Tag: Oculus

Editorial: Some Facebook Musings on a Lazy Saturday Morning

Image by Firmbee from Pixabay

It’s been ten oh-so-glorious months since I decided to boycott Facebook and trade in my Oculus Rift for a Valve Index, and I continue to celebrate (nay, revel!) my near-complete emancipation from Facebook software and hardware. (I did have one person tell me he would no longer bother reading my blog after my decision… to which I responded Bye, Felicia!)

I have done a factory reset on my Oculus Quest (first edition), and it sits quietly in its box, waiting to be shipped to my sister-in-law in Alberta, where she plans to use it in her work with developmentally-challenged adults. I have completely deleted both my Facebook and Oculus accounts, and I asked Facebook to delete all my personal data. The Facebook app has never graced my relatively new iPhone. I even installed Privacy Badger and uBlock origin to block the setting and sending of tracking cookies to Facebook while I surf the Web! I think I have burned my bridges pretty effectively. (Now, I am not kidding myself, I am quite sure that Facebook has some sort of “shadow account” on me.)

In fact, the only remnant of Facebook left in my life the Oculus Rift I had purchased for my suspended research project, which sits in my office at the University of Manitoba Libraries, untouched as I continue to work from home during the pandemic. (I’m still figuring out what my new academic research project will be!) That VR headset has an Oculus account, and I have a little under two years to decide if I want to get a Facebook account for it when I am forced to do so. I can tell you one thing: if I do, it sure the hell won’t be in my name! I’m quite sure that many institutions of higher education are dealing with the thorny issues of being required to set up Facebook accounts for Oculus hardware. I’m also quite sure that Facebook/Oculus has lost some business because of that requirement!

At the same time, I am glad that the Oculus Quest 2 is selling well. “A rising tide lifts all boats,” as I like to say, and greater consumer uptake of VR will only mean good things for the entire VR/AR/XR ecosystem. People whose first taste of virtual reality is in an Oculus Quest will no doubt migrate to other hardware over time (many people are eagerly awaiting to see what Apple will do). I’ll tell you one thing: I trust Apple with my privacy way, waaay more than Facebook! I watch with amusement as the privacy battle between Facebook and Apple continues.

My experience with Facebook has informed the skepticism with which I look at all social media platforms, including the ones I use the most: Twitter and Reddit. I still derive value (and leads for potential blogposts!) from both, and I intend to continue to use them, and I still hang out on the new drop-in social audio apps Clubhouse and Spotify Greenroom (although I suspect that the Clubhouse boom has turned into a bust). However, I will never again use social media without wondering about data and privacy issues. Remember, if it’s “free”. YOU are the product!

I’ve also been watching Facebook take its first tentative steps into introducing advertising in Oculus apps. The BBC reported:

In what the social network described as an experiment, ads will begin to appear in a game called Blaston with other developers rolling out similar ads.

It said it would listen to feedback before launching virtual reality ads more widely.

It also revealed it is testing new ad formats “that are unique to VR”.

In 2014, shortly after Facebook bought Oculus, creator Palmer Luckey told concerned gamers: “We are not going to track you, flash ads at you, or do anything invasive.”

But in a blog on Oculus’s website, the firm said: “We’re exploring new ways for developers to generate revenue – this is a key part of ensuring we’re creating a self-sustaining platform that can support a variety of business models that unlock new types of content and audiences.”

Shortly after this was written, Blaston withdrew from the program after the negative press and review-bombing by unhappy players:

Barely a week has passed since Facebook started testing ads in Oculus apps and already the initiative has run into trouble. On Monday, one of the handful of developers involved in the initial ad experiment said it was pulling out of the test. Resolution Games tweeted that it had decided that in-app ads were not suitable for its multiplayer shooter game Blaston after “listening to player feedback.”

The developer had encouraged its user base to leave their thoughts on an ad feedback channel on its Discord server. As spotted by Upload VR, angry players had also review bombed Blaston on the Oculus Store and Steam shortly after its participation in the ad trial was announced.

Resolution Games’ decision marks a setback for Facebook’s burgeoning ad strategy for Oculus. After squeezing more ads into Instagram and its main platform, the company risked irking passionate gamers by bringing ads to VR. Unlike those other services, Oculus isn’t free: An Oculus Quest 2 headset alone starts from $299. While Blaston is also a paid game. 

I have been informed that, in fact, Facebook sells the Oculus Quest at a loss, hoping to earn back that money through software sales for the platform (which makes sense). In a discussion with Voices of VR podcaster Kent Bye (whom I admire greatly), I mentioned that I didn’t feel the need to subscribe to VRChat Plus, and he challenged me to consider the alternative: paid advertising in VRChat. I can tell you that the very thought made me shudder, and I changed my mind in a hurry, happily shelling out for a VRChat Plus subscription. And apparently, they are selling well:

Our community has shown their support by buying our optional subscription, VRChat Plus, which unlocks some enhancements and perks. VRC+ has been greatly successful, and has been instrumental in helping us expand via features like Regions. We plan on expanding VRC+ by enabling purchases on the Oculus platform, as well as allowing players to gift subscriptions to each other. We are so grateful to our community for their support!

