UPDATED! Saying Good Bye to Facebook, for Good: Taking the Final Step (Plus a Look at All the Personal Data the Oculus App Collects and Sends to Facebook)

Today, I took the final step…

Today, I took the final step in my emancipation from Facebook and Oculus. I did a factory reset on my original version Oculus Quest, de-associating my Oculus account from it, and wiping all the games and apps on it. Then, I deleted the Oculus app from my cellphone. Two simple steps, and I am now completely free of Facebook! (The Quest 1 will be going to my sister-in-law in Alberta, where she plans to use it in her work with developmentally-challenged adults. It will have a good second home.)

I’ll admit that I was sitting on the fence for a little while, as I wrote about here. While replacing my Oculus Rift with a Valve Index was an easy, painless upgrade (and I’m quite happy with it), there’s currently no competition for the wireless Oculus Quest VR headset. It’s a great headset, but I can no longer in good conscience sign on to the associated vacuuming of my personal data that comes with the deal, and I just absolutely, resolutely refuse to set up an account on the Facebook social network for my Oculus Quest.

What finally pushed me into making this final decision was a recent tweet by social VR app developer Cix Liv, who posted the following:

Just to put in perspective the corporate lies of @FBRealityLabs [Facebook Reality Labs] in perspective. @boztank [Andrew Bosworth, Vice President of Facebook Reality Labs at Facebook] says there will be a “big shift in privacy”. Meanwhile the Oculus app tracks you even more than their Facebook app. Check it yourself.

A brief fly-through of the Oculus app privacy statement, which you need to install in order to activate your Quest (you can check it out yourself in the App Store, or just scroll down to the update at the end of this blogpost to see the list in full)

Cix Liv is one of those developers whose idea for a VR app was poached by Facebook, a story you can read about in a December 3rd, 2020, Bloomberg News article titled Facebook Accused of Squeezing Rival Startups in Virtual Reality (original article, archived link).

Now, you might tell me that I am overreacting in singling out Facebook as the target of my ire. Of course, I do know that other Big Tech companies like Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft strip-mine my personal data as well. The issue is one of TRUST. And frankly, I no longer trust Facebook Inc., while I still retain at least some level of trust that Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft will not abuse the data they have on me. In an editorial I wrote way back in August of 2019, I said:

More concerning to me is that, at some point, I may be forced to get an account on the Facebook social network to use apps on my Oculus VR hardware. In fact, this has already happened with the events app Oculus Venues, which I recently discovered requires you to have an account on the Facebook social network to access.

Sorry, but after all the Facebook privacy scandals of the past couple of years, that’s a big, fat “Nope!” from me. I asked Facebook to delete its 13 years of user data on me, and I quit the social network in protest as my New Year’s resolution last December, and I am never coming back. And I am quite sure that many of Facebook’s original users feel exactly the same way, scaling back on their use of the platform or, like me, opting out completely. I regret I ever started using Facebook thirteen years ago, and that experience will inform my use (and avoidance) of other social networks in the future.

Yes, I do know that I have to have an Oculus account to be able to use my Oculus Rift and Oculus Quest VR headsets, and that Facebook is collecting data on that. I also know that the Facebook social network probably has a “shadow account” on me based on things such as images uploaded to the social network and tagged with my name by friends and family, etc., but I am going to assume that Facebook has indeed done what I have asked and removed my data from their social network. Frankly, there is no way for me to actually verify this, as consumers in Canada and the U.S. have zero rights over the data companies like Facebook collects about them, as was vividly brought to life by Dr. David Carroll, whose dogged search for answers to how his personal data was misused in the Cambridge Analytica scandal played a focal role in the Netflix documentary The Great Hack (which I highly recommend you watch).

We’ve already seen how social networks such as Facebook have contributed negatively to society by contributing to the polarization and radicalization of people’s political opinions, and giving a platform to groups such as white supremacists and anti-vaxers. The Great Hack details how Cambridge Analytica used Facebook data without user knowledge or consent to swing the most recent U.S. election in Donald Trump’s favour, and look at the f***ing mess the world is in now just because of that one single, pivotal event.

