
If Logged into Facebook, Oculus VR Data Will Now Be Used for Ads - Larrikin
https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/303310-facebook-oculus-vr-data-advertising
======
adgineer
FB ads engineer here.

Every time I read these threads, I'm 1\. Flattered by how sophisticated HN
thinks our systems are (they're not. and we're not that smart. FB's A-team
stopped working on ads a long time ago) 2\. Entertained by how HN thinks ad
targeting works (we don't want to know everything about YOU. we want to know
basic info about all of our users.)

Hypertargeting doesn't work. Targeting small audiences doesn't provide
marketing scale and is extremely expensive. The goal is to have the biggest
possible audience, while still applying one or two critical filters. You could
hit all 1000 people in a pool for $100 each, or you can hit 1000 people in a
pool of 1 million for 50 cents each.

The main priority here is to enable "Show ads to people who own an Oculus"
level targeting. This means that people selling VR-adjacent services,
products, and content can reliably advertise to their core market without
wasting money on non-users. Or maybe they can filter out that segment to show
different ads to non-users that convince them to buy their first device. I
know most on HN hate any level of targeting, but this has a massive benefit to
the VR ecosystem because it allows VR companies to reach their customers much
more effectively and sell more products.

FB is actually stripping away features from our targeting system and removing
inputs because we spend too much compute power ($$) driving optimizations that
don't have any material impact on delivery value. Basic is better. There's no
meaningful business value to capturing biometrics or pictures of things in
your home. Also, ethics. We do actually think about that a lot these days - it
just took us a while to clean up short-sighted product decisions made a decade
ago.

~~~
Nextgrid
Your systems are sophisticated enough to make people believe their phones are
listening to them in the background even when that's not the case. So even if
_you_ think they are primitive, a lot of people thinks they're more than
sophisticated enough to be creepy.

~~~
ceejayoz
Facebook's not helping this conspiracy theory with their "why did I see this
ad?" dialog. I'll see a _clearly_ hyper-targeted ad (for example, a psoriasis
medication) and click that button and it'll say "they wanted to reach people
in the United States between 18-65!"

I _know_ I was targeted by that ad. I _know_ they're just showing me the most
general bit of the targeting info that was used to put that ad in front of me.

The dialog even obnoxiously says "There could also be more factors not listed
here." Yes, I know, that's fairly obvious. I clicked the dialog to figure out
what those were.

~~~
cm2012
I am a professional FB advertiser.

The advertisers are probably choosing to target everyone on FB in that age
range, but asking FB to optimize for conversions. Then the FB algorithm finds
more people who look like people who are clicking and converting.

~~~
texasbigdata
Ok, so dumb question. Why _wouldn't_ you optimize for conversions then? Unless
you want some immeasurable branding value type lift.

Sorry for the dumb question but if you're implying one particular bidding
mechanism benefits from FB algorithmic experience in a way that's meaningfully
more accurate (serving the ad to the guy or girl with the condition), why
would anyone do anything different?

~~~
cm2012
Almost everyone who cares about performance does bid for conversions.
Sometimes companies add extra layers of targeting on top of it though.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
Because they are idiots.

Non conversion optimised ads can work for small audiences of really high
value, but that's a pretty niche use-case.

------
CelestialTeapot
Sure, after spending hundreds of dollars on a device, it only seems fair that
the vendor exploit your personal information so that credit companies and
anyone willing and able to buy the data can compile a dossier on you.

~~~
patrickaljord
Facebook does not sell data.

~~~
naniwaduni
Mostly because they find it more profitable to maintain their exclusivity on
the data itself and sell only ad placements.

------
vermilingua
A surprise to exactly nobody.

When are people going to stop rewarding the exploitative behavior of Facebook
and its offspring?

~~~
zxcb1
Yes. However, it is not apparent which inferences are possible to make with
this kind of sensor data. How invasive might this become?

~~~
classified
> How invasive might this become?

Brain-wave-scanning kind of invasive. FB (and advertising in general) will
continue to become ever more invasive until it meets a limiting factor. That
limiting factor will possibly be legislation (just not in the US because
worshiping the Dollar overrides anything and everything else).

~~~
bagacrap
Do we know the first thing about how brain waves correlate to any real world
properties of a person? If Facebook or anyone else can crack brain waves, ie
in a sense "read your mind", it seems like serving ads is the least of our
worries, but also pretty exciting in terms of the potential positive
applications.

~~~
wizzwizz4
We've already got "EEG to categorised-eyeball-images" technology; in fact,
that was a relatively primitive application of neural nets.
[https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/787101v2.full](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/787101v2.full)

No, I don't think it unlikely that the next-gen Oculus might do this.

------
tyfon
And this is the reason I never touch anything that has a connection to
Facebook.

No surprise really but it irks me as I wanted the rift some time ago but then
Facebook bought it.

Luckily it seems like Valve Index will be a good alternative.

~~~
kgwxd
Valve won't collect data?

~~~
tyfon
They might, but they don't have facebooks apparatus or motivation for turning
it into ads on unrelated web pages.

~~~
bagacrap
Do they need to own the apparatus? I search for a product on Google, I click
on a search result, navigating to a retailer's site. That site knows not only
what I'm looking at but what I was searching for. By way of third party
cookies it knows who I am and it sends that info back to FB and the next time
I'm on Instagram I'm getting ads from that category. The retailer I visited
didn't have to own the FB ad network to play a role.

~~~
lm28469
I don't think valve does any of that, and even if it did it has access to way
less data then FB (which owns instagram and whatsapp) which basically know
your location, who you talk to and when, your centers of interest, political
orientation, &c. Valve, at least for now, is mostly concerned about selling
games. Collecting data in itself isn't bad, imho the issue is the
centralisation and what the data is used for. I'd feel much more confident
giving a little data to Valve than enlarging the humongous dataset of
facebook.

------
mnw21cam
[https://outline.com/Fur6Bq](https://outline.com/Fur6Bq) for those of us who
don't like looking at a blank black page.

------
aedron
Eye tracking is adtech's wet dream for a long time. It's like heatmaps on
steroids. And VR glasses are the perfect platform for it.

------
asutekku
It’s Facebook’s service, what did you expect. Also, recommending products
based on your past experiences is something pretty much every service
provides.