I also find myself wondering about Facebook’s latest attempt at a social VR platform, Facebook Horizon, which many people expected to be launched by now, and which seems to be stuck in closed beta testing. I don’t regret not participating in Horizon by boycotting Facebook, not for one instant, but I do find the delay in launch perplexing. I have heard second-hand accounts that, while the in-world building tools are nice, there’s not a lot to do, and user moderation has been a problem area, despite Facebook’s surveillance attempts, which I mention in this blogpost. The longer it takes for Facebook to roll out Horizon, the more people wonder what’s really going on.

It just seems that Facebook can’t put a foot right these days. Even worse, the company itself doesn’t seem to know exactly what it is nowadays, as it lurches from market to market in an attempt to remain dominant. Shira Ovide of The New York Times wrote recently in an On Tech newsletter editorial:

This question might sound silly, but I’m serious: What is Facebook?

Did you know that Facebook has a dating service, online job listings, a version of Craigslist, a new collection of podcasts and live audio chat rooms, multiple copycats of Zoom, a section just for college students, two different spots for “TV” shows, a feature like TikTok (but bad) and software that office workers can use to communicate? On Tuesday, the company also outlined new developments in its efforts to get more businesses to sell merchandise directly inside Facebook and the company’s other apps.

If you knew that Facebook was doing all of this … gold star, I guess. You spend way too much time on the internet.

…The company’s constant tinkering raises the question: Is Facebook trying so hard because it’s excited about what’s next, or perhaps because, like its peers, it is no longer so adept at predicting and then leading digital revolutions?

(The entire On Tech column is well worth a read, by the way.)

Anyway, these are just some assorted musings about Facebook this lazy Saturday morning. As always, I’d love to hear your comments and perspectives! Feel free to join the burgeoning RyanSchultz.com Discord server, where well over 500 of us like-minded social VR/virtual world enthusiasts gather to discuss, debate, and argue about the ever-evolving metaverse and all the companies building it! Or just leave a comment on this blogpost, thanks!

Andrew “Boz” Bosworth and John Carmack Have a Discussion About Next-Generation Virtual Reality

When John Carmack and Andrew “Boz” Bosworth have a conversation, people tend to listen. Andrew is vice president in charge of augmented and virtual reality at Facebook, and of course John is the millionaire Chief Technical Officer of Oculus, who is currently working away on an Artificial General Intelligence project.

The two recently held a half-hour conversation on Twitter Spaces (Twitter’s version of the hot new drop-in audio app Clubhouse), which offered a fascinating glimpse into the heads of two key people who are driving Facebook’s move into virtual reality.

Right now [VR is] still largely an early adopters’ toy where a lot of people that have VR already have everything else, and we’re just adding some new spice, but we need to be a displacement device where we need to be something that somebody hard up for money decides “I’m going to buy a VR headset instead of a Chromebook or instead of a tablet.” And we need to do everything that those devices do. You know, we need to have similar app libraries. We need to be just as effective with keyboard and mouse. We need it to be something that you could put on your head and do the work that you need to do during a normal day.

—John Carmack

Anybody who uses what Philip Rosedale has pejoratively called a “marimba keyboard” (i.e. where you use a mallet-like device to awkwardly type on a virtual keyboard), can immediately relate to what John says here. Despite the many technical advances of the past five years, we are still not anywhere near the ease of use that is required for people to actually opt for a VR headset instead of a tablet!

Here’s the whole half-hour discussion, which I can highly recommend:

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).

Editorial: My Social VR/Virtual World Predictions for 2021

Photo by Hulki Okan Tabak on Unsplash

Every year, for the past couple of years, I have traditionally drawn up and published a list of predictions on where I see social VR and virtual worlds going over the next twelve months. As someone who keeps an eagle eye on the comings and goings of the various companies that are building the ever-evolving metaverse, I’m pretty well placed to be able to make some educated guesses.

However, you should be aware that my track record as a prognosticator is truly lamentable; more often than not, I have been proven dead wrong. For example, I rather sarcastically predicted that Cryptovoxels would fail, hard, and it has done nothing but flourish (something which I am happy to see and report on here on the RyanSchultz.com blog). So, what do I know?

Therefore, please take the following three predictions with a grain of salt.