Well, as it turns out, Facebook did do an about-face, change the rules, and insist that Oculus VR headset users will have to get accounts on the Facebook social network for their devices to continue to work “properly”. While I still have an Oculus account (and, at least at first glance at the Oculus website, there appears to be no way to actually delete that account*), I no longer run any Facebook or Oculus apps on my desktop computer or any of my mobile devices. Facebook may still have a “shadow account” on me, but at least I can feel comfortable that I am no longer actively sending them any data from any Facebook/Oculus apps. Good bye and good riddance!

As for this blog, I will, of course, continue to write about Facebook, Oculus, and Facebook’s own social VR platform, Facebook Horizon—just not from a first-person perspective! I do not feel that I am missing out on anything by the stance that I have taken.

Freedom from Facebook!

Free from Facebook, at last! It feels great.

*Found it! I have now asked Facebook to delete my Oculus account, too.

UPDATE Feb. 18th, 2021: I have decided to cut and paste the entire App Privacy statement from Apple’s App Store for the Oculus app below, so you can read for yourself just how much data the app shares with Facebook Inc.!

App Privacy

The developer, Facebook Technologies, LLC, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. This information has not been verified by Apple. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.

To help you better understand the developer’s responses, see Privacy Definitions and Examples.

Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More

Data Linked to You

The following data, which may be collected and linked to your identity, may be used for the following purposes:

Third-Party Advertising

Purchases
  • Purchase History
Financial Info
  • Other Financial Info
Location
  • Precise Location
  • Coarse Location
Contact Info
  • Physical Address
  • Email Address
  • Name
  • Phone Number
  • Other User Contact Info
Contacts
  • Contacts
User Content
  • Photos or Videos
  • Gameplay Content
  • Other User Content
Search History
  • Search History
Browsing History
  • Browsing History
Identifiers
  • User ID
  • Device ID
Usage Data
  • Product Interaction
  • Advertising Data
  • Other Usage Data
Diagnostics
  • Crash Data
  • Performance Data
  • Other Diagnostic Data
Other Data
  • Other Data Types

Developer’s Advertising or Marketing

Purchases
  • Purchase History
Financial Info
  • Other Financial Info
Location
  • Precise Location
  • Coarse Location
Contact Info
  • Physical Address
  • Email Address
  • Name
  • Phone Number
  • Other User Contact Info
Contacts
  • Contacts
User Content
  • Photos or Videos
  • Gameplay Content
  • Other User Content
Search History
  • Search History
Browsing History
  • Browsing History
Identifiers
  • User ID
  • Device ID
Usage Data
  • Product Interaction
  • Advertising Data
  • Other Usage Data
Diagnostics
  • Crash Data
  • Performance Data
  • Other Diagnostic Data
Other Data
  • Other Data Types

Analytics

Health & Fitness
  • Health
  • Fitness
Purchases
  • Purchase History
Financial Info
  • Payment Info
  • Other Financial Info
Location
  • Precise Location
  • Coarse Location
Contact Info
  • Physical Address
  • Email Address
  • Name
  • Phone Number
  • Other User Contact Info
Contacts
  • Contacts
User Content
  • Photos or Videos
  • Audio Data
  • Gameplay Content
  • Customer Support
  • Other User Content
Search History
  • Search History
Browsing History
  • Browsing History
Identifiers
  • User ID
  • Device ID
Usage Data
  • Product Interaction
  • Advertising Data
  • Other Usage Data
Sensitive Info
  • Sensitive Info
Diagnostics
  • Crash Data
  • Performance Data
  • Other Diagnostic Data
Other Data
  • Other Data Types

Product Personalization

Purchases
  • Purchase History
Financial Info
  • Other Financial Info
Location
  • Precise Location
  • Coarse Location
Contact Info
  • Physical Address
  • Email Address
  • Name
  • Phone Number
  • Other User Contact Info
Contacts
  • Contacts
User Content
  • Photos or Videos
  • Gameplay Content
  • Other User Content
Search History
  • Search History
Browsing History
  • Browsing History
Identifiers
  • User ID
  • Device ID
Usage Data
  • Product Interaction
  • Advertising Data
  • Other Usage Data
Sensitive Info
  • Sensitive Info
Diagnostics
  • Crash Data
  • Performance Data
  • Other Diagnostic Data
Other Data
  • Other Data Types

