I have also created a Facebook account to use their NLP service, Wit.ai. The Facebook account has received an automated block, and they've kept it blocked after a manual review which has asked for a photo of my face.
Now they have a photo of my face, my legal name and date of birth, my verified email address and phone number, and I cannot exercise any control over this data, only download it, which is obviously illegal under GDPR.
Facebook engineers from Wit.ai are ignoring my request for help and the app APIs remain operational, I just can't log into the dashboard.
If you're a developer who considers using Wit.ai, be careful. You could receive an automated block from Facebook and an overworked contractor will rubber-stamp the bot's decision, while Wit.ai staff will ignore you.
I once had my account blocked and they requested a face and full details and I just entered a fake name plus the Google image results for the pictures they wanted (e.g. "my face" I just used the first Google result for the name of my congressman). They approved my submission and unblocked me immediately despite my account obviously being fake.
If a human is touching the process they are likely overworked, underpaid, and probably not in the US. If they are then they probably aren't paid enough to care as long as the check list their manager gave them is met.
I too have a blocked account, that I had removed (or so I thought) more than a decade ago and has reactivated by itself some months ago. Any attempts to delete it or contact the company has been a failure and I am amazed they are not being inundated by fines for this criminal behaviour, there are no contacts to ask GDPR data deletion (apparently it's a subsidiary that handles them..?) and by that no means to have your personal information removed. I can't imagine buying any software or hardware that would be in any way related to a company with such an hostility towards their customers.
Because you are not a customer, you aren't paying. Instead, you are the product of facebook. Their business model is to sell your personal information to advertisers
Seems like a simple enough landing page though. Discord server for tracking when people got blocked and you reach the 100-person count (is that an actual EU court requirement?)
There's no direct access to an EU court for most things; in almost all cases you first have to go through national courts.
In addition to that, most of the GDPR laws don't actually create a direct right of action. In many cases only the ICO is allowed to take action. And they may not bother.
From that discussion, it seems Facebook is deeply contradicting itself. On the one hand, it requires people to have a Facebook account to use the Oculus Quest 2, on the other hand, it considers inactive Facebook accounts to be fake and bans them.
So everybody who buys a Quest has to create a Facebook account, which subsequently gets banned for inactivity. To be able to use a Quest, you actually need to be active on Facebook.
Basically only buy a Quest if you really like Facebook.
I'm not active at all on Facebook itself - checking now, my last post was >18 months ago, and and other interactions (likes, comments, etc) even longer. But I leverage Messenger for a few contacts that prefer it, and that Messenger use seems to be sufficient to ward off the inactivity trigger.
I'm surprised they don't just treat the Oculus usage similarly, and count that usage as "activity" in the context of considering an account active/inactive.
Old accounts seems to be immune to this, and will not get banned even if you push the boundaries of spamming. Creating a new account, however, has become almost impossible.
Which seems shitty since I bet a lot of people just create a new account for their Oculus just to keep it separate. Does Facebook have a one account per person policy?
Honestly we need laws in many countries that say: if a provider bans your account, you need to be able to download all your data for 30 days and you need a 100% refund of all purchases. Period.
I make all my expensive electronic items with my AMEX. AMEX has been treating me well over the past 15 years. If a company shutdown my access to it product, I would request a charge back through AMEX. Usually, AMEX accepts my request with in the same day, no question asked.
Oh, that's good to know! My account is well seasoned from years past, even if it slowed to a trickle a few years ago before eventually going into full zombie mode ~18 months ago.
I've mentioned here before I got rid of my Facebook account for my mental health. Silly reason or not, it's done, and I have no desire to go back.
I also really like my Oculus. It's helped me escape a bit, and gotten me moving around more. It's a fantastic little device. I'm not looking forward to the day it becomes a paper weight.
The only positive in all of this is I've started upgrading my PC to get it to the point where it can play VR games, and deciding which VR rig I want to go with. It won't be as great as the Oculus, even if the tech is better, since I love the untethered nature of the Oculus, but a cable-tether is worlds better than a Facebook-tether, at least to me.
I have the original (wired) Vive and I upgraded it with a wireless adapter not a month ago. It was trivial to do, the software worked on the first try and it was overall a very nice experience. It also improved the gameplay dramatically.
Is the Valve Index ever going to come out with a wireless solution? I feel like wireless is a VR game-changer but I am not 100% sure about upgrading my Vive Pro to a Vive Cosmos and adding the wireless adapter and card, due to expense, and also, wanting to try something different
yeah, facebook is the only thing preventing me from buying an occulus. I have a VR ready pc, but there is no alternative to the quest / quest 2 in that price range.
the vive / valve’s headset all cost in the 1k and adding 349 to that is not appealing to get a heavier setup.
