, so the pointless pedantry of opposing the clear and distinct transitive use which makes the intransitive use less detached from the rest of modern English is dumb. And tiresome.
I've given up complaining about the common usage, except that it's a nonsense phrase that apes the technical usage; there's no "begging" involved so the only reason not to say "raise the question" is because it sounds more scholarly to use the Latin, even incorrectly.
The phrase “begs the question” is an idiomatic phrase that operates as a verb phrase. It can be either intransitive (“X begs the question” or transitive “X begs the question Y”). In the intransitive use it refers to applying the petitio principii fallacy; in the intransitive form it refers to creating a demand for the answer to a specific question (the former can be viewed as a special case of the latter where the specific question is the justification for the same claim the argument was intended to justify.)
> I've given up complaining about the common usage, except that it's a nonsense phrase that apes the technical usage; there's no "begging" involved so the only reason not to say "raise the question" is because it sounds more scholarly to use the Latin, even incorrectly.
“begging the question” isn't Latin, its an (arguably quite bad even when it was coined and definitely dated) translation of Latin into English.
The Latin is “petitio principii”.
It's not a total win, probably, but part of the issue is that it's very unclear if you can have multiple redundant Meta accounts, what the ID requirements are for Meta accounts, what the process for appealing against moderation decisions for Meta accounts are, and what the terms of use for Meta accounts are.
I suspect that what they are planning to do is to allow thirdparty authentication for "professional" VR devices.
More just instead of a star with each on a spoke and FB in the middle, Meta will be in the middle and FB just another spoke.
> and frankly, as we've heard your feedback more broadly, we're working on making it so you can log into Quest with an account other than your personal Facebook account. We're starting to test support for work accounts soon, and we're working on making a broader shift here within the next year. I know this is a big deal for a lot of people. Not everyone wants their social media profile linked to all these other experiences and I get that, especially as the metaverse expands.
> There were all these subtle ways in which, because the company brand was Facebook, a lot of stuff flowed through Facebook and the Facebook app in ways that may have not been optimal. Facebook is still clearly the app that people use the most out of all the ones that we do. But there are people who want to just use WhatsApp or want to just use Instagram, or just want to have Quest and be in VR or AR and not have to use these things.
> So I think it’s about being able to pick and choose which of the services you want to use and know that, no matter what happens to your Facebook account or your Instagram account, you’re still going to have all the content that you bought in VR or all your virtual goods. You can set up an avatar and it can be tied to one of those accounts or could just be tied to your overall identity across the different family of apps. And you can use it in all these places if you want. I bet that’s going to be pretty powerful.
Quest 2: €350, standalone
They're not really in the same class at all.
It seems, though, that the timeline was moved up dramatically to both distract from other Facebook-related news, and to escape from the toxic branding that is Facebook at this point.
Switching to a name which is already a common english word with many uses, seems like an attempt to make future criticism more confusing, as well.
how so?
Glib but true. Wireless Vs. non-wireless is apples vs. oranges, now that I've experienced apples I want apples and Valve is only currently selling oranges.
Plus you're comparing a "good enough" $300 device to a superior but cost prohibitive $1K device. I feel like people who compare a Valve Index to a Quest really don't get what makes Quest uniquely good to its audience currently.
Nobody is denying that the Index is technologically superior across the board, what I am saying is that the measures we're using are completely different. I consider the Steam Deck a closer comparison than the Index for example.
And if you care about the higher performance you can still tether yourself to a gaming pc.
Although regardless of who you were trying to respond to, comes across likely ruder than you intended just fyi.
Is it though? I mean given the price difference it should be miles ahead. However I don't see any meaningful difference between the two.
Yes, in low light it might suffer, but then occluded base stations will cock up the vive
.
Eg. If you want wireless one like the quest, the HTC Vive Focus or HTC Vive Focus plus have similar specs to quest 2.. they can play games by themselves without a pc and are wireless
.
If you have a pc and want higher resolution / framerate like the index then DecaGear and HP Reverb G2 look good.
.
I would not get a quest cus of fb, and apparently atm the build quality of index is atrocious.
I've dropped mine, walked in to objects several times. Had the light house trackers fall from a distance and ripped the DP plug out of its port. I've had no issue with the quality; actually been quite impressed.
What source of claims are you using here?
Do you think they will just ignore those micro-head-movements when they start A/B testing different stuff on screen to figure out the algorithm that is _you_? Who needs a real, physical Westworld?
I hear the next version might even track retinal movement. So many useful audience-segmenting and personalized targeting capabilities!
As an aside, the Quest 2 would have been a break away hit, if they didn’t make the FB login a requirement last year though
The Facebook login was unnecessary friction since they didn't even take advantage of it from the start. It wasn't until a few months ago when I could even find my friends from Facebook.
I do love my Quest 2 though.
Why?
Edited to cite the announcement transcript[1]:
> And as we’ve focused more on work, and frankly, as we’ve heard your feedback more broadly, we’re on making it so you can log into Quest with an account other than your personal Facebook account.
