Deleting or deactivating your Facebook does the same to your Oculus account:
Facebook does not want you to stop using Facebook, it seems, because if you deactivate your account for a little break you'll also lose access to your Oculus Profile. Perhaps worse, if you delete your Facebook account you'll also delete your app purchases and achievements. "You will no longer be able to return any apps," says Facebook, "and will lose any existing store credits." So buyer beware: If you purchase an Oculus Quest 2 you'll need a Facebook account, and that account will have to be active at all times and, presumably, in good standing if you want to use your Quest 2.
[...] First reported and confirmed by UploadVR, this is just the latest of the controversies surrounding Facebook's decision to tie future Oculus VR Headset use to an otherwise-unrelated Facebook account. Users of past headsets who have not tied their Oculus account to Facebook can continue using those accounts until 2023.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2020, @04:52AM (9 children)
Deleting your youtube account deletes your gmail account
Deleting your xbox account deletes your hotmail account
I am sure there is more at news at 11 ...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday October 27 2020, @05:13AM (2 children)
I have "breaking news" for you, then: deleting you google account doesn't stop one's Android phone to stop working.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2020, @05:23AM
Can you use google goggles? No?
Let's not compare apples with oranges. Android and iPhone didn't start as new markets.
Also, in the name of Chandler Bing - how about you get what I am saying?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2020, @10:18AM
Not quite. I used to have a fake google account, which I had made specifically for logging in to the play store on my Android tablet. After eight years, they figured out that the obviously fake account was, indeed, fake, and deactivated it, with the only way to reactivate it being answering an e-mail sent to said deactivated account (scratch that out) or supplying them with personal data, to associate with that account (ditto). With the account deactivated, I lost access to the play store, which I could only regain if I logged in with another account. However, all installed apps were associated with the previous account, and did not appear in the play store under the new account. I ended up uninstalling all apps and reinstalling them. I'm not sure I could have done this if the device had not been rooted, and I certainly wouldn't have been able to use Titanium backup, to preserve the settings of all these apps. Even so, I lost my app installation history, which I had found useful on occasion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2020, @05:23AM
Deleted my !@#$% account, and my desktop monitor was disabled. :'(
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2020, @05:25AM (4 children)
You wish it was that simple.
And just why do folks need a Zuckhelmet in the first place?
(whisper, whisper..)
Oh. Because they are [redacted].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2020, @05:57AM
Grin swells?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday October 27 2020, @06:20PM
. . . because they are wired in, and online.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday October 27 2020, @07:46PM (1 child)
And just why do folks need a Zuckhelmet in the first place?
Exactly, and this is why I really don't see the problem here. This thing is just an expensive toy, and if you don't like the terms (i.e., requiring a FB account), then don't buy it. It's not like, for instance, smartphones, which have become almost necessary to fully participate in modern society. No one's life is going to be harmed because they couldn't use an Oculus, just like no one's life would be harmed if professional golf disappeared.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Common Joe on Wednesday October 28 2020, @08:07PM
It's not about what they're doing now. It's about them testing the waters to do further damage in the future. And even if you don't use Facebook, one of the big boys that you do use is watching to see the fallout and decide if they want to do the same thing to you.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday October 27 2020, @05:15AM
I'm with Fräulein Schadenfreude on this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2020, @05:47AM (6 children)
This seems like unfair business practices, forcing people to use Facebook in order to use a completely unrelated VR product. Given that Facebook is likely facing an antitrust investigation, this seems like something that could be part of the complaints against them.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday October 27 2020, @06:46AM
Agreed. It's just that the US justice department hasn't seemed to be doing its job for far too many years now, and they don't seem to be in a particular hurry to step in now.
Probably too many powers that be on the payroll. I wouldn't be too hopeful that the giant turds get broken up...
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2020, @11:12AM (4 children)
Nobody is forcing you to use facebook. My god where are all the technically literate people? Guess what - you can't have Flickr without yahoo mail. Do you feel forced?
Honestly, the attack on facebook as compared to Twitter or reddit is so disproportionate there is no way it is not politically motivated.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2020, @12:40PM
They are trying their best to be part of the democrat machine this year, but people still are salty that they took 50k of Russian interest money and supposedly made Trump win with that.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Booga1 on Tuesday October 27 2020, @01:39PM (2 children)
That information is both out of date and incorrect. First, SmugMug now owns Flickr, but even during the time Yahoo owned it they never locked out the original account owners.. As long as you had your Flickr account before Yahoo you were still able to use it without a Yahoo account of any kind, much less having to use Yahoo Mail. Sure, Yahoo pushed for account merging but it was never a hard requirement. I've never had to change my Flickr log in to a Yahoo account, nor do you need a Yahoo account to sign up for it now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2020, @06:23AM (1 child)
I have a mail from yahoo and an article on ye Olde website to prove you wrong. Granted i didn't know that yahoo didn't own Flickr, my point was precisely that you can't possibly feel forced to use that.
