If Logged into Facebook, Oculus VR Data Will Now Be Used for Ads

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/303310-facebook-oculus-vr-data-advertising

by Larrikin • 7 years ago

245 155 7 years ago

extremetech.com

vermilingua• 7 years ago

A surprise to exactly nobody.

When are people going to stop rewarding the exploitative behavior of Facebook and its offspring?

zxcb12• 7 years ago

Yes. However, it is not apparent which inferences are possible to make with this kind of sensor data. How invasive might this become?

ctack• 7 years ago

They'll classify how people move and join that with profiles they've already created on Facebook.

They'll try to figure out if you have any kind of disability.

mosselman• 7 years ago

It is not exactly clear to me whether you are down playing the implications or not, but lets assume you are:

If this weren't invasive, they wouldn't be doing it. What use would random data be to Facebook? Also, it is irrelevant: if I buy a VR set I want to use it for whatever I see fit, not get hooked into some data collection machine. How is it that we have come to accept that in order to use products, that we buy even, we have to hand over lots of data?

moron4hire• 7 years ago

There are cameras and microphones on the things

classified• 7 years ago

How invasive might this become?

Brain-wave-scanning kind of invasive. FB (and advertising in general) will continue to become ever more invasive until it meets a limiting factor. That limiting factor will possibly be legislation (just not in the US because worshiping the Dollar overrides anything and everything else).

LegitShady5• 7 years ago

As invasive as they can convince people to buy

ComodoHacker3• 7 years ago

The article talks about 3D maps of user's environment. One can infer what kind of furniture and home appliances you have and use, for example.

UweSchmidt• 7 years ago

They won't. People buy what's in the store / is marketed and expect products to work, functionally, but also in the greater context, in their effect on society as a whole. Voting with the dollar does not generally work to steer corporate behaviour.

wavefunction• 7 years ago

And facebook is not a traditional corporate structure so holding facebook/Zuck accountable can only be accomplished via legislation.

Nasrudith2• 7 years ago

Yeah in the same sense your vote doesn't decide the election. It certainly has worked wiith many missteps fallen into obscurity. Marketing is a post-facto category for success. If everything is done right for a campaign but the CEO says something outrageous it is all undone like the infamous Gerald Rattner incident.

workthrowaway• 7 years ago

the problem, as i see it, is not with data collection itself. because the larger public 1. does not care 2. does not seem concerned. 3. the collected data is deemed harmless to the user.

what worries me is the sampling itself. or how diverse the sample is. using VR users data to draw any conclusion is misrepresenting the larger population. now if we are all into VR or use it, this might be different...

Grustaf• 7 years ago

Why is it a problem that facebook gets skewed data when spying on its users? It won’t give me any sleepless nights, that’s for sure.

thejohnconway• 7 years ago

Most people do not understand how much is collected, how it can be connected, or how it is shared with random companies with no accountability. Often they are fairly shocked when specific examples are brought to light.

But there are lot of problems in the world, and none of us can be sure where to rank this one.

deogeo• 7 years ago

Good news! China has solved the problem by watching everyone, finally giving us what we all want - crushing levels of omnipresent surveillance, without any diversity-harming biased sampling. Because that's the worst part about surveillance - not how it's (often legally) abused by power, but how it's not fair for diversity.

zamalek2• 7 years ago

The DK2 was the last Oculus device I owned precisely due to this. I would have absolutely purchased the CV1 were it not for the FB acquisition.

There is something subconsciously intimate about the movements of my head. The idea of FB getting off to that (obvious to everyone, except the willfully ignorant, that they eventually would) is incredibly creepy.

kruczek• 7 years ago

Some already stopped rewarding such behavior. It's the precise reason why I chose Vive over Oculus.

asutekku• 7 years ago

It’s Facebook’s service, what did you expect. Also, recommending products based on your past experiences is something pretty much every service provides.

rchaud2• 7 years ago

recommending products based on your past experiences

I've recommended music and movies to people without any prior compensation from the companies that put those products out.

What Facebook is doing is advertising. "Personalized recommendations" is marketing doublespeak for "pay to play".

AndrewThrowaway• 7 years ago

At first I read it as "will not be used". "Yet" I thought to myself. Then I reread the title. "Oh" I though to myself.

tyfon2• 7 years ago

And this is the reason I never touch anything that has a connection to Facebook.

No surprise really but it irks me as I wanted the rift some time ago but then Facebook bought it.

