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Comment by ASinclair | Hacker News Reader

> This requires further study, but our hypothesis is that it is still easier to build trust in person

I chuckled a bit. This is coming from a Social Media Company whose product is about connecting online. What does it say about the trust between users of its platforms?

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Well I mean, the simple explanation is online is still far better than nothing. I'm not sure anyone is expecting you to read someone's wall if you could just talk to them every day.

But given the choice, why would a company invest in VR headsets as a way to collaborate remotely if the company selling them thinks in-person is better?

I don't think those ideas necessarily contradict. If you're using VR to collaborate with someone on the other side of the country (or world) but you only need to collaborate intermittently, then remote collaboration just has to be "good enough" to offset the cost of travel even if in person would be ideal. Meanwhile, for their own employees who may need to collaborate daily, from their point of view they might think in that case it makes more sense to enforce in-person. I doubt Meta's stated goal (at this point) with their VR stuff is that you should never ever leave your house because VR is just as good, seems like it's more "this thing enables remote to be better".

It can be that in-person is best, but isn't always possible. And then it can also be the case that VR is better than connecting over Web/Mobile, while also being far cheaper than a plane ticket.

Adding to what others have said, the headsets are actually MR devices. You can collaborate in person with shared virtual objects. I will admit that the software isn't there yet, but the vision is you could comfortably replace models and mock ups with richer virtual media.

Originally Facebook was all about only connecting with people you already know. So it’s not as ironic as you are suggesting.

Yeah "it is still easier to build trust in person, so they can work together on collaborating via floating Wiimote heads in VR"

About as good as musk Tweeting that phone calls are better than tweets for actually connecting with some.

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