(Score: 2) by Booga1 on Wednesday October 28 2020, @09:05AM
The warnings about loss of access to Flickr without a Yahoo account were just hot air. I've always had my Flickr account associated with Hotmail(still do) and never had to use Yahoo.
Anyway, I think I get the point you're trying to make: You can have a Facebook login so you can use the Oculus without actually having to use Facebook itself. Still, it's really sad you need a login to use a piece of hardware of any kind. This whole thing really shows folks just how much ownership they really have of their Oculus gear.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2020, @06:14AM (2 children)
I wonder if Luckey knew this was coming when he teamed up with Brendan Iribe (the one who set up the Farcebook deal). Building the Rift was basically his childhood dream.
I was about to feel sorry for the guy, financial compensation nonwithstanding, until I read his Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org].
So he basically makes weapons now and is Trump's best buddy. Nice.
When the Facebook deal originally was announced, I figured Iribe was the sleazebag who had sold out starry-eyed nerd Luckey because of greed. After Oculus became Facebook tech I immediately lost interest and didn't care to take another look.
In hindsight, everyone involved in this drama is so terrible that it makes Facebook almost look good in comparison. Poor souls who backed the Kickstarter. They were the only starry-eyed nerds who got sold out for having a dream. Luckily, I learned the crowdfunding lesson for a much smaller fee. I backed DayZ...
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday October 27 2020, @04:23PM (1 child)
Yeah, I was very interested in Oculus, but wasn't about to drop that kind of money on Kickstarter. Then there was rumors of Facebook + Oculus, and I noped right out of there. Thankfully, Vive had put out their headset and I got a used one on e-bay. I've enjoyed it immensely. It was almost worth it just for the free Portal 2 VR mod, Portal Stories or something like that is what it's called. Sure, the mechanics don't work exactly the same as the portals in portal, but it was very fun and set in the same universe. I loved it. Also, played through Fallout 4 VR, which was a total blast. I'm sure Skyrim VR would be great, but I've never gotten into any of the Elder Scrolls games, though I've tried a couple, including Skyrim VR. The environment and experience was fun, but I just couldn't get into it. Maybe, it's the lack of a Pipboy, or Map of any kind, but I've just always had this kind of lost feeling every time I've play an Elder Scrolls game. There are some seriously fun games like Gun Jack, and experiences, that you just can't get in a Non-VR game. Also, I got in on some Star Trek VR and that was a fun game. It was fun to play with others and do a bit of real life like / VR roleplaying. Blowing stuff up in a Star Trek VR game, while being the captain of a starship or it's engineer, or weapons' specialist. Yeah, that was fun. Then, there were a couple of Tower Defense games that I played that were very fun. One of them was a free, not free-to-play/pay-2-win/stupidness, that was someon's pet project. It had a bit of RTS elements, a bit of FPS elements, and a bit of Tower Defense elements, plus robots/skeletons. I was sad that it was abandoned. Yet, it was a fully finished project, had some character (weapon) progression and even a minigame inside the minigame.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2020, @12:26AM
Almost all of the VR titles I've seen so far look wholly unimpressive and dated in 2D. Can a rig purpose-built for VR not handle better visuals? By Star Trek VR, do you mean Star Trek Bridge Crew by Ubisoft? From an AAA publisher, I would have expected more eye candy compared to the various indie titles...
I expect when experiencing immersion, it *feels* a whole lot better but why do all these games look like Pre-Crysis tech?
I've yet to try on a Vive, have taken a longer break from gaming and I'm unsure when and if I'll pick it back up. VR is currently the only itch I feel Iike I'll want to scratch. The games industry mostly evolved away from what I liked about it when it was smaller.
And no, I do not want your lootboxes. If that was my type of thing, I'd be in a casino instead of on a PC. Srsly WTF?