App Functionality

Health & Fitness
  • Health
  • Fitness
Purchases
  • Purchase History
Financial Info
  • Payment Info
  • Credit Info
  • Other Financial Info
Location
  • Precise Location
  • Coarse Location
Contact Info
  • Physical Address
  • Email Address
  • Name
  • Phone Number
  • Other User Contact Info
Contacts
  • Contacts
User Content
  • Emails or Text Messages
  • Photos or Videos
  • Audio Data
  • Gameplay Content
  • Customer Support
  • Other User Content
Search History
  • Search History
Browsing History
  • Browsing History
Identifiers
  • User ID
  • Device ID
Usage Data
  • Product Interaction
  • Advertising Data
  • Other Usage Data
Sensitive Info
  • Sensitive Info
Diagnostics
  • Crash Data
  • Performance Data
  • Other Diagnostic Data
Other Data
  • Other Data Types

Other Purposes

Purchases
  • Purchase History
Financial Info
  • Other Financial Info
Location
  • Precise Location
  • Coarse Location
Contact Info
  • Physical Address
  • Email Address
  • Name
  • Phone Number
  • Other User Contact Info
Contacts
  • Contacts
User Content
  • Photos or Videos
  • Gameplay Content
  • Customer Support
  • Other User Content
Search History
  • Search History
Browsing History
  • Browsing History
Identifiers
  • User ID
  • Device ID
Usage Data
  • Product Interaction
  • Advertising Data
  • Other Usage Data
Diagnostics
  • Crash Data
  • Performance Data
  • Other Diagnostic Data
Other Data
  • Other Data Types

Wow…that’s a LOT. Why does Oculus need my search history and my browsing history, for example? Or my health and fitness data? And I’d love to know more details about this so-called “Sensitive Info”. What the hell’s that?

I understand that Facebook is currently fighting a battle with Apple over the amount and kind of privacy information being released to the consumer (according to this Harvard Business Review article and other sources).

Valentine’s Day in Second Life: Free Gifts, Hunts, and One Billion Rising

Have you joined the RyanSchultz.com Steals, Deals & Freebies group yet? I will be posting EVEN MORE news and tips on finding fabulous freebies and bargains in Second Life than I post here on the blog! More information on this brand new SL group here.

Bleah.

This picture perfectly illustrates my mood today, stuck in my apartment due to a combination of bitterly cold Winnipeg winter weather (it’s -25°C/-13°F, or -33°C/-27°F with the wind chill), and a province-wide pandemic lockdown. On a day meant to celebrate lovers and love, I am feeling alone and isolated, cranky and depressed.

So it’s time to for me to escape real life by retreating to Second Life! The following are some random notes from my travels, of free gifts and Valentine’s Day hunts, plus a visit to the One Billion Rising event taking place today. Enjoy!

First, please don’t forget to visit the Second Life Valentine’s Shop and Hop event before they close on February 17th, 2021, and snap up all the fabulous freebies (here’s a blogpost with my picks of the best gifts). One example of the many wonderful free gifts you can pick up is this shimmering, lilac Athena ballgown by Son!a Edge:

Such an outfit demands a place to wear it, so I trotted out an alt wearing this lovely ballgown to Frank’s Jazz club, which was a predictable sea of red for Valentine’s Day (including what appeared to be one man who appeared to be dancing stark naked, but I assume that this was because his clothes failed to load in my Firestorm viewer!)

Anyway, I wasn’t really in the mood for syrupy love songs today, so instead I decided to go hunting for Valentine’s gifts. Baby Monkey’s proprietor, Pixieplumb Flanagan, posted the following heartfelt notice to her store group:

I know it’s not the easiest time right now, but I hope these colourful and funky heart print mules help a smidge. 4 colour options xxxxx

The cost of join the Baby Monkey group is a very reasonable L$20, so this is a bargain! Here’s the SLURL to the location of the group gifts wall at the Baby Monkey store (save the SLURL to your inventory, then right click on it and select Show on Map, then follow the red arrow from the central spawn point).

