Germany begins legal action against Facebook for their Oculus login requirements | Hacker News Reader

Germany begins legal action against Facebook for their Oculus login requirements

vrfinal.com

92 pointsvrfinal15 comments

What I don't understand from Facebook's side is why even do something like this!??

First, it's obvious that this upsets customers. It makes many uncomfortable. Secondly, its obvious that this will make governments curious given the reach and power FB has.

Besides being out of touch with reality or just ignorant, I really try to understand what people at Facebook are thinking these days?

They have some of the smarter people one would think.

> What I don't understand from Facebook's side is why even do something like this!??

A bit more secure logins, increase sign ups (many are leaving facebook - now they have a reason not to), and most important of all - User tracking tied to their own facebook accounts.

What if people are using it for work stuff?

It's becoming a big thing in some industries.

Facebook for work is a thing that exists.

Yeah, someone in our company was convinced to sign the department up for it - but noone uses it because promotions and bonuses shouldn't be based on social media "likes".

That's a big problem internally at Facebook these days friends told me - where value of employees work is reduced on how many likes they get on that platform. It seems pretty toxic.

Zuck never asks why, he just collects whatever he can.

People make jokes he's a robot or something, but I think for him company is everything. All the money but no respect earned, and his "status" ends at $10m house and whoever wants to use him for their goals. Hence the paranoid need to have FB stay on top, otherwise he'll end up at the dumpster bin of history. Collect all the data, copy all the competitors.

Compare with Elon Musk who is also kinda asshole, but has a vision and charm.

Control.

Even at the lowest level of management, people will do things that enhance their control and power at the expense of goodwill or even functioning of the business.

They believe that the value-add of Facebook and Horizon will cause enough users to buy the new, cheaper headset vs the people who will not buy it. I don't know if they are right (I want the OASIS as much as anyone but not from Facebook, unfortunately), but people who use Facebook probably don't care all that much. And there's no way they'd make their new social VR space work without a Facebook account (they allowed that on Instagram and now seem to be trying to set up a bunch of interoperability stuff for things like Messenger).

What about the Apple sign in requirement for all iOS apps that have a social login? Is that not a much bigger fish to fry?

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#sig...

That's not the same thing at all. Apple requires Sign In with Apple for all applications that have another social sign-in provider, but if you don't use Facebook or Google sign-in, you don't have to use Apple either (and many companies chose to remove their other SSO options rather than implement Apple's since they couldn't get user's real email addresses). Furthermore, Apple hasn't changed the Apple ID sign-in requirements since the launch of the iPhone (you have to sign in to access Apple services, but if you don't want to and just use your phone for calling and web browsing, you don't have to), whereas Facebook has said you will lose functionality in your original Quest in two years if you do not sign up for Facebook.

There is an argument to be made that I should be able to run native apps on my iPad without having to sign up for an Apple ID, but that's always been the deal since the device existed, and I knew that when buying it.

That is the definition of "anti-competitive behavior." It's literally one of the textbook examples they give in antitrust 101.

1. The customer can choose sign in with Apple or not. There is no choice with a mandatory FB login.

2. Customers prefer sign in with Apple. If you go on the Oculus subreddit you find nothing other than complains about the Facebook login.

I wish Google had bought Oculus. Never understood why would Facebook was interested in their tech; Unlike Instagram & WhatsApp.

Nah, Google would close it after two years.

I have had cancelling my FB account in my todo list for a while. I finally got to it yesterday, only to realize that it would make managing the two Oculus Quests difficult or impossible.

Instead I spent ten minutes trying to make my account as limited as possible.

I hope the German government wins this.

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