(Score: 3, Funny) by leon_the_cat on Tuesday October 27 2020, @07:36AM (4 children)
Am I right :D
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2020, @12:41PM (2 children)
i dont think americans know what 'a goethe' is ... thus
(Score: 3, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 27 2020, @12:48PM (1 child)
Sure we do. Those were the guys who invaded the Roman Empire. Who's got the big brain now, euros?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2020, @02:52AM
You're mistaken "a Goethe" is what we use to build those sky scrapers out of.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Tuesday October 27 2020, @05:42PM
Giving Facebook real info, or linking to anything important, is like paying the Danegeld.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 27 2020, @01:50PM (8 children)
VR will eventually take off, but it has had trouble gaining traction. (Texting and smartphones did initially.) Facebook is trying to use the technology to leverage decreasing engagement on its main platform. It's usually done the other way around, where you use dominance in one area to conquer other business areas. Microsoft famously leveraged its dominance in office productivity software to conquer other areas. Apple leveraged mobile devices to reinvent every other part of its business.
Facebook is stumbling, along with other social media companies now, in its main business. That's going to act like an anchor on VR.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday October 27 2020, @04:25PM
Yeah, last time I looked at getting a Valve Index, it was wait 6 months or buy a used one off e-bay for more than the cost of a new one. Valve Index + Half-Life Alyx, seems to have really given VR on Steam a nice boost. Here's hoping for any even cheaper and better headset, coming soon.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday October 27 2020, @06:23PM
Facebook, or maybe VR. One of them is like getting Mad Cow disease. I'm just not sure which one of them is the cause of it.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday October 27 2020, @07:54PM (1 child)
This sounds a lot like sports and cable TV. Cable TV is dying out, but if you want to watch live sports for various leagues, you *must* have a cable TV subscription and watch it there; you can't just watch it online. (This may have changed in recent years; I don't keep up with this stuff.) It's slightly different in that the cablecos don't own the sports teams or whatever companies control televising the games, but still similar.
And like there, I just don't see the problem. If the cablecos want to prop up their businesses and their profit margins by charging sports fans absurd amounts of money to watch live games, and the sports fans have no alternative aside from attending the games in-person, I'm fine with that, no matter how expensive it gets. Sports games are a silly luxury that no one really *needs* to watch, so if some companies take advantage and screw over the addicted fans, I think that's fine. Same goes here: no one *needs* a VR headset to play video games, so if Facebook screws over these people by forcing them to have FB accounts (which is a lot cheaper than a cable TV subscription with the sports add-ons), that's fine with me.
If you don't like it, don't buy it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 30 2020, @02:29PM
Something I find infinitely tragic about many sports fans is that they'll pay through the nose and bend over backward to make time to watch NFL games on cable, but won't make time to go watch their kids' games in person.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2020, @12:40AM
This is about the only positive I can find in Facebook having bought out Oculus. They acquired the tech it so they hopefully have some sort of plan to get people hooked to VR headsets...
If this results in VR headsets becoming a commodity item I'm all for it.
If anyone knows, what did Carmack ever contribute? His face in front of a camera?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday October 30 2020, @10:16AM (2 children)
The Oculus Quest 2 was preordered five times as much as the original [theverge.com]
I'm seeing estimates of between 20% to 50% CAGR for the VR market through 2025. Which means it could still feel small for a year or two, until it just doesn't.
Based on articles I've read, we won't see some of the great headset innovations (varifocal lenses, etc.) we're looking for until 2023 or so. I also think merging AR and VR could benefit the latter, since it has the potential to turn a device you might use 1-4 hours a day and not be caught wearing in public into something you have on your person at all times, like a smartphone today.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 30 2020, @02:24PM (1 child)
That's astute. The technology is compelling. To me, though, the potential for abuse by players like Facebook is chilling. We're already seeing the costs of the pervasive invasions of privacy, and with VR/AR it will only get worse exponentially faster.
As a technology, it seems like the killer app might turn out to not be gaming & recreation, but for real-world, work applications. Aspiring pilots have gotten value out of simulators for a very long time, but with full VR many other fields might see the same kind of benefit.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday October 30 2020, @03:21PM
Work applications are tending towards AR, hence that market will probably end up 2-3x the size of VR. That's another reason VR should be merged with it. Ideally, a flat smartglasses device with metalens trickery and a removable cover to block light in VR mode will become feasible. Something like 3DSoC could provide the processing grunt within 50mm2 die area and battery power constraints.
On privacy, I would like VR devices to be either dumb input/output devices, kind of like desktop monitors, or generic Linux/Android/LineageOS devices for standalone headsets. Obviously, Facebokulus wants ecosystem integration, advertising, user tracking, etc., but there are alternatives [wikipedia.org] now and there may be more later. Hopefully the free/open hardware does not lag a decade behind the market leaders.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday October 27 2020, @05:58PM (8 children)
Its a weird sort of extremist propaganda, showing all the negative effects of one selection of binary thinking.