Second Life will continue to be successful and profitable—but it will face increasing competition from newer platforms such as VRChat, and it will no longer be the most popular virtual world

My first prediction is a no-brainer. In my predictions for 2019, I wrote that Second Life would “continue to coast along, baffling the mainstream news media and the general public with its vitality and longevity”, and that still holds true. Linden Lab sold the money-losing Sansar social VR platform to Wookey, and the remaining, profitable company was successfully acquired by the Waterfield investment group.

As of yet, there have been no major changes announced by the new owners; it would appear that Waterfield is content with the way that Linden Lab is running the virtual world of Second Life and the Tilia payment processing business (which has also been picked up by a few non-SL clients). However, Linden Lab’s CEO, Ebbe Altberg, might decide that this year is now a good time for him to step down (although I would personally hate to see him go, as he has been one of the better CEOs in Linden Lab’s sometimes rocky history).

However, I will agree with a prediction made by Wagner James Au of the long-running blog New World Notes, who in his list of predictions stated:

Both VRChat and Rec Room will finally surpass Second Life in peak concurrency numbers.

In fact, we have already seen days and times when the total number of users in both VRChat and Rec Room surpasses that of Second Life. I predict that 2021 will finally be the year that a newer platform will pass the venerable Second Life to become the most popular metaverse.

I am busy exploring VRChat most evenings, wearing my Valve Index VR headset and using my Knuckles controllers, and greatly enjoying the enhanced audiovisual experience it gives me. (I get a big kick of out being able to wiggle my avatar’s fingers!) VRChat now gives me serious vibes of what Second Life was like in its heyday, circa 2006 and 2007: a place which you might not always like, but a place you could not afford to ignore! A place where you are never quite sure what is going to happen.

And it would appear that other popular social VR platforms, such as Rec Room, are also reaping the benefits of the network effect: the more people who join a platform, the better the value it provides. This same network effect helped drive Facebook into becoming the dominant force in social media, and it turned Fortnite into a cultural juggernaut, so it is not something to be lightly dismissed.

The coronavirus pandemic will continue to provide opportunities for social VR and virtual world companies, particularly for remote workteams, conferences, and education

The testing, approval, manufacture, and delivery of COVID-19 vaccines will continue to be slower than originally anticipated, and virus mutations may blunt the effectiveness of some vaccines, and require some to be reformulated in response. All of this means that we are not going to be returning to “normal” anytime very soon.

This situation provides a window of opportunity for metaverse-building companies to sell their products and services to corporations, conferences, and educational institutions. I expect that we will see more announcements this year of conferences taking place with a social VR/virtual world component, for example.

While games and recreation will still form the largest part of the virtual reality consumer market, we can also expect to see more practical applications of VR in areas such as pain reduction, physical rehabilitation, and mental heath support.

And we can expect that more and more corporations will be looking at downsizing expensive downtown real estate and shifting permanently to remote workteams, which will fuel the what I like to call the “YARTVRA” (Yet Another Remote Teamwork Virtual Reality App) market.

Facebook is going to have a very bad year, despite the commercial success of the Oculus Quest 2

The Quest 2 is not a toy. It’s a virus disguised as a toy.

—Cix Liv, The Voices of VR Podcast with Kent Bye (source)

Speaking of Facebook, I predict that the corporate behemoth is going to have a rocky year. On December 3rd, 2020, Bloomberg News published an article on their website, titled Facebook Accused of Squeezing Rival Startups in Virtual Reality (original article, archived link), which paints a rather damning picture of Facebook’s ruthless corporate tactics in dealing with (and stealing business ideas from) much smaller companies.

Frankly, Facebook faces major hurdles in public relations and public perception, a problem that is only growing worse as the company becomes more powerful and more profitable, and seeks to enter and dominate new markets. Many people (myself included among them) simply don’t trust Facebook anymore, and aren’t willing to have their personal data shared among the many companies under the Facebook umbrella, strip-mined for profit, and sold to the highest bidder.

To give one example, recent changes to WhatsApp privacy policies, forcing users to share information with Facebook, have led to many people abandoning the messaging platform. Add to this the recently-announced U.S. federal government investigation into Facebook’s possible illegal monopolization of the social networking market, and the fuss kicked up in the virtual reality community by Facebook requiring Oculus VR device users to sign up for Facebook accounts, and it seems pretty clear that Mark Zuckerberg will be called upon to testify before even more government panels this year. (And you might not know this, but the next time that Mark or Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg set foot on Canadian soil, they can be compelled to appear before a Canadian parliamentary committee with jurisdiction over tech issues, as a direct result of refusing to show up for hearings in 2019, which were attended by representatives of countries all over the world.)

So, these are my three predictions for 2021 (and I reserve the right to add more as they come to me). What do you think will happen this year? Feel free to leave a comment on this blogpost, or join the free-wheeling discussion on the RyanSchultz.com Discord channel, and share your predictions with the 460-plus members there! We’d love to have you become a part of our cross-worlds community!