As others mentioned, new customers now can only use Facebook.
I'm in the same boat you are, but:
> If you choose to continue using your Oculus account, you’ll be covered by our updated Oculus Terms of Service and Oculus Privacy Policy, which we previewed last month. After January 1, 2023, we will end support for Oculus accounts
That boat will finally arrive at Facebook in two years. Two years is a long time for a bit of tech, but for me, the bigger deal is any money I've sunk into the Oculus ecosystem will go up in smoke then.
That was the primary reason I started gaming mostly on Steam via Rift, and am looking to replace the headset completely now.
(Helping this decision were things like downloading custom songs in Beat Saber is just easier on the desktop.)
You probably have a Quest 1. The Quest 2 shipped in October, and apparently requires a Facebook account instead of an Oculus account. In the future, all remaining Oculus accounts will be forced to move to Facebook.
There was a small window where early Quest 2 purchases before October or whatever are able to keep their oculus accounts. My friend has one without needing a facebook.
It really feels like Facebook is making a mistake here. Most people who are into VR are relatively tech savvy and probably not that keen on being forced to tether to Facebook as a company. I don't think you'll be alone in your decision to look at other VR solutions.
It's a shame because I wanted to get into VR at the beginning of lockdown and everything I've read about Oculus seemed positive except the facebook account.
One of the most frustrating things about mega corps like Facebook is that it’s really easy for them to make dumb decisions and just keep going. They’re too large for anything but the biggest mistakes to bring market pressure to bear.
The literal worst case here for FB is that a few people don’t buy a Quest II, which isn’t even core to their business success.
Well, it ostensibly hurts the entire Oculus line, not just the Quest 2.
And, while it's not core to their current business success, it was intended as a strategic decision, to have a path into VR social networks, I suspect. But I can easily see short term business decisions and priorities dominating that consideration, yes. Businesses are not know known for their long term planning skills.
Recently tried to delete multiple old accounts on FB and they have this thing where they lock your account and won't allow you to do anything until you verify yourself through identification.
I've decided to just leave them "open" forever instead of giving them my info.
> I also really like my Oculus. It's helped me escape a bit, and gotten me moving around more.
I'm thinking about getting an Oculus for the same reason. What software would you recommend? Are there any good titles with just scenery (e.g. beach, mountain, etc.)? Are the YouTube VR channels any good? (I sure hope they don't get interrupted by 3d advertisements).
Google Earth VR is my recommendation to people just trying out VR for the first time. It's pretty much exactly what you'd expect, but somehow seeing where you grew up, or went to college, or whatever is just a great first experience for a lot of people.
Beyond that, there's an entire category of "Travel the World" apps out there. I'm a big fan of the Ocean ones, but look around in the category to see what sparks interest.
YouTube is also a great source of videos. I'm a fan of the "360 Walking Tours" of various cities. Even the ones of the city I live in are great, though I gravitate to the big bright cities like Tokyo and Hong Kong. And of course, there are plenty of more fast paced videos, like 360 videos from the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels that are pretty fun. Some performers are also have concerts (or even do live concerts) in 360 if that's your thing.
Beyond that, don't rule out the games. Aircar VR technically has goals, but it doesn't enforce them, and it's great fun to fly around a Blade Runner inspired world. Beyond that, some of the story games are really good. Ghost Giant is a fairly easy puzzle game, and while the story was a little saccharin for my tastes, it was really well done and fun.
Beyond that, a lot of my friends seem to love the Theater apps like BigScreen. This has never really worked for me, perhaps because I don't have lots of great memories of theaters for whatever reasons, but for those missing that side of life, it seems to be a good option. I got more out of the social side of that, but only when using it with friends, when entering the public rooms, it's too hit-or-miss if you get a griefer or not for my tastes.
And of course, I think there's a law that every VR owner tries out Beat Saber. I really like it, but beyond that, it's a great app to show off to friends, since it's trivial to get started in.
Of course, don't take my word for any of these, I recommend you dig into reviews and see what floats your boat.
- In games like BigScreen, I suppose you can't play your own .mp4/.mkv files? Or can you?
- To be honest, I mostly want to use Oculus to find a little bit of tranquility on top of a mountain or on a beach. Would it be worth it? Do you know of a more open product which can perhaps deliver the same experience, and also allows programming/hacking?