I would think a more rational way to stop using Facebook would simply be to not run the app or open the website. I don't seem to have much trouble with that, and every couple months I do log in and look around, see its a mostly empty and utterly boring wasteland, and return to socializing IRL and on other platforms.
Their investors and "suits" see the number of accounts as a metric goal. Given their paychecks and bonus literally depend on not doing it, they aren't going to delete your account just because you haven't logged into it for over three hours. Or over three months. I know for a fact based on other people's abandoned accounts that they won't delete accounts that haven't been logged into for five years.
The "real" story is the whole story is propaganda about the dangers of not using facebook, therefore you should log in daily if not hourly or else we've let the terrorists win or some nonsense.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday October 27 2020, @06:16PM (7 children)
I logged in to FB for the hell of it and here's the golden content that I've been missing.
An elderly distant relative of mine died a couple years ago an this was her birthday and nobody deactivated or deleted her FB which is ironic in the sense of this article, so FB wants me to wish her a happy birthday.
A coworker from more than 15 years ago treats his FB feed like a normie RINO mainstream talk radio type republican version of /pol/ so I get normie flavored right wing memes. Apparently people are agast that Wisconsin will only count votes made before voting day. OK then.
Weird political paid spam.
I do follow the Babylon Bee which is freaking hilarious and "CNN Mourns ACB confirmation by flying Chinese flag at half-mast" is pretty funny.
A leftist personal friend who's also had enough of this mask bullshit despite masks being "his people's kippah" or whatever, posted that since the governor allows more people at funerals than at thanksgiving he's having a funeral for his pet turkey on the 26th. OK then.
GAB is funny to follow a pix of ACB with "Happy Birthday Hillary" stuff.
I used to help coach a sports team and they're still doing stuff and posting to FB despite my kids having aged out.
Saw a nifty meme where someone photoshopped a Gerber baby food bottle into "Cream of Lutefisk" complete with pix of the wrong species fish. I sincerely hope its a photoshop, either northern pike nor lutefisk is not really baby food or food in general.
Another meme "Floppy disks are like jesus they died to become the icon of saving" OK not bad.
The memes aren't bad. Not as good as the original sources on the chans and plebbit but viewable, yeah.
My family seems to have abandoned Facebook. My Aunt still posts about once per season. Last post was bragging about her CSA sending her a shitton of veggies.
As for ex-coworkers one had a weird migrating bird species visit her neighborhood; cool and obscure pictures.
Overall I'm not missing much with not using FB.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2020, @11:46PM (3 children)
However, what VLM didn't tell us is that this friend is just a classic conservative who has managed to stay stationary on the political spectrum and is now only slightly right of the Democratic Party.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2020, @12:30AM (2 children)
Wait, were you able to deduce a coherent narrative from his story? I'm still trying to figure out whether he was just shitposting memepics and had them OCR'd.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2020, @02:56AM (1 child)
Deduce is a strong word here. It's doubtful there's a coherent narrative. I read it like a trip report on Erowid.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 02 2020, @01:42PM
Yeah thats pretty much facebook, yeah.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 30 2020, @02:30PM (2 children)
That's because you are a racist. Against Norwegians.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 02 2020, @01:49PM (1 child)
On one hand, lutefisk is one of those rare foods that doesn't smell any worse after it passes thru the digestive tract.
On the other hand, at least conceptually, "Cod Fish Jerky" SHOULD BE much less gross than other ethnic food, consider Scottish ethnic food such as Haggis or USA ethnic food such as Gas Station Sushi
On the third hand, I might just be racist against processed WHITEfish like cod, and in the current legacy media regime, being anti-white is always rewarded and supported, so ...
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday November 02 2020, @02:52PM
No, but the texture does change. It's less gelatinous after it's been digested.
I see where you're going wrong, here. "Haggis" is an appellation, not a food, eg. "You silly Haggis!" "Gas Station Sushi" is what they call live bait they could not sell in time--thought everybody knew that.
I'm waiting for the joke t-shirt gifts to come out for Christmas: "You might be racist IF...A) You eat whitefish B) You keep a whitelist on your email server C) You whitewash your house."
(Queuing the woke responses in 3...2...1...)
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2020, @11:51PM
From what it sounds like everybody is just making fake Failbook accounts. It's what I did when my Quest2 arrived. I think it was like my 3rd or 4th failbook account. If they're going to make failbook a centralized authentication service, then I'm going to treat it as one and not as a social network.