Luckily it seems like Valve Index will be a good alternative.

kgwxd• 7 years ago

Valve won't collect data?

tyfon2• 7 years ago

They might, but they don't have facebooks apparatus or motivation for turning it into ads on unrelated web pages.

LegitShady5• 7 years ago

Valve doesn't make money the way Facebook makes money. The incentives for how to use the data are much different.

britmob• 7 years ago

Luckily the Valve Index is much superior to the rift lineup, so you’re not sacrificing anything to stay far away from facebook.

pavel_lishin3• 7 years ago

Valve won't collect data?

If your boyfriend beats you, the argument that "your next one might, too" isn't a good reason to stay with them.

ReverseCold2• 7 years ago

Valve's main revenue stream is selling products to consumers (unlike Facebook), so at the very least it's a safer bet.

This quote is entirely unrelated but I thought of it and want to share: "Valve used to make games, now they make money."

zamalek2• 7 years ago

Gabe has verbally explained the woes of pissing off customers on multiple occasions. It's why he replies to many of the weird emails people send him.

No. They won't. They have far more than proven it at every possible occasion.

mnw21cam• 7 years ago

https://outline.com/Fur6Bq for those of us who don't like looking at a blank black page.

aedron• 7 years ago

Eye tracking is adtech's wet dream for a long time. It's like heatmaps on steroids. And VR glasses are the perfect platform for it.

sp3322• 7 years ago

John Carmack steps down from being CTO, and a month later this happens.

swebs• 7 years ago

Now which one was the cause, and which was the effect?

sp3322• 7 years ago

I mean I don't remember him being loudly against this. It could be more of a difference of priorities. But it's still interesting. Even if they're not directly connected, two big changes in a row could mean there are more to come.

dangoor4• 7 years ago

Carmack does not appear to be against this: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1204938668680634368

LegitShady5• 7 years ago

This has nothing to do with Carmack. Carmack being part of Oculus is a stain on Carmack and his reputation. Don't look to Carmack for moral guidance - he sold his soul to Facebook to develop VR and failed.

dangoor4• 7 years ago

When I bought an Oculus Quest, the fact that Oculus is owned by Facebook was slightly bothersome, but I honestly don't care a whole lot about this particular data at this particular time (basically just game playing).

It's Facebook Horizon[1] that's the worrisome thing. I'm pretty sure they're trying to build the OASIS from Ready Player One.

[1] https://www.oculus.com/facebookhorizon/

LegitShady5• 7 years ago

It's interesting that you say the only data being collected is what you play and when.

Why do you think that? They have a lot of lose and movement data from you I bet theyve been spending a lot of time trying to develop inferences you can make from it.

dangoor4• 7 years ago

Sure. They know I play Beat Saber and move pretty quickly while doing so. Maybe they'll try to sell me exercise stuff (though I rarely interact with Facebook and my browser setup is kind of aggressive when it comes to them).

They also know I'm shorter than Darth Vader. They know the size of a couple of our rooms.

I acknowledge there is data they can attempt to extract value from, but that data just doesn't concern me. As VR expands, particularly with Horizon, I will be a lot more wary.

kick• 7 years ago

I mean, Zuckerberg's expressed a love for Ready Player One, so it's not far-fetched.

CelestialTeapot• 7 years ago

Sure, after spending hundreds of dollars on a device, it only seems fair that the vendor exploit your personal information so that credit companies and anyone willing and able to buy the data can compile a dossier on you.

patrickaljord• 7 years ago

Facebook does not sell data.

naniwaduni• 7 years ago

Mostly because they find it more profitable to maintain their exclusivity on the data itself and sell only ad placements.

Rebelgecko• 7 years ago

https://about.fb.com/news/2018/12/facebooks-partners/

pavel_lishin3• 7 years ago

Of course. Why sell it once, when you can keep renting it out forever?

tripzilch7• 7 years ago

And when you buy a Photoshop subscription, Adobe doesn't technically sell you software, either.

yc_2345• 7 years ago

I am not sure what is the big deal here.

When WhatsApp improved its popularity by claiming "privacy is important, no ads" etc and then did a U turn it was actually noteworthy and newsworthy.

I don't think Oculus ever made such claims. They were happy to "sell out" [1]. If anything, they seem to be proud members of the Facebook cult [2].

If you bought the Oculus, you knew exactly what you were getting.

Also, a side note: I just suppose that everyone who supports Facebook at this point benefit from Facebook's profits in some way (e.g. FB employees, FB ecosystem consultants, close partners such as Microsoft etc) and automatically discount their opinions about Facebook.