Never bothered me. I got used to the reduced field of view and such pretty quickly.
> - In games like BigScreen, I suppose you can't play your own .mp4/.mkv files? Or can you?
Yep, you absolutely can. I've pointed it at an SMB share I have for such things, but you can also load it up with videos on the deviec. It's a little annoying to deal with DTS, but once you put the random .so it needs to decode it on the device, the hard work is done.
> tranquility on top of a mountain or on a beach. Would it be worth it?
Personally, I think so. It's mostly what I used mine for. It might not literally be a beach or whatever, but I really like the more tranquil apps like the VR painting ones or whatever that let me zone out and ignore the world for a bit. Also, I forgot to mention Derail Valley. I have many hours in that game, which for me is mostly about enjoying the train rides as I move cargo around.
As for more open: I'm looking into the HP Reverb, but I'm not yet that familiar with the desktop side of things. Given some of the quality of apps available, I'm guessing the programming side is pretty easy. Getting 3rd party stuff on the Quest is a bit like an iOS device. You need a developer account, then you can sideload packages (or use "SideQuest" to act as a third party store). No clue what FB plans for that side of things, of course.
I send an emotionally charged tweet about Vegetarian militants fighting in the Mongolia China war.*
Car - "I'm sorry your Apple account has been deactivated for thought crimes against the Tencent-Alibaba republic of China. Disabling braking and steering features on your Apple iCar."
Car - "Seatbelts decoupled"
The car crashes into an automated Tesla Truck full of zero gravity fidget spinners on shipment to Amazon fulfillment centre, just in time for christmas.
> The car crashes into an automated Tesla Truck full of zero gravity fidget spinners on shipment to Amazon fulfillment centre, just in time for christmas.
A week later, an unrelated Tesla has an unfortunate camera glitch and takes off the side mirror of an Apple executive's car. Two weeks later, the Road Wars begin.
Killing the driver sounds too drastic. The tweet would probably lower your social score, which in turn is in violation of the Apple EULA ("Our exclusive products may only be used by persons with high social score"), stopping the car and blaring the alarm "Please disembark.".
And since you're in the middle of the highway in rain, you don't get out. "Your license to use this car has been terminated. You are now trespassing. The authorities have been alerted.". And then the police show up and shoot you because their data mining software says it's mostly black people that have such low social score, so the iGlasses the cops have say you are black.
Also, the CO2 scrubber in the car is automatically turned off for low status individuals. (Non-plus-persons live in a perpetural brain fog due to elevated CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Hence non-plus-persons are by default declared legally insane and are automatically removed from voting rosters.)
A large part of the population too tired to think, but at the same time constantly overwhelmed and possibly very angry about stuff they can't quite put their finger on? A politician's dream, why wouldn't they be allowed to vote?
Likely barred due to binding arbitration clauses. The upside of such is that Facebook has to pay the arbitration filing fees, so you can get a full refund for the device out of it (it's cheaper than paying for arbitration).
This can be as devastating class action law suit. If enough people start exercising their right to arbitration it can get VERY costly for Facebook.
I can’t find the story now, but there was a case in I think California of a company suing to get out of an arbitration clause, wanting instead to move to a class action lawsuit. Thousands of arbitrations became time consuming and costly. So I think there is still big potential for a coordinated effort to make this difficult for Facebook, even if a class action suite were off the table.
The summary is DoorDash agreements with its dashers demanded arbitration, which costs both parties an amount, but thousands of dashers invoked the clause which cost DoorDash millions in fees.
DoorDash then tried to get out of it and opt-out or arbitration, but they couldn't.
Is there anything unlawful about offering to cover legal fees for everyone wanting to pursue good-faith legal recourse (including arbitration) against a particular company?
For example, suppose I'm a mega-billionaire who simply finds Facebook's conduct abhorrent. So I offer to pay for the Binding Arbitration fees of every Facebook user who has a plausible claim against Facebook.
And would the legality of that change if I was majority stakeholder in one of Facebook's competitors?
I don’t think click through tos are legal. It’s just convention to pretend they are real. The real world equivalent is a 15 page sign in a store that says “by entering this store you consent to our staff living on your couch”
From what I've heard, one big reason for the arbitration clauses is just so that the CEO won't get dragged off to small claims court all the time.
(Otherwise, you just need to convince a sympathetic judge that the CEO or some other senior official is important to the case, and they'd need to show up or risk contempt of court.
Not very likely for any individual case, but the chances add up with bigger numbers of claims.)
There are companies out there willing to help with this. Mass arbitration, when actually -done- can quickly wind up more expensive for the company than a class action.
Uber and Lyft had their mass arbitrations handled by a specific law firm that deals with consumer as well as employee issues, perhaps they are worth reaching out to.
I don't have an Oculus but have heard good things about it for VR. But I can't get one because my Facebook account was similarly shut down without explanation last year. Despite its age (15 years) I barely used it, let alone for anything "controversial", but did regularly log into it. I repeatedly tried to verify my identity by submitting an image of my driver's license, without any response.
I don't want to create a fake new Facebook account. I want my own back.
I share similar situasion with you, only they did respond after few weeks with we're too busy to verify your request, please submit again later. Nice facebook.
Have a similar problem but with my Facebook ad account. Didn't use it for sometime and when I went back to have a look at it, Facebook had disabled it and disabled my associated domain. I reached out to them to enable my account and they quoted the 180 day limit for appealing and said it would be better if I don't appeal further. The associated domain was disabled for not following community standards. Again I reached out to FB via the sharing debugger contact form and have received no response. The only thing I can see online is people crying about similar apathy and reaching out to a certain Karlin John who apparently is solving these issues. (I haven't reached out to this person, so could be a scam.)
What I have learnt is in a world run by monopolies/oligopolies there is little room for mistakes and even if you don't commit a mistake your livelihood can be at the mercy of corporations.
It’s specifically low cost infinite scaling SaaS where the product is sold for so little or nothing that any amount of customer service wipes out the entire business plan.
It is quite possible and a frequent point of speculation that the oculus hardware is sold at a loss. If they’re near the standard, they’ll take something like a 30% cut of app revenues. That $5-10 per title pays for everything, including some of the hardware and development and marketing, etc.
How much do you think a single support case costs? It could easily be the lifetime profit of a single average user.
You can still create a regular oculus account and it will continue to work until they fully transition to Facebook accounts, which I believe isn’t for several more years. It’s likely a new generation of the quest will have been released by then.
The described situation reflects an abysmal
service quality.
A counterexample: I had my Overwatch account stolen by a third party. While the financial cost was neglible I still issued a note to Blizzard's helpdesk - expecting nothing to happen. They answered in LESS THAN 24 hours and reverted everything bad that had happened. That's good service.
Since Facebook links Oculus to their services they absolutely should be prepared to offer similar quality service for account problems.
This is the problem with devices that rely on cloud servers to operate. They can cut you off as they see fit. They also leave the cutting of to an algorithm and don't care about the few edge cases where they ban the wrong people. Because that improves their bottom line.
Tying hardware to 'the cloud' is one thing. But tying it to social media accounts is far worse.
You shouldn't be getting banned from VR gaming due (including offline single-player games) due to a completely unrelated drunken political rant on social media.
> You shouldn't be getting banned from VR gaming due (including offline single-player games) due to a completely unrelated drunken political rant on social media.
Have you stopped to consider that might very well be the goal? It’s like an abusive relationship.
Act out, make our jobs hard & that stupid camera you call your parents on is toast!
Act out & your VR headset is toast!
Act out & I won’t let you talk to your family and friends on WhatsApp!
For anyone interested the cutting edge in VR is the new HP Reverb G2, it's a significant leap in tech and is interestingly quite a bit cheaper than previous flagship models from HTC or Valve. It's getting very good reviews and is releasing this month. Also it's made in partnership with Valve so should get all their RnD benefits.
I also dropped Oculus immediately after seeing the FB integration, and now have a HP on the way.
I simply cannot go back to a wired headset after using a wireless one. Unfortunately that's a 100% dealbreaker. All it needs is a standard 5GHz wifi chip.
The thing is that this is a different audience than Quest.
Quest is a standalone headset, and this is most likely the reason why it's one of the most popular.
So, if no other company competes in the standalone headset market, Oculus and FB will still be major players in the VR industry, and a lot of people will still keep buying it. Regardless of how shitty FB is.
From HP's store: "Looking for access across any and all VR content? With compatibility across both SteamVR and Windows Mixed Reality, seamless access to everything VR is now within reach. All with quick and painless setup."
Which makes sense, they also partnered with Valve on this headset as well. It's fluffy marketing-droid speak, but from the sounds of it the headset should work with Steam.
Yeah; I was contemplating getting a Quest 2 a while ago, since it hits a sweet spot of being a standalone headset, while also being able to be connected to the PC for greater fidelity (which will be important when my living arrangements change and I can get a tower PC)...but seeing reports like this was a showstopper. I'll wait until I have the tower and just buy an Index.
