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Comment by jdc | Hacker News Reader

How about the freedom to use your property, electronic or otherwise, as you see fit?

Oculus isn’t secretive about the cloud account requirement. When you go to buy it, you’re buying it as Facebook chose to build it. And once you have the hardware you own it. But they aren’t required to sell you a device that works the way you wish it did.

If the pitch here was that vendors were lying about cloud/connectivity requirements, and we wanted legislation to prevent them from obscuring the truth, I’d be 100% down. Thankfully, we already have those laws.

Just because they aren't secretive about it doesn't mean it's an okay thing to do. Doing a bad thing out in the open might make it shameless, but it doesn't make it acceptable.

I’m saying it’s not clear to me why it’s a bad thing. It’s clear that you want them to design a different VR headset, but I wish IKEA made a different depth Kallax shelf and yet I’m not looking to make it a legal requirement.

Designing things around safety is something IKEA already has to do, and regulations about materials, heights of products, etc all play into that.

The IKEA bookshelf doesn't violate your privacy nor have an always on connection to a much more powerful entity always looking to make another buck.

The IKEA bookshelf isn't an avenue for your attention and your time - whereas things like gambling (considered addictive and regulated by almost everyone) are - and we regulate them heavily.

Why would Facebook with its billions be exempt from regulation? It's not something we "want" - its to make their product basically useful without the IKEA subscription service to make sure your shelf doesn't fall apart every month.

The law says IKEA has to use certain non-flammable materials on mattresses etc to protect the individual.

Along the same lines, the law should say Facebook can't sell hardware that forces you to give up all your privacy to protect the individual.

This is not "I want Facebook to design a headset with blue stripes", this is "I don't want to be forced to give up my private data to use a product that would work just fine without".

I think the difference between the two should be obvious.

I have a Quest 1 and having a Facebook account was not a condition when I bought it, but they’re going to require my Oculus account to be converted into a Facebook account that I don’t want to have

I agree that this is undesirable, and if the pitch here were to mandate that sellers enumerate ongoing requirements of their item at time of sale, I’d back that.

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