[1] https://www.vox.com/2014/3/25/11624928/facebook-buys-oculus-...

[2] https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/facebook-oculus-privacy...

colejohnson665• 7 years ago

Also, a side note: I just suppose that everyone who supports Facebook at this point benefit from Facebook's profits in some way (e.g. FB employees, FB ecosystem consultants, close partners such as Microsoft etc) and automatically discount their opinions about Facebook.

I was gonna upvote you, but this was unnecessary. It’s possible for someone to be positive towards something you see as a negative. People hate Trump and he has supporters. Whether you agree with them or not, not all of them are benefiting from the Trump Administration

tabula• 7 years ago

Yeah, not to mention that you can benefit from FB without being one of their employees or close partners. Just buy some stock next time it crashes bc they get caught using data they weren’t supposed to!

adgineer2• 7 years ago

FB ads engineer here.

Every time I read these threads, I'm 1. Flattered by how sophisticated HN thinks our systems are (they're not. and we're not that smart. FB's A-team stopped working on ads a long time ago) 2. Entertained by how HN thinks ad targeting works (we don't want to know everything about YOU. we want to know basic info about all of our users.)

Hypertargeting doesn't work. Targeting small audiences doesn't provide marketing scale and is extremely expensive. The goal is to have the biggest possible audience, while still applying one or two critical filters. You could hit all 1000 people in a pool for $100 each, or you can hit 1000 people in a pool of 1 million for 50 cents each.

The main priority here is to enable "Show ads to people who own an Oculus" level targeting. This means that people selling VR-adjacent services, products, and content can reliably advertise to their core market without wasting money on non-users. Or maybe they can filter out that segment to show different ads to non-users that convince them to buy their first device. I know most on HN hate any level of targeting, but this has a massive benefit to the VR ecosystem because it allows VR companies to reach their customers much more effectively and sell more products.

FB is actually stripping away features from our targeting system and removing inputs because we spend too much compute power ($$) driving optimizations that don't have any material impact on delivery value. Basic is better. There's no meaningful business value to capturing biometrics or pictures of things in your home. Also, ethics. We do actually think about that a lot these days - it just took us a while to clean up short-sighted product decisions made a decade ago.

fhood• 7 years ago

Is there a name for this phenomena? Where we know that everybody blunders around like a caveman at our workplaces but assume infinite sophistication for everyone elses.

awinter-py• 7 years ago

novelist michael crichton named it 'gell-mann amnesia' in a news-reading context

tripzilch7• 7 years ago

well there's this great quote from the movie "Cube" (1997):

There is no conspiracy. Nobody is in charge. It's a headless blunder operating under the illusion of a master plan.

corndoge• 7 years ago

I don't care

My $500 device should not be exploiting me

Full stop

paride5745• 7 years ago

Let me play Devil's Advocate here.

Without these Ads plans, your device would probably cost $1000, as the Valve Index shows us.

My 2 cents.

CJefferson• 7 years ago

With regards your last paragraph, is there any evidence of this? Any place Facebook says "we do not, and will not, use information X for ad targeting"?

adgineer2• 7 years ago

Not sure if there's a public document as granular as "information X", but that $5b FTC settlement came with a bunch of policies.

Also, the "clear history" feature should be rolling out (or maybe it already rolled out in your country) that lets you dissociate any 3rd party info from your profile.

Nextgrid4• 7 years ago

They claimed they would never use 2FA phone numbers for ad targeting (which I didn't believe to begin with)... and guess what, at some point they started using them for ads and when things blew up they issued a fake apology and continued as usual.

mokash• 7 years ago

Maybe you don't have the capabilities to make meaningful predictions that you can sell to marketing departments at the moment however, you still have all of the data that you collect and free reign to do with it as you wish. The problem we have is less about what you're doing right now and more about what you could do in the future. Let's face it, Facebook (and other surveillance capitalists) don't exactly have a track record for respecting privacy rights.

hanniabu• 7 years ago

FB's A-team stopped working on ads a long time ago

What are they working on now?

mcast• 7 years ago

Instagram and personalization feeds if I had to guess

Nextgrid4• 7 years ago

Your systems are sophisticated enough to make people believe their phones are listening to them in the background even when that's not the case. So even if you think they are primitive, a lot of people thinks they're more than sophisticated enough to be creepy.

ceejayoz4• 7 years ago

Facebook's not helping this conspiracy theory with their "why did I see this ad?" dialog. I'll see a clearly hyper-targeted ad (for example, a psoriasis medication) and click that button and it'll say "they wanted to reach people in the United States between 18-65!"