~~~
rchaud
> recommending products based on your past experiences

I've recommended music and movies to people without any prior compensation
from the companies that put those products out.

What Facebook is doing is advertising. "Personalized recommendations" is
marketing doublespeak for "pay to play".

------
AndrewThrowaway
At first I read it as "will not be used". "Yet" I thought to myself. Then I
reread the title. "Oh" I though to myself.

------
dang
We changed the url from [https://uploadvr.com/facebook-ads-
vr/](https://uploadvr.com/facebook-ads-vr/) to an article that links to the
relevant announcement.

------
yc_2345
I am not sure what is the big deal here.

When WhatsApp improved its popularity by claiming "privacy is important, no
ads" etc and then did a U turn it was actually noteworthy and newsworthy.

I don't think Oculus ever made such claims. They were happy to "sell out" [1].
If anything, they seem to be proud members of the Facebook cult [2].

If you bought the Oculus, you knew exactly what you were getting.

Also, a side note: I just suppose that everyone who supports Facebook at this
point benefit from Facebook's profits in some way (e.g. FB employees, FB
ecosystem consultants, close partners such as Microsoft etc) and automatically
discount their opinions about Facebook.

[1] [https://www.vox.com/2014/3/25/11624928/facebook-buys-
oculus-...](https://www.vox.com/2014/3/25/11624928/facebook-buys-oculus-vr-
for-2-billion)

[2] [https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/facebook-oculus-
privacy...](https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/facebook-oculus-privacy-
messages-controllers-1203188863/)

~~~
colejohnson66
> Also, a side note: I just suppose that everyone who supports Facebook at
> this point benefit from Facebook's profits in some way (e.g. FB employees,
> FB ecosystem consultants, close partners such as Microsoft etc) and
> automatically discount their opinions about Facebook.

I was gonna upvote you, but this was unnecessary. It’s possible for someone to
be positive towards something _you_ see as a negative. People hate Trump and
he has supporters. Whether you agree with them or not, not all of them are
benefiting from the Trump Administration

~~~
tabula
Yeah, not to mention that you can benefit from FB without being one of their
employees or close partners. Just buy some stock next time it crashes bc they
get caught using data they weren’t supposed to!

------
sp332
John Carmack steps down from being CTO, and a month later this happens.

~~~
swebs
Now which one was the cause, and which was the effect?

~~~
sp332
I mean I don't remember him being loudly against this. It could be more of a
difference of priorities. But it's still interesting. Even if they're not
directly connected, two big changes in a row could mean there are more to
come.

------
just_myles
Well you have the option of not signing in with your facebook account. Good
thing about this market is that there are other options out there and
presumably more coming in the future.

~~~
throwaway48544
Yes, I have to give credit there for allowing it to be an option at least.

------
dangoor
When I bought an Oculus Quest, the fact that Oculus is owned by Facebook was
slightly bothersome, but I honestly don't care a whole lot about this
particular data at this particular time (basically just game playing).

It's Facebook Horizon[1] that's the worrisome thing. I'm pretty sure they're
trying to build the OASIS from Ready Player One.

[1]:
[https://www.oculus.com/facebookhorizon/](https://www.oculus.com/facebookhorizon/)

~~~
LegitShady
It's interesting that you say the only data being collected is what you play
and when.

Why do you think that? They have a lot of lose and movement data from you I
bet theyve been spending a lot of time trying to develop inferences you can
make from it.

~~~
dangoor
Sure. They know I play Beat Saber and move pretty quickly while doing so.
Maybe they'll try to sell me exercise stuff (though I rarely interact with
Facebook and my browser setup is kind of aggressive when it comes to them).

They also know I'm shorter than Darth Vader. They know the size of a couple of
our rooms.

I acknowledge there is data they can attempt to extract value from, but that
data just doesn't concern me. As VR expands, particularly with Horizon, I will
be a lot more wary.

~~~
LegitShady
>I acknowledge there is data they can attempt to extract value from, but that
data just doesn't concern me

This feels like a weird non computer person answer of "I don't understand why
I should be worried about metadata it doesn't concern me"

~~~
dangoor
Let me put it another way: there are many things we choose to do which
generate data and provide that data to various entities. We have to decide
which data we're willing to share with whom and for what benefits.

I know some people who, at least as of a couple of years ago, had dumbphones
from which they'd remove the batteries when not in use so that their location
couldn't be tracked.

I have an iPhone. I've got Comcast internet at home and don't use a VPN. I
have a Facebook account (which I access in Firefox only using the facebook
container). I don't use gmail, and my primary browser isn't logged into Google
and has various bits of tracking protection.

So it's a pretty conscious choice. Maybe it's misguided, but I just think the
data Facebook is getting from my Oculus Quest is pretty low value. Lower value
than Likes, for example.

------
sli
So... is anyone actually _surprised_ by this?

~~~
dvtrn
Does it count that I _want_ to be surprised by it?

------
jammygit
Amazing how invasive such an expensive product is. I sold mine 2-3 years ago
and still feel icky about when I read the privacy policy

------
welluu89
But the it would be used for FB ads? So, what's the difference really?

