Meta Accounts: A New Login for VR

&gt; Today we’re introducing Meta accounts: a new way for people to log into their VR headsets that doesn’t require a Facebook account.<p>Great. where can I not signup.

From Meta&#x27;s point of view this doesn&#x27;t change anything.<p>Your activities and interests on your meta accounts will all be part of the same profile meta keeps on grin your Facebook activity, internet browsing, and anything else they can attach or infer a tracking identity from.<p>Their &quot;privacy&quot; controls are outward facing - e.g., how your meta account is related to your Facebook profile <i>outside</i> meta, not inside.<p>This really doesn&#x27;t seem to be getting to the meat of the matter.<p>Your neighbor and family may not know that &quot;John Smith&quot; on Facebook is &quot;mariofan#1&quot; playing VR games and &quot;naughty69&quot; doing VR porn, but meta sure will.

The problem isn&#x27;t that you need a Facebook account, it&#x27;s that Meta owns Oculus at all. Call the account whatever you want; if I&#x27;m a record in any of Meta&#x27;s databases then I expect to be linked to a shadow profile and surveilled for their profit. The only control I have over the situation is to never agree to any ToS relationship with Meta. There&#x27;s literally nothing they can do to change this short of selling Oculus to someone else.<p>The day Meta bought Oculus they killed the platform for privacy-conscious webizens. I say this as someone who would love to try the Soda Island VR experiences and often lament the acquisition.

I am super bearish on Meta:<p>- why would anyone trust Meta&#x2F;FB on anything they say or trust them with your data<p>- FB became popular because it was easy to use, it was just about uploading and commenting on photos. I don&#x27;t see any of my family members buying a VR device and connect in metaverse ... there is no way ..<p>- I don&#x27;t think people will ever use VR devices for the sole purpose of having meeting, video works just fine<p>The metaverse does not make sense, what it makes sense is AR, and Apple will be the one dominating the space.

Just after leaks of a killer VR headset from Valve? No thank you, Meta.<p>For those not in the know, Valve is coming out with a successor to the Index headset called Valve Deckard. They&#x27;ll probably announce it later this year. From the leaked information, it looks like an absolute beast of a headset.

How exactly does this address the privacy concerns underlying the previous model? They still require me to have a “social” profile. I never agreed to that when I bought my Oculus Rift back in 2016. In effect, my Rift remains bricked unless I agree to have a presence in their dystopian Metaverse. No thank you!

This is a bait and switch. There&#x27;s no reason to believe that Facebook will remain benevolent in the future. They will switch back to requiring some <i>thing</i> they can use to collect and sell your personal data even if it&#x27;s not called Facebook. That was the point of them buying Oculus. They never tried to make money on the hardware.

It is an interesting growth play that Meta is doing (putting aside our feelings about it).<p>By putting out relatively cheap VR headsets and requiring a meta (Facebook) account to use it, they are getting young people signed up for meta. Those young people might not have signed up for Facebook&#x2F;Meta otherwise. It&#x27;s a sneaky way to reduce friction and maybe convert young people onto the social media platform.<p>It also reminds me of how google&#x27;s social network automatically created profiles on their social media spot. That experiment failed. Will meta&#x27;s growth play fail?<p>This is purely me trying to figure out the business angle.

Misleading title. Going from requiring a Facebook account to a Meta Account is a very minor move.

This looks like it&#x27;s &quot;just&quot; follow-through from previous headlines.<p>s&#x2F;Facebook&#x2F;Meta&#x2F;g

You&#x27;ll still need to add an email address, your name, DOB, a phone number, and payment info. To retain your privacy, you can easily create an email alias and put in a fake name and DOB. A paid Twilio number should work. A privacy.com (or similar service) should also work.

This misstep cost them a heck of a lot of goodwill in their community.

Metaverse is Zuckerberg&#x27;s wet dream. I always remember Virtual Sex Scene from Demolition Man[0].<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=E3yARIfDJrY" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=E3yARIfDJrY</a> :)

Well correct me if I&#x27;m wrong but so far as I can tell you still need a &#x27;Meta&#x27; account to use them so... Not so great as it sounds.

