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Comment by willis936 | Hacker News Reader

It begs the question: if they host the social media account and VR account and can reliably identify / link them on their end, and the laws and terms allow them to do so, does it really matter if they’re different accounts?

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.

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>It's still a win if you don't have a facebook account.

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.

If so then it would be a repeat of what they did with Oculus. They've certainly demonstrated their capability. I personally won't be considering any Meta hardware or software until they've demonstrated some seriously benevolent and sustained changes.

I was just trying to comment about what this means right now for people invested in hardware and on the fence.

Reminds me of google plus

And Microsoft Passport ... or later .net Passport

Google Plus is interesting because whilst the social platform failed, getting you to sign in across a huge swath of properties with your Google account certainly worked. They even had me along for the ride until they started automatically managing Google accounts through their browser.

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.

A unified google account predates Google+. Really the two pushes in that direction that Google+ contributed was when they decided to force the holdouts on legacy unlinked YouTube accounts to make G+ brand accounts, and when they shuttered orkut which had its own account system iirc.

They all have Apple envy

After the "Facebook pixel", yes.

That's making the assumption that they are not going to identify you using your ip + some heuristics

There was a recent interview with MZ on HN that addressed this. He was asked if it was a mistake to require one account, and he basically said "we wanted a single-login, but we didn't think about how combining accounts would be undesirable, but we recognize it is"

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?

They aren't planning on it, based on Mark's keynote. They are opening up the products to multiple different account integrations. You will most likely be able to create an account with your Google account or Microsoft account.

> does it really matter if they’re different accounts?

Yes. If you lose access to one, you can keep the other.

Also if you have a Quest that is shared in the family, you don't need to worry about your family members poking around your FB stuffs anymore.

Can Facebook reliably find fake, empty profiles created just for Oculus?

I wouldn’t bet against them. They can tell if you longer on an ad, just by measuring how fast you’re scrolling the feed.

I recall reading something about having to have "an account in good standing", which certainly suggests that they can tell if an account is a real one or a dummy one.

My friend and I bought two Oculus Quest 2 for trying out out workrooms. We created new facebook accounts, oculus accounts as well as workrooms accounts. Both of us got the message that our accounts are not in good standing when trying workrooms. See screenshot from another poster in [1].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/p8dasg/ive_bee...

You assume that linking them will prevent any bans from propagating from one to the other.

Yes, because that's literally what they said was the reason for doing so in the stream, but I agree that until there's more clarity here and an explanation of how the terms of a Meta account would work then that's only of so much use.

They are explicitly banned from "soft matching" account now, by germany of all places.

I suspect that what they are planning to do is to allow thirdparty authentication for "professional" VR devices.

I guess it depends on what you’re worried about so if it’s identification and targeted ads you’re probably right but I was just worried about losing access if I close or get banned or something from my Facebook account for whatever reason.

It seems like it is better in that the arbitrary suspension of your Facebook account for moderation purposes (which is, due to how moderation at scale with machine learning just doesn't work, inherently random) won't cause you to lose access to your Oculus content and paid media.

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.

If they would have just stuck to this strategy, there would have been a lot less drama around the Quest 2 and more sales.

This is not what begs the question means.

It isn't and I've long given up on correcting people. Language evolves and sometimes it unfortunately evolves in ways that actually make communication more difficult (such as the over usage of literally). I've come to terms that if someone uses "begs the question" and then actually follows it with the question it's raising then it's fine. It's still annoying in the same way as using "utilize" instead of "use". It just sounds like someone trying to project themselves in a certain way and it coming across sort of stilted

> This is not what begs the question means.

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.

What is "the question" in the intransitive sense, that makes it not the object of the verb?

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.

> What is "the question" in the intransitive sense, that makes it not the object of the verb?

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”.

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