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Oculus social features now require a linked Facebook account

nalex66
MVP
MVP
Apparently, starting today, Oculus social features (friends list, parties, visiting people's Oculus Homes) will now require a linked Facebook account. This was already the case for some apps like Venues, and some features, like accessing your phone's camera roll in the Quest gallery. Going forward, new social features will demand a Facebook account, and now existing features will too.

Starting today, when you choose to log into
Facebook from the Oculus Platform, you’ll be able to access new social
features that make it easier for you to connect with other people,
including:

  • Chats, so you can message your Oculus friends in or out of the headset with quick responses to hop into games together
  • Join your friends
    in VR directly from any device with links that open to where your
    friends are within an app, and see the most popular destinations where
    people are playing in VR
  • User-created Events, so you can organize meetups or multiplayer games with friends
  • