Can you not just make a throw away account?
I was going to get a Quest for Star Wars Squadrons until this came out. I don't care how much more the Vive is or how many features it's behind. Not worth reactivating FB for it.
I also know someone who wanted to change their last name (their current one is already fake) and the system didn't let them without sending an ID.
[0] https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=1016165...
It was probably two months before my account was flagged for "suspicious activity" and asked that I submit a photo of a government-issued ID, which I never obliged.
However, now the create a new account page says there’s an existing disabled account with this email address, but the account support portal says one doesn’t exist! Top notch engineering. Luckily I have my IG account for Messenger login, but I can’t use it for desktop sign-on’s which is pretty dumb.
We made a Facebook account for Marcelo a few years back as a joke. One day a couple years in, we could no longer log into his account without proving his identity. We probably tripped some internal flags because it was being logged into by several IPs that also had their own Facebook accounts is my guess, that or someone not in on the joke reported Marcelo. Either way, Marcelo can't use Facebook anymore... A small inconvenience in our case, but this is definitely something that can and does happen to fake accounts.
Annoyingly, someone/somebot made a full mirror of my Facebook account one day and sent me a friend request as well as several of my friends and family. I reported it and eventually got back a response that the account was not in violation of any rules. That was years ago and I had forgotten about it until just now. Just checked today and it seems it's actually gone, but it was very creepy at the time.
Currently there is no reason to believe that Facebook should be trusted for anything (based on their past actions) or that the current regulatory environment (both US and EU) is effective at discouraging and punishing violations.
Wasn't this part of the settlement with the FTC for about 5 billion dollars? I'll agree with you it evidently is not enough to really deter Facebook but I wouldn'T call it nothing, that was one of the largest fines ever handed out.
Same in Europe, Google has taken significant fines. Those companies are not untouchable any more. And yeah I don't trust facebook that much either but I don't think they'll blatantly ignore the law intentionally.
Also don't forget that there is quite a social factor to VR and they are pretty much going in the "single player only usage without FB account direction".
They legally require you to give them honest/correct personal information.
Practically maybe.
But there is all the pairing with phone etc. requirement.
There are also all the information they likely will collect about usage patters, interactions and your PC. So if you don't also use a isolated throwaway PC/console account and don't use social features you can be sure they will be able to somewhat link your information anyway.
It not just about forcing increased FB marked share.
It's also about an additional source of information they can link and combine.
(Due to GDPR they are quite restrict about what data Oculus can share with the rest of FB.)
If you really want to use a throwaway account and have a chance to escape their surveillance engine, use it on a separate machine, VPN'd to a separate network (where none of your real traffic ends up) and do not do anything on that machine that can be correlated to your real activity (no playing with friends for example).