Can I now safely consume adult VR content without anyone watching me back?

I guess that removes one block from us buying Oculus devices. I still have no clear idea how we buy them for a classroom, but I guess this is a good start. It still sounds like its a Facebook account in another form.

&gt; Your “Friends” will now become “Followers,” similar to Instagram’s existing model.<p>Don&#x27;t see how this makes sense for VR, where you probably want to hang out with your friends and play games. Followers?

I will admit this is very tempting.<p>The Quest 2 is the only reasonably priced standalone headset.<p>I&#x27;ll probably wait until the end of the year though, hopefully ANYONE else will release a solid standalone

I gave my Quest away when they announced they were requiring a Facebook account. I liked it, but ultimately decided it had been a mistake to use something owned by Facebook, and I should have seen where it would go. Maybe I did, but had been too excited by the idea of VR. I&#x27;m not going to buy another device now, expecting that their fundamental nature as a company will eventually win out. It&#x27;s a frog&#x2F;scorpion situation with them.

too late; already moved on.

This is really a big move from Meta, and very right one.<p>Consider how many countries can&#x27;t directly use Facebook, they had to use a VPN to first login Facebook, then the headsets, its ridiculous. Many novice users have even no idea what is a VPN, so they have to put away the headsets just bought from the online.<p>I heard many stories of this, now finally changed.<p>Good job Meta!

Since I still login to Facebook at least once a month to see what my family is doing, I see no reason for me to switch.<p>If I was starting with a new device with no prior purchases of entertainment content, then I would create an Oculus account.<p>For me, Oculus is the one really great thing about Meta&#x2F;Facebook. It is my favorite toy.

Only Mark Zuckerberg could possibly announce with a straight face (without apologizing for having made a Facebook login mandatory previously) this, as if he&#x27;s doing <i>us</i> a favor. The man is a narcissist and megalomaniac

meta (heh): can’t view this page without accepting all cookies, including Facebook ad ones, which it says you can control on your cookie settings page (404 link) but if you don’t have a Facebook account you can’t access

Doesn&#x27;t change the Oculus games I lost from their forced integration.

Easy solution: Never spend money on a Meta product.

I’ve had one just laying around since they announced this. I have an updated or anything. Still not quite trusting Facebook…

Ah cool, they&#x27;re going to use your Oculus account to open a Meta account for you. How convenient.

So this is the long awaited promise to use oculus with a facebook account? What a joke.

All I want is to be able to use the Oculus without any account at all. Just offline.

Just waiting for Apple to enter VR market and pull market share from Facebook Oculus

Meta&#x2F;Facebook is actually a good company, and I trust them. They&#x27;re really clear about how they use your data, and as far as I can tell (being a FANG worker), you can trust what they say about data usage<p>In fact, I&#x27;d trust them with my data more than a bank (competency is more important)

Steam valve VR headset all the way. Not touching one thing from Facebook.

NewAccount.source = Meta SameOldTableOfAccounts.add(NewAccount)

Update 2023: now a facebook account is required!

Apple is coming for their metaverse.

guess their find &amp; replace &quot;Facebook -&gt; Meta&quot; task completed

Fuck Facebook.

It’s afraid

Too late.

yeah once the sales and stock prices are up, it&#x27;s gonna be business as usual

@dang This is a heavily editorialized bait-and-switch title, posted by a user who is a VP at Facebook. That doesn&#x27;t seem above board.

Instead, a Meta account is required.<p>I see what you did there.

That&#x27;s nice, but I still don&#x27;t trust Meta and will never willingly use their products. The brand is irredeemably tainted because my sense of history goes back <i>decades</i>. I&#x27;m not Jesus; I don&#x27;t forgive and I rarely forget.

Odd to see so much hate for facebook, a company that created:<p>1. react<p>2. pytorch<p>Arguably the two best technology frameworks to come out in the last decade.