> ... I know this is a big deal for a lot of people. Not everyone wants their social media profile linked to all these other experiences.
[1]: https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/meta-facebook-connect-2...
Apple is hardly the model for technology we should be using these days. Their walled garden has rotten fruit and it doesn't even get you drunk, you simply fall ill.
Is Facebook planning to let us do this? Or are they just changing the brand logo on the login page for their required login?
I can root it and install alternative store
What alternative software can I run on Occulus?
That and all the extra engineering for managing users for business reasons not technical wastes real resources to prop up a technology company that isn’t interested in novel discovery, but servicing contemporary business obligations
If they’re so smart and capable of pulling useful metadata off unstructured data, why do they need me to maintain a specific profile?
Really kind of feels like they rely on having concrete data and the meta part is marketing
Guaranteed all these people in this thread wouldn't be losing their shit over a hardware account if it wasn't from Facebook's holdco. Forcing a Facebook account was creepy, a dedicated Oculus (well, Meta) account is normal and defensible.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/19/tech/apple-battery-settlement...
Well if you can root an Oculus you can do whatever you want there as well. That's the whole point of... root.
Do better.
Since this is disingenuous on your part, telling the person you responded to, to "do better" seems hypocritical.
Like, it's confusing for sure, but not on the part of the reader. It doesn't even make sense. Most people don't even _have_ ipads.
And even if they did, you're basically saying, "this small subset of self-selecting people who are okay with their tablet requiring a login to work, are okay with their devices requiring a login to work", which isn't very convincing to others, either.
And even if _that_ made sense, 'these other people are okay with it' is probably one of the weakest possible arguments in favor of /anything/.
I'll go ahead and assume English isn't your first language. I was saying the vast majority of people who own ipads are fine with needing to login to an account to get the most out of it. Doesn't seem like a particularly controversial statement.
Now go ahead and find some way in which the above sentence is technically incorrect, but you're starting to look silly.
You do better and stop moving the goalposts and lying.
Specifically I would sideload fdroid, and then install (free) apps from there since it doesn't need a login.
Or maybe I'd (say, on windows) "sideload" steam, and install apps from there instead of from Oculus.
The idea that the only place I can get apps from is the "official" appstore is ridiculous.
You have to pay them, they have to remember you paid them.
Because you bought a system that only has apps from your monitor's app store available, and that means you have to prove who you are to use them.
It's no different to phones, consoles, etc.
You can use a Nintendo Switch or an Android phone without an online account.
De facto, that means you need an account.
Yes, I know you can try to find copies of your banking apps on apkmirror and sideload, but... no. (Also, wouldn't that mean that you have to manually confirm every single app update, so a 10-minute button pushing session every week?)
Blatantly false. You can either play Oculus games (must, if you are playing without PC; basically the app store) or you can connect to PC and play any SteamVR games just like you would with any other headset (supported officially).
So with Quest 2, I get to play both the Oculus-only standalone games made for the headset specifically, as well as any SteamVR games that my friends with other VR headsets might want to play together.
An oculus is not a monitor, it's an entire game console that includes a screen. Are you this incredulous about having to log in to an iPad or a Switch?
It is a fact of life that companies will impose more and more profit-maximizing inconveniences upon the customer as long as the customer is willing to accept them. It only stops when enough customers push back.
If not, sounds like a Facebook account by another name.
In this specific analogy, the point is, despite having different business models, society benefits from either conglomerate separating their respective two aforementioned business units.
This is not stated anywhere. I don't see why Facebook couldn't create a Meta SSO that you can use for Facebook and/or Oculus and call it "job done". For them it's a win/win. Most people would choose to "migrate" their Facebook login to Meta. Those annoyed by this could just create a Meta account. Notably there's no mention of whether you'll need to use your real name for logging into Oculus as you do with Facebook. My bet is: probably.
Hmm, the statements you posted don’t quite say that.
I guess it’s still possible that users could be required to register a “meta” account which is separate to your personal Facebook account, although you can sign into your personal Facebook account with your meta account via single sign on. I think this would technically meet their wording while also not fulfilling the spirit of what everyone wants.
For instance, you can have a Google account that isn’t linked to your personal Gmail account, because not everyone wants their search history linked to their email - just change Google to Meta, Gmail to Facebook and search history to social media.
> And as we’ve focused more on work, and frankly, as we’ve heard your feedback more broadly, we’re on making it so you can log into Quest with an account other than your personal Facebook account.
> ... I know this is a big deal for a lot of people. Not everyone wants their social media profile linked to all these other experiences.
To me this strongly suggests that it is a separate account, and is not required to be linked to a Facebook account.
[1]: https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/meta-facebook-connect-2...
This corporate-speak makes me very cynical and I hate it but given FB's history I would like a completely clear statement that data harvested from Oculus is not immediately linked to an identity of myself in some system of the FB colossus.
It’s a very long standing problem. Many people created new Facebook accounts just for Oculus, bought maybe $80-$100 worth of games, and then got their Facebook account banned[*]. There is pretty much no recourse but to whine on the Oculus subreddit till the community rep escalated them past tier 1 support. Even then, the result would be “We’ve refunded your purchases please use your actual Facebook account.”