Also, if you visit Suna Design, and join their store group for free, you can pick up a free L$500 gift card, good for anything in the store!

You can use the L$500 gift card to pick up two different versions of the beautiful materials-enabled Mia ballgown shown here!

The gorgeous Mia ballgown can be yours for free with the L$500 gift card from Suna Design

The Poème womenswear store is celebrating Valentine’s Day with a hunt, with 14 prizes for only L$15 each. The pink hearts are large and fairly easy to find!

Here are three of the hunt prizes: a flirty sweater, leggings, and red combat boots (the sweater and leggings come in two patterns each):

Here, I paired one of the Valentine’s Hunt prizes, the Ruffle Me Up dress, with a L$1 prize in the My Funny Valentine Hunt at Poème (the hunt hint is: “Are these 2 heads looking at me!?”). The cute red-and-pink-with-hearts design umbrella is resizable, and comes with a high-priority Bento hold pose (there’s a second version to rezz as home decor if you wish).

At the Orsy shopping event in Second Life, you can pick up the following men’s and women’s outfits for only one Linden dollar! The package is called L’Amour, by La Perla, and you can find it high up on the wall, halfway up the stairs at the south end of the shopping event (here’s the exact SLURL). The women’s gift is a red bodycon dress with matching reel heels in sizes: Maitreya Lara; Belleza Venus, Isis, and Freya; Slink Physique, and Legacy (note that the jewelry shown is not included).

The men’s gift is a men’s dressy outfit (shirt with bowtie and vest, pants and shoes) in sizes: Belleza Jake, Signature Gianni, Slink, and Legacy.

If you like the look of these, La Perla also has a Love Set, consisting of men’s and women’s outfits, on the SL Marketplace for only L$1.

In addition to Valentine’s Day, February 14th also marks the date of the One Billion Rising event in Second Life, when men and women in Second Life join people across the world to protest violence against women, in a show of unity and strength. The Second Life event features a four-region stage where 200 people can come together to dance, surrounded by an area of art installations, an arena for poetry, a stage for dance performances, informational exhibits, and free gifts.

A couple of the art installations at One Billion Rising
The main performance stage at One Billion Rising

You can pick up free T-shirts for both men and women at the four landing spots for the One Billion Rising event in Second Life:

For more information about One Billion Rising in Second Life, and a schedule of events at their main stage, please visit their website.

Upcoming Events at Bray’s Place in Second Life

As many of you know, I have made Bray’s Place my home community in Second Life, even going so far as to give up one of my Linden Homes and moving into a lovely house on the Bray’s Place sim (and you can, too; just check the Bray’s Place website listing of available plots of land for your next home).

In fourteen years of hopping from grid to grid and club to club in Second Life, I have rarely encountered as warm and friendly a welcome as I have at Bray’s Place! This place is very special to me, especially in the middle of a bitterly cold Winnipeg winter and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

I wanted to promote three special events which are taking place at Bray’s Place over the next week. I cordially invite you to come party with us!

First up is Valentine’s Day, when Bray’s Place celebrates Love and Friendship Day. Come join the special line-up of talented deejays and performers, If you are alone on February 14th, we’d like to extend a special welcome to have you join us, too!

Two days later, Bray’s Place celebrates Mardi Gras! Dig out those Mardi Gras beads, and your finest feathered costume, and join us as we celebrate Fat Tuesday, which is what Mardi Gras means in French, reflecting the practice of the last night of eating rich, fatty foods before the ritual Lenten sacrifices and fasting of the Lenten season.

Finally, Bray’s Place Blues club is celebrating its third birthday on Sunday, February 21st, 2021! The theme is steampunk, so pull out your best steampunk/Victorian wear!