From what I understand there's a not insignificant (but also potentially low enough to not matter to many) amount of extra latency when using it to display content rendered on an external PC.
There are streaming solutions that work well enough via the Internet.
The trick is that they basically render a skybox/sky-dome. If you turn (rotate) your head, that is computed locally, you just get shown a different part of the picture that's already on your device (if you turn too fast, you may get a black cut-off edge until the viewport is updated from the remote machine.
If you move (translate), it needs to re-render for paralax etc. and that's when you notice it and potentially get VR-sick. So games where you have to move your head a lot are probably not a good match, but e.g. Fallout works great.
If you augment your skybox with distance information, you can fake some of the parallax locally. Might be convincing enough for the split second needed?
How hard would be to "simulate" a facebook account on your own? So that any crap like this get forwarded to your own personal "cloud" and be done with all the shenanigans.
Preemptive nitpicking "this is piracy" - no it isn't, it falls under "right to repair". Fight me!
Amazing how Facebook is killing the most capable VR hardware on the market. After reading things like this, who would want to gamble on an Oculus headset?
Most consumers don't care. Mom buying a Quest for her son won't care. Neither will majority of younger players. This is a case of small but loud group of people standing up against it.
Most don't but this endlessly being brought up in every comment section outside of supportive communities and then even there sometimes must hurt to some extent.
That's a whole lot of people doing anti-marketing screaming "don't buy!" for years to come.
Maybe it will not be enough to offset their gains and change course or see it as a mistake.
But enough for it to matter still? Probably.
Hell they might even spend time and money trying to salvage reputation even if they got gains hurting it in the same way that microsoft tries to paint itself as an ally of open source.
VR is a investment for the future for Facebook. It's likely that they are operating with losses at the moment, price point where they are offering Quest 2 is much lower than most other VR headsets. I am sure that the criticism is not helping at this moment, but it's unlikely that it will affect their bottom line in 5 or 10 years time.
I think Facebook's are objectively more onerous here. Creating another account violates their ToS. You can't buy physical copies of games for their headset. You can't play any of the games you purchased, even in an offline mode, if your account is deleted. You must tie your account to your real identity. It just all seems excessive
The one-account-only rule is horible treatment of users. What's wrong with having multiple online persona's? Using them avoids the conflicting roles of being a career professional, a parent and also politically active.
With multiple account the FB could still mine your data and show personalized ads. Still they insist on single account backed with real ID. This shows some deeply ingrained totalitarian ambitions. Luckily I still have my Oculus account so I can still enjoy Quest 1 without FB BS.
Hm, weird. I checked with FF private mode and on mobile (where I’m not logged in) and in both cases I could load more comments without nagging. Maybe uBlock Origin blocks the nag screen.
What I've found that works for this is getting a permalink (either through the option menu or via the comment timestamp). The direct comment link will show (some amount of) children, though if it goes too deep you'll have to repeat the process..
We were shopping for a VR headset last week. We absolutely would have bought an Oculus, except the risk of having it tied to Facebook kept putting us off.
It wouldn't just be risky to purchase an Oculus; that risk would continue the entire time we'd own it. Having that kind of worry built into a product makes it less fun.
In the end we bought an HTC Vive. We've been quite happy with it.
I purchased an Oculus Quest 2 yesterday actually from Best Buy. As an original Vive owner I'm astounded at how far VR has gotten for the price. Getting past the forced FB integration, the Quest is one of the best VR experiences I've had. The inside out tracking is nothing short of magical and using Virtual Desktop to stream PCVR wirelessly works so much better than I was anticipating.
I'm not a FB hater, and I think the social integrations could actually be very useful in the future - especially in a post covid world.
Please don't characterise this as "facebook hating". There is that. But this is not that. This is people more than happy to open a Facebook account, getting banned after doing literally nothing with that account, and have no recourse at all.
If you believe OP of being honest about that. Personally I don't, any time there are posts online complaining about being banned there's always some real underlying reason.
Either way it shouldn't matter. If someone is being an ass or cheating online, maybe that's grounds for multiplayer banning, like with valve, but not for a complete shutoff. Watching youtube videos or playing beat saber by yourself doesn't let your toxicity spread to others. Same with potential payment fraud even, just don't let them buy online anymore.
It should also be up to the developers of apps. Some may not care (ex: beat saber), or someone just want an ability to ban from their app specifically for bad behavior in their app, or have cool off periods instead of perma bans or whatever else.
Yeah I don't disagree with you. I just find it hard to have an honest/open discussion when the starting point is a claim without proof that "I didn't do anything", because in my past experience, every time proof has surfaced in cases like these, they definitely did do something and it completely changes the perspective.
Your sample size is guaranteed to be too small to matter. You can say, "I am cynical about individual reports, and naive about Facebook, so I automatically believe the latter over the former" just as some will do the reverse. But there's no point pretending individual experience matters here.
As someone else in the OP’s position (locked out of the Facebook account linked to my Quest), it is supremely frustrating to see your comment dismissing this situation out of hand.
Let me clarify. I also think it's stupid and fraudulent that you should be banned from using your Oculus because your Facebook account is locked. I just find it hard to believe that Facebook accounts get locked for no reason whatsoever.
Why? I think it is very plausible that a large part of this is automated. Combine that with a real name policy and false positives sound not that unlikely.
One potentially error-prone part of moderating any site with community content is handling users evading bans by creating new accounts. If you don't have any mechanism to prevent that, you have a much larger amount of offensive or troll posts, and react slower because you don't have the history of the user because you treat each account as a different person. But any mechanism trying to detect if a new user is potentially a sock puppet of a troublemaker is acting on rather few bits of information. So false positives are not that unlikely.
I'm sure there are reasons. It's just that Facebook's reasons might not sound reasonable to everyone else, and it could be as simple as a login from an IP associated with fraudulent behaviour caused by someone else at the same ISP. Carrier-grade NAT is funny that way.
I’m also a fellow Vive Pro owner. What amazes me the most beyond the price is the convenience of a Quest. I just turn it on and play vs 1. Turning on the PC 2. Turning on my HTC base stations 3. Setting up wire control ie on the ceiling 4. Turning on the VR set
Sadly, the forced Facebook login sucks for a lot of people. I also don’t see any consumer benefit from it. A complaint I’m seeing is that everyone has to manually re-friend their Facebook friends for Oculus.
Facebook's network effect is way stronger than you appear to believe. It's a massive incentive to stay on their platform. All my friends are on it and they use it actively. And yes, a significant percentage of them are tech savvy.
It's nothing like that. It's the convenience that the platform provides that nobody seems to want to give up. FB definitely makes it much more easier to catch up with my peers compared to email/phone.
> There is no need to be "connected" with people on demand 24/7.
It's the the other way around. I'm not after the 24/7 connectedness, but rather for the on-demand information polling about some of my friend's status/life events. This includes messenger and instagram.
There a lawsuit in Germany which challenges the legality of tying a facebook account to the oculus. It's against the coupling laws[1].
I have a hard time imagining facebook winning that lawsuit especially because they threatened in a separate unrelated lawsuit by the Irish privacy watchdog "to pull out of Europe"[2]
If you combine this with the blocking of accounts for infractions unrelated to the use of the oculus, I can't see how this will go well in court for facebook.
I don't like Facebook but I don't think I would have a problem with creating a Facebook account for the device only (with an email address only for this device).
But what seems to be the main issue here is that it must be an active Facebook account.
I don't think any judge could call that a fair policy.
Usually, they instaban new users for suspicious activity if it is a brand new email and you dont put any information, and ask you for mobile number or ID Card. Don't try to do that.
I'm saddened to see others in exactly the same camp as myself having also written about this the other week (https://joshcollie.com/articles/zucked/). Fortunatetly I have an Oculus Rift S and can maintain usage with my Oculus account. As far as I'm aware it will still be in a usable state come 2023, albeit with no social features.
As much as the Oculus hardware is fairly good I would highly recommend seeking alternative providers of VR hardware.
Seems like the solution here is for Facebook to consider Quest activity (playing games, active session on the device etc.) as legit Facebook activity.
Surely this is a glitch, probably happening in small numbers, that'll get sorted soon enough?
Why on Earth would they want to ban active users of their VR headset? Every active VR user, even if they don't use the Facebook site, is surely a precious asset. If Facebook continues to move into VR and AR, then surely many of its future users may only be interacting with its services exclusively in those mediums.
There might be a chicken-and-egg problem here -- if someone creates an account to use their headset, Facebook's problem is that it locks the accounts before you can ever attach your headset.
Allow attaching a headset to unlock the account?
Or just don't require connecting to FB at all to use it, I mean... shrug.
I have two. A rift S and a quest 1. I don't care about the money but many people probably do. I hope Facebook gets flak for this and I think they will. They might have buried a complete market segment for VR. That said, they always preferred the more naive users.
I certainly won't create an account and for me this gen of VR failed like the last ones. It is an experience, but not that good to warrant this customer hostile behavior.
I like pre-recording hypotheses when these things happen. In this case, my top hypothesis is that the user picked a name that is common for online game communities (maybe something like xxHardcoreGamerGod420xx and extending to including slurs perhaps) which falls afoul of Facebook's Real Name Policy, causing them to shut off the account.
Interesting consequence of Facebook using a device account and is a social network identity.
> I like pre-recording hypotheses when these things happen
I wish this was compulsory before posting. So people actual have to think first. With the important bonus they will improve their critical thought and confidence.
It's the same old problem with getting only one side of the story. Omit a key detail or twist the facts in a slight arguable way and it can totally change things.
Having said that, I don't know that the above hypotheses are enough to matter. There's a difference between "de-platforming" people and destroying their property. Perhaps if the redditer is omitting the fact that there's a solution but they just don't like it (e.g. using their "real" account instead of this fake one that got suspended or something).
They simply deny services to new customers. You buy the headset, you can't use it until you register and sign in with FaceBook.
If you have an existing Oculus account, however, it is still valid for use until January 2023.
I've filed an FTC complaint, because we built an AR/VR research lab and invested heavily in Oculus, and it's not going to be usable in two years because our organizational policies prohibit registering Facebook accounts on behalf of the organization. If this had been a requirement prior to our buy-in to Oculus, we would have chosen a different platform.
Jailbreaks are in the works to bypass the Facebook requirement but aren't yet public. This will likely lead to permanent account bans, since like with Wii, the ability to sideload largely is used to run apps customers did not purchase from their store.
I strongly recommend the Index - it is much more pleasant to use, much more technically impressive, and doesn't require you to deal with artificially introduced bullshit like this!
I got one to try to replace my Rift because of this FB account fiasco but sold it 2 days later as it was so disappointing. Horrible black levels, those horrible hovering headphones, also bad for porn since the controllers are not easy put on one handed.
Now hoping the HP Reverb G2 is the thing although HP has a horrible rep for being abusive to customers as well as waiting to see.
Audio-science time! (for a given amount of science in a field full of homeopathy): the headphones NOT touching the ears is important to preserve the feeling of sound coming from around your head (the outer ear shape is not compressed) instead of from withing your head.
Disagree, to me that's like saying PS5 has to match an iPhone 12. No, I'd say it's the other way around. Quest has a mobile GPU so it can't deliver the top VR experiences. That it's easier to use, no wires the same way an iPhone is easier than a PS5 might be true but I can't play PS5 AAA games on an iPhone and I can't play VR AAA games on a Quest
OK then sell it to somebody else. "Bricked" in my opinion means the device can never be made to function again. If you can reset it, it is not bricked.
You can resell the device (at a loss), but you will never recover the money spent on games and apps in the Oculus Store. In my case, hundreds of dollars spent in the years since the launch of the Rift CV1.
Demand that money back too. You paid for it, they deny you access to it. They should be obligated to pay your money back. Sue them in small claims court, raise a stink, and never do business with them again.
I see this a suggestion a lot and I can only assume the person making it hasn't been screwed by a company (sorry if you have, not trying to attack you). Unfortunately, the reality is that raising a stink won't do anything more than annoy the 1800 operators (if they don't have a button on their screen to give you what they want, it is impossible for them to do it for you, no matter how persuasive you are).
Suing in small claims court is a) a massive ordeal (even without the lawyers) and b) a permanent, public record that you can legally be discriminated against for
In my experience your only real recourse is a chargeback (which, to be fair, will almost always work), but that only is an option for a few months after your purchase.
I agree that chargebacks should be the first port of call here. My experience with that route has been great.
But small claims isn't as difficult as you make out, at least in the UK. In some areas there are specialist law firms who do all the work for you and will to take the case no win/no fee (but often they will take a share of any award as well as full court-awarded costs in return). Their entire business model is to make the process as pain-free as possible for you.
This works because some companies have a policy of ignoring and/or fobbing you off continually but will immediately settle when you issue proceedings against them because the cost to them of any outcome which involves going to court (win or lose) is higher than the cost of settling (eg Ryanair is pretty notorious for this).
It's supposed to be less complicated than bringing in lawyers but you still need to file everything, show up in a suit, and be prepared to argue your case. It isn't like you can just fill out a brief online form and get a refund. It's an all-day affair. Also most courts are only open during working hours, so you'll have to take time off, but there are exceptions to this.
Good that you've managed to read the first sentence. But it would have been better if you've also read the second one where he explicitly said "I created the account just for my Oculus Quest 2 and don't post anything on it".
With Ethereum 2.0 coming out, I wonder if one of the new XR2 devices coming out over the next few years might be able to support that. Because cryptocurrency payments is one of the things that can make platforms public and non-proprietary.
I've spent a lot of time in the past being a moderator on a larger game system's forums - one that has a ban system. I've seen enough "I wasn't cheating and I got banned!" posts to be really doubtful of people claiming they got banned "for no reason at all"
That said, you should be able to do whatever you want OUTSIDE of your game or game environment, which is the main issue for me.
I know HN much desires to pile on the FB hate, but look. I read this subreddit daily and most people who have posted about a banned account have been able to get Oculus support to reinstate them after a few calls. These posts do not really come up that often for the number of people buying these things. There are other VR headset options if you don't like FB as a company and want a more open platform.
The issue is people bought it under the assumption they wouldn't need an account, then they forced an account. It's hard to see it as anything but criminal behavior
even if needing an account were acceptable, shutting down the account or preventing a device owner from using their device at all should be considered a warranty issue.
This is a half-truth. The Oculus 2 clearly states that it requires a FB account. It's printed in big words right on the box. Previous headsets will not require an account for awhile still. Though it is crappy they will eventually be required to have an account, the tech will be fairly obsolete by then anyway. Most modern consumer tech products do not exist separate from the company and are not "Buy it for life." There are other products from other companies for enthusiasts.
> Most modern consumer tech products do not exist separate from the company and are not "Buy it for life."
Oh? What products would those be? Glancing around, I've got mice, trackballs, keyboards, laptops, desktops, assorted Android phones and tablets, routers, switches, bluetooth speakers and headphones, some lights, a Nintendo Switch, and a Chromecast. Of those, only the Chromecast would be affected if the manufacturer disappeared tomorrow. The desktop is from 2011, and the laptops span ~5-10 years old, not one running the original OS (and many with hardware upgrades). The phones did require bootloader unlocking (kudos to Motorola for making this painless) and aftermarket ROMs to stay up to date, but even without that they'd work without needing any company help. Likewise I'll concede that some routers/switches are a pain (I was grumpy at the hoops I had to jump through to switch my Edgerouter to OpenWRT) but it's fine and again even the default options didn't require an online account or any service from the manufacturer. I don't think this is a foregone conclusion at all.
The real issue is thinking that is ok. Ownership has been degraded and devalued. There needs to be a new term that defines this new type of relationship between customers and corporations. And it should be illegal to call it ownership anymore on the basis of false advertising.
I think the term would be "as a service." And I am actually ok with that. There are lots of things I buy that are like that. You don't always need something physical and lasting to show for a purchase. I understand the Oculus business model and went in understanding it. I'm putting in an up-front cost and then future payments for content and I don't own the headset or the content in any kind of traditional sense. The closest analogue in this case is a digital vacation. I will have experiences and memories to show for it and a souvenir once the headset no longer has any functional value.
I am totally ok with it being regulated what could be called ownership. I think the crappiest thing about FB is that a whole lot of early adopters thought they were becoming owners and only later realized that they were renters. Legal action seems possible over this. I went in with clear expectations so I do not have the same complaint. I also recognize this is still an early product category and that I take certain consumer risks to experience the future today.
There would still be things to establish with regards to this new type of relationship.
Who is responsible for repairs? How about recycling? How about insurance? How about upgrades?
If as a customer I am no longer an owner of the device, I believe some of these should no longer be my responsability.
> Most modern consumer tech products do not exist separate from the company and are not "Buy it for life."
Adding a FB account dependency renders the device useless after the fact, for some owners. This seems like a violation of First Sale doctrine, and hopefully gets smacked down in court rather than accepted as a dystopian new reality.
Let's cool it with the hyperbole. Facebook is doing nothing but abiding by the terms that the buyer agreed to. You (and everyone else) can "punish" them by simply not buying their junk.
Now they have a photo of my face, my legal name and date of birth, my verified email address and phone number, and I cannot exercise any control over this data, only download it, which is obviously illegal under GDPR.
Facebook engineers from Wit.ai are ignoring my request for help and the app APIs remain operational, I just can't log into the dashboard.
If you're a developer who considers using Wit.ai, be careful. You could receive an automated block from Facebook and an overworked contractor will rubber-stamp the bot's decision, while Wit.ai staff will ignore you.
https://github.com/wit-ai/wit/issues/1946