I know I was targeted by that ad. I know they're just showing me the most general bit of the targeting info that was used to put that ad in front of me.

The dialog even obnoxiously says "There could also be more factors not listed here." Yes, I know, that's fairly obvious. I clicked the dialog to figure out what those were.

Ajedi32• 7 years ago

Is there any evidence to suggest those rumors are actually the result of unusually high levels of sophistication on the part of Facebook's ad targeting systems, and not just an artifact of confirmation bias and the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon?

djohnston• 7 years ago

People also think God made the earth in 6 days. What mass groups of people believe isn't indicative of Jack.

throwaway77384• 7 years ago

Just wanted to chime in and say kudos for speaking up. That sure is a risky thing to do. Unless, of course, this is just more smoke and mirrors.

I like to believe it is not.

Nextgrid4• 7 years ago

I agree. I have no reason to believe what they say is true, but even if it's all lies it's nice to see their perspective and be able to talk to them.

jammygit3• 7 years ago

It isn’t smoke and mirrors, it might just be idealism or trolling.

thdrdt2• 7 years ago

"2. Entertained by how HN thinks ad targeting works (we don't want to know everything about YOU. we want to know basic info about all of our users.)"

I'm sorry but this sounds so naive to me. As you say in your last paragraph Facebook was tracking a ton of info about everyone. This is why a lot of people distrust Facebook. You might find this entertaining but this happens when you spy on people. We can't know what Facebook does with the data.

There are also people who targeted a friend as prank and succeeded. So it is possible to target very specific people. With enough money you can do a lot of evil with this (Cambride Analytica).

Because we don't know how they use the data a lot of people now actively block requests to Facebook when they visit a website.

I don't think this is very entertaining.

iwintermute• 7 years ago

You might want to look up what was up with Cambridge Analytica - Michael Lewis has one of episodes in Against the Rules (podcast) - it's a good place to start.

There was nothing at all. No predictive power. Total waste of money and it's funny this example keeps coming up

orbifold• 7 years ago

I mean sure, that is why Computer Vision research at Facebook doesn’t have multiple papers on scene segmentation and understanding, where they take kitchen scenes for illustration. Your all in one home appliance spying device surely wouldn’t be used in such a way. Of course. Not to mention that in all likelyhood both the microphone and camera are hot while using WhatsApp or Facebook.

wizzwizz42• 7 years ago

Instagram activates the camera on Windows 10 laptops when the app isn't even open, if the app is given camera access. Anecdotal evidence, sure, but that's valid because this isn't a statistic.

jiofih• 7 years ago

Honestly, it doesn’t matter what you think or how cozy you feel with your employer. Fact is it will now be requiring users to cede their identity and data, where it was not required before. Whether FB uses the data or not is irrelevant.

Selling my Oculus as soon as the Index comes down in price a bit. Thanks for the ride.

acjohnson55• 7 years ago

Please. Ads are Facebook's core business. I don't have any reason to believe you're not telling the truth about basic facts, but the "aw shucks" part is a bit insulting to my intelligence.

If the A-Team isn't working on ads, that actually concerns me. When I think of mediocre performers, I think of people who respond most strongly to short-term incentives, not people making nuanced ethical decisions involving a lot of foresight.

aylmao• 7 years ago

FB is actually stripping away features from our targeting system and removing inputs because we spend too much compute power ($$) driving optimizations that don't have any material impact on delivery value.
Also, ethics. We do actually think about that a lot these days - it just took us a while to clean up short-sighted product decisions made a decade ago.

I mean, it sounds to me like the A-Team were the ones motivated enough by the technical challenge to not care about cost, ethics or the "big picture". I know plenty of "A-team" engineers like that— they're in it for the technical challenge and to prove themselves, not to be "slowed down".

liquidise• 7 years ago

I appreciate you posting this as it flies in the face of the generally accepted opinion among HN regulars and privacy-oriented technologists (both groups i am included in). The value of HN for me is, in part, getting critical views from multiples sides of an issue and your comment is more earnest and believable than hours of Zuck's congressional hearings.

troquerre• 7 years ago

Having spoken with people who have worked on the FB ads team, and having heard stories of how extensive FB's tracking is, this post seems disingenuous and personally I wouldn't be surprised if the account is sponsored by FB.

colejohnson665• 7 years ago

Please don’t suggest people are astroturfing here. It’s against the site guidelines.

caconym_• 7 years ago

It's documented fact that certain political entities have made heavy use of microtargeting in Facebook ads. Such entities would seem to be less sensitive to traditional ROI concerns, regardless of whether your bit about microtargeting never being worth it is actually true (spoilers: it is not true. maybe for some advertisers, but not for all).

disgruntledphd22• 7 years ago

It potentially works for un-measured outcomes. Nonetheless, even if you have a very specific audience, you would be better served (from a conversion optimisation perspective, at least) by creating a lookalike from your small, valuable audience.

throwaway485442• 7 years ago

Who is "we"? Thinking big picture here, from a corporate POV, it's entirely possible that the discussions of ethics around handling and retention of data is way outside of the engineering core.

Furthermore, while it's interesting to read about this good intent, that doesn't change the reality of the situation. Your post actually bothers me more than pure maliciousness or opaqueness, because I know it's entirely possible these systems and workflows could be out of control... which is reflected extremely well today in the major complaints and scrutiny of the platform.

The tinfoil hat side of me does not believe this is a genuine account, but eh, there's no way to know here, and at least it opened up an interesting discussion

rchaud2• 7 years ago

there's no meaningful business value to capturing biometrics or pictures of things in your home. Also, ethics.

And that'll be the company line, until there is 'business value'. FB is just investing in facial recognition technology to "help protect you from a stranger using your photo to impersonate you" [1]

Regarding ethics, have their been any meaningful changes since the FTC handed down the $5bn fine for data privacy violations? Or was it just an unfortunate set of actions taken by individuals and aren't representative of the company's philosophy?

Will there be any changes forthcoming when the Illinois class lawsuit alleging illegal collection of biometric data without user consent goes to trial? [2]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/09/technology/facebook-facia...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/09/facebook-...

tripzilch7• 7 years ago

Well, to be completely fair to anyone who isn't a criminal, ethics usually means changing your behaviour before you get slapped by the law over it ...

grawprog• 7 years ago

Every time I read these threads, I'm 1. Flattered by how sophisticated HN thinks our systems are (they're not. and we're not that smart. FB's A-team stopped working on ads a long time ago)

Facebook's money comes primarily from it's ads.

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/120114/how-does-fac...

What you're saying seems unlikely

2. Entertained by how HN thinks ad targeting works (we don't want to know everything about YOU. we want to know basic info about all of our users.)

That's odd, then why does Facebook show me targetted ads based on my whatsapp and messenger conversations, youtube videos I watch, websites I browse, and places and people that are nearby me when I'm signed into Facebook on my phone

Not to be rude, but your post seems like a lot of bullshit just based on things i've seen Facebook do too many times to call it a coincidence.

There's no meaningful business value to capturing biometrics or pictures of things in your home.

This is just straight bullshit. Those things are a direct window into finding out exactly what people buy, pretty much the solid gold, diamond encrusted wet dream of advertisers.

iscoelho2• 7 years ago

whatsapp ... conversations

You seriously believe that the encrypted communications platform that the US government desperately wants a backdoor in is secretly backdoored by Facebook for ads? Something that mundane?

The platform (WhatsApp) that is subject to huge public skepticism, who's source code is so limited in scope that it's probably been audited by every security researcher that is interested in posting a "I found Facebook being evil" blog post?

And you believe they are using this data for ads? The most obvious thing ever to see if you audit/monitor the app?

This is why theories like this borderline paranoia. FUD. Nothing more. Statements like that discredit your entire argument.

-- And yes, of course Facebook uses trackers on sites to figure out what sites you've been to. Of course they use unencrypted data available to them to target ads. Your data is already in their database. Just because it's in another table to allow the "big bad ad agencies" to target you (data the ad agencies can not even see) does not make it any different.

Everyone does this. Everyone will continue doing this. There is absolutely nothing morally wrong with that status quo. The only part that can be morally wrong, is if a human themselves inspects the database without respect for privacy.

And this is why we have laws for dealing with malicious employees, robberies, house break-ins, etc. Things happen whether it's online or offline. All of this was possible (arguably even more so) before Facebook. It's just more centralized now.

This paranoia simply needs to stop.

EDIT: Adding, it makes complete sense that Facebook's A-team is not working on ads. Taking a page from Google: Diversification. Ads are auto-pilot income, have hit their tech ceiling, and Facebook's longevity depends on investment outside of their core business. I am unaware how this is so unbelievable to some.

bpicolo• 7 years ago

I primarily get ads for my employer on Facebook properties, always first / second on the feed. I imagine I'm a tremendously bad target for those.

greggman2• 7 years ago

If I want to run porn apps on my VR devices what right does FB have to vacuum up that knowledge? If the porn app has a specific sexual orientation why should Facebook get to know that?

Facebook should not be collecting this data IMO. Microsoft and Apple should be working to make it impossible to collect and governments should work to make it illegal to collect and extremely high fines if caught collecting.

danShumway3• 7 years ago

The main priority here is to enable "Show ads to people who own an Oculus" level targeting.

From the article:

Your photos and related content like captions, likes and comments if you use the “share photos” feature to share photos from VR to your Facebook Timeline

But don't worry! An engineer has told me I can just ignore that part of privacy policy because Facebook doesn't even care about my photos. They're utterly irrelevant.

It really takes a load off my chest. Sure, Facebook is collecting info about what apps people use, what people message, and what photos people take, but that's just going into a database somewhere that will never be monetized or read or used against them. And I can definitely trust that, because when Facebook says its going to silo data, it always keeps that promise, and definitely doesn't change its privacy policy to remove that silo 4-5 years down the road.

FB's A-team stopped working on ads a long time ago

I'm relieved to hear it, because its very concerning to hear about a technical team building infrastructure to collect individual app usage when all that anyone at the company cares about is whether or not I own an Oculus. It's wasted effort. Y'all need to learn to tighten your sprint scope, why are you building all these features that aren't being used anywhere?

it just took us a while to clean up short-sighted product decisions made a decade ago.

And don't worry, the CEOs that made those decisions have all retired, and they definitely won't make them again in the future. It's just old, outdated stories that keep resurfacing. Like in 2017 when Facebook experimented on how depressed teenagers would respond to ads[0], or like in 2016 when Facebook started trying to intuit people's race based on their behavior[1]. See? Decades ago!

----

In actual seriousness, I don't have any reason to doubt the author's intention, but I think this is a type of gaslighting, whether purposeful or not. I've brought this issue up before in regards to privacy debates -- but the conversations around surveillance have a habit of suddenly shifting.

Before Snowden, people who worried about the NSA were paranoid, and the response was, 'we're not doing any of that, and we don't care about your data anyway.' After Snowden, the comments became 'why is anyone surprised, and it's not even a big deal anyway because it's just metadata and metadata has always been fine to collect.'

Before the Alexa/Google Home contractor scandals, it would not have been hard to find people on HN that argued that 'the controls are perfect, and it's just a computer listening to you, and people who worry about this are just paranoid.' After the scandals broke, it was 'of course you need human reviewers to train AI, this is a nothingburger that everyone already knew about.'

So try to remember adgineer's comment, because a few years from now when it turns out Facebook is doing microtargeting based on really invasive Oculus data, the story is suddenly going to be, 'this was consistent with our privacy policy, of course everyone knew what they were getting into, it's not a big deal.'

[0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/faceb...

[1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/faceb...

tripzilch7• 7 years ago

Also, ethics.

Oh really? Can you give me an example of a decision actually driven by ethics? That is the decision was NOT made based on how much compute it spends, the material impact on delivery value, or because of meaningful business value, or whatever.

Because I find it hard to believe that FB makes decisions based on ethics, instead of merely highlighting otherwise motivated decisions that seemingly happen to align with ethical values.

Like, that the ethical aspect actually caused the decision to be different than what it had been if it were made purely based on business, money or resources.

I mean I could be wrong, and you could give a single example of FB being motivated by ethics, and I would be wrong.

sli2• 7 years ago

So... is anyone actually surprised by this?

dvtrn• 7 years ago

Does it count that I want to be surprised by it?

haditab• 7 years ago

I was surprised that they were not already doing this.

dang2• 7 years ago

We changed the url from https://uploadvr.com/facebook-ads-vr/ to an article that links to the relevant announcement.

just_myles• 7 years ago

Well you have the option of not signing in with your facebook account. Good thing about this market is that there are other options out there and presumably more coming in the future.

throwaway485442• 7 years ago

Yes, I have to give credit there for allowing it to be an option at least.

jammygit3• 7 years ago

Amazing how invasive such an expensive product is. I sold mine 2-3 years ago and still feel icky about when I read the privacy policy

welluu89• 7 years ago

But the it would be used for FB ads? So, what's the difference really?

If Logged into Facebook, Oculus VR Data Will Now Be Used for Ads

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