To find Bray’s Place, just do a keyword search for “Bray’s” under the Places tab in search. For more information about Bray’s Place (including a list of available rental properties), please check out their website. And tell’em Ryan sent you! 😉

What People Are Searching For When They Visit My Blog: A List of the Most Popular Search Terms Used by Visitors

Photo by Marten Newhall on Unsplash

Among the absolute bonanza of detailed statistics WordPress offers up on my blog, are a list of search terms which people are using when they stumble across one of my blogposts, as shown here in a screen capture of today’s stats:

So tonight (because it’s 8:30 p.m. and I am tired and cranky and it’s -25°C outside and I OBVIOUSLY have nothing better to do with my time), I have decided to share with you what people have been searching for when they visit the RyanSchultz.com blog over the past three and a half years. Think of it as a glimpse into the zeitgeist of my readers, or visitors, or whatever you like to call yourselves…so, let’s dive in, shall we?

Top of the list is a bit of a surprise to me: a search for “amazon”. Now, I have absolutely no idea why people searching for Amazon land up on my blog, but yes, they do! (Perhaps I should consider setting up a sales affiliate link of some kind.)

Next up is certainly zero surprise to me: people searching for “vrchat sex” and all its variations. This is not a surprise, since my perennially-popular blogpost about adult content in VRChat is now the top Google search result when you search on “vrchat adult”. (Now, if I could just get off my raggedy ass and add some targeted advertising to that particular blogpost, I could probably rake in a few more pennies…aah, but I disgress.) Search terms related to “vrchat sex” include:

  • “vrchat nsfw avatar worlds” (even though I don’t link to any!)
  • “vrchat nsfw”
  • “vr chat sex”
  • “adult vr chat”
  • “vrchat adult”
  • “nsfw vrchat”
  • “vrchat nude”
  • “vr chat nude”
  • “vr chat nudity”
  • “18+ vrchat worlds”
  • etc. etc. etc.

I mean, people, come on, already…do you really expect to find not-safe-for-work content in VRChat with a Google search?!??

Photo by Julio Tirado on Unsplash

Number three is also a bit of a surprise: “livcloser”. The last time I checked, LivCloser was a virtual world still very much in the alpha stage of development, if it still exists at all (here’s a link to all my blogposts about it), and I haven’t even visited it since April of 2018. It turns out that, in some cases, blogposts I wrote about some of the more obscure virtual worlds I have visited end up rather high in the results of Google, Bing, and other search engines; who knew?

Much like LivCloser, among the other little-known-about platforms which show up in the search terms people use to land up at my blog are:

  • InWorldz and its short-lived successor, Islandz (because I had written at length about the final, unexpected, dramatic shutdown of the OpenSim-based virtual world, and its attempts to resurrect itself);
  • 3DX Chat (an adult virtual world)
  • AviLife
  • Utherverse (another adult virtual world…seeing a trend here in what people are actively searching for? 😉 )
  • VIBEHub
  • Avakin Life
  • Twinity (THIS old chestnut? Really?!??)

Next up is something which I did very much expect to find: “second Life freebies”, as well as related search terms about my extensive and popular coverage of steals, deals, and freebies in Second Life. I note with no lack of amusement that one intrepid searcher actually entered “ryan schultz’s 2 blog posts packed with info on the free or cheap mesh bodies/heads” into a search engine no less than 17 times, with the exact same wording every time! (It’s a newgfangled browser feature called a BOOKMARK, sweetheart…look into it. 😉 and, if you are interested, you can always find my constantly-updated compilations of free mesh heads and bodies for Second Life avatars here: male and female.)

Among the rest of the (sometimes mystifying) more popular search terms people have used are:

  • “sars covid2” (perhaps not such a surprise)
  • “ninja suits”
  • “second life name change 2020” (again, not a surprise, as my step-by-step guide to changing your avatar name in SL is pretty popular)
  • “sansar user statistics”
  • “open world non combat games” (referring to this list, no doubt)
  • “genus project dmca” (about the whole Genus Project mesh heads DMCA saga)
  • “how to remove a default head in second life” 😉
  • “free second life female vagina” (a topic about which, I do hasten to assure you, I have written ABSOLUTELY NOTHING)
  • “10 reasons why you should quit social media”
  • “second life millionaires”
Ninja suits??? Really? REALLY?!??

I hope that you found this deep dive into my WordPress stats enlightening (or at least, entertaining)!