It’s probably gotten bad with charge backs and returned headsets that they’re finally doing something about it.
[*]: The common speculation is that this would trip a similar heuristic to “Egg Accounts” on Twitter and would be banned without recourse because that particular piece of Facebook’s automation didn’t have visibility into the Oculus-side purchase activity. The assumption by Facebook being the account didn’t have any content so if it was an actual human they’d just create a new account.
Quote: We asked Bosworth directly if we could unlink and delete our Facebook accounts from Quest and still keep our software purchases, to which he simply replied: “Yup”.
Wonder what will happen to it.
"Sure we said it won't require a FACEBOOK account, but Meta is something totally different and <insert more marketing sentences>. And because of that, a Meta account is required."
In general, the facemasks are pretty tight around the eyes, and the sweat glands are on the forehead, so it doesn't affect operation.
Of course, it still gets gunky and you'll want to regularly clean the facemasks if you do any exercising in VR.
The Quest specifically has the face mask directly integrated to the spacer, so you have to remove the whole thing to clean it, but it's doable.
They are introducing a new workout pad (the pads are super quick to interchange).
I honestly don't know if I can ever buy a new car, I might have to stick with ICE. At some point even your car might show a screen that says, hey before driving to work, do you agree to the following terms? NO? Then you don't get to go to work.
I think we have too many "agreements" and a lot of it is parasitic because they want to sell data about you.
(jk)
I can't believe it took this long for the policy to be reversed.
The damage to Oculus among enthusiasts was huge. But I guess the Oculus brand is going away anyway leaving just 'Meta' and 'Quest'.
I develop a social VR experience for students of foreign languages. It's an activity we provide in addition to our traditional classroom based instruction. Our students are primarily government employees, in diplomatic, defense, or intelligence roles.
When the pandemic hit, we had a huge problem. We needed to pivot our experience away from in-person and figure out a solution to continue development and testing with remote learning. So we built a new teleconferencing feature into the app and started shipping headsets directly to the student. They use them a couple of times for their classes and then ship it back.
This pivot also came at the exact same time that we had the first kerfuffle over the Quest 2 requiring a Facebook login, which made it a complete non-starter for organizations like US intelligence agencies.
Our product is a WebXR experience, which can technically run on any headset on the market. Any sort of PC tethered devices would mean we would have to also ship a gaming laptop to the students, because we can't count on their PC being powerful enough to run a VR headset at all. That would be significantly more expensive and would overcomplicate the setup for students. We can't ship Pico Neo headsets because their employers are fearful of the Chinese ownership of the company. We can't ship Vive Focus devices because, well, the lenses suck and have made even me, a hardened VR user, sick. The OfB Quest 2s that we have are really the best user experience we can provide right now.
With Oculus for Business, the users of the headsets did not need any sort of login whatsoever. It was the best case scenario for us. WebXR nominally keeps us from being platform-locked-in, and the enterprise licensing terms keep our customers happy. I say "nominally", because the only other, realistic option for it right now is PC tethered devices. All of the non-Quest standalones only have an ancient version of Firefox available as a browser. Mozilla laid off all of their VR developers and has not had anyone releasing updates to Firefox Reality in over a year. There are spec changes and defects that they've not kept up with that are significant impediments to continued development. On the other hand, Facebook builds a version of Chromium as the browser on the Quest, that they keep very up to date and have some excellent performance optimizations built in.
But Meta is ending new OfB purchases at the end of this year [0]. There is a Quest for Business (QfB) program that they have announced, but it won't be generally available until at least 2023. In an FAQ [1], they talk about options for migration. Migrate the existing OfB headsets to use the consumer Quest 2 software, migrate to QfB "when it becomes available" (starting a closed beta later this year, going to open beta "sometime in 2022"), or continue using OfB (which means no system updates in the near future [2]).
What is not clear is what that means regarding headset users being required to have some sort of device login. They say QfB will have "Work accounts" to log in instead of a personal Facebook account. But what, exactly, does that mean? Are these accounts that we can provision per headset, so users can check headsets out of a locker or we can ship to the students and they can just use them? Or will they have to be per-user accounts?
I can abide per-headset accounts. Our clients are not going to abide per-actual-user accounts.
This has been a frustrating experience, to say the least. I keep hoping Microsoft will wake up one day and realize that waveguide displays are stupid, rip them out of the HoloLens, put in some opaque displays, and give us a standalone VR headset, with a decent browser, that my USG customers can abide. But they aren't listening to me.
[0] https://developer.oculus.com/blog/evolving-from-oculus-for-b...
[1] https://business.oculus.com/faq/
[2] OfB devices are currently on v28 of the system software, whereas the consumer SKUs are on v33, which has significant defect fixes and performance improvements. They've stated that v29 will be the last version deployed for OfB, so that's pretty annoying.
No, it's absolutely clear that this has nothing to do with the outage. WhatsApp and Instagram were down too. Their infrastructure does not care if the parent corp is called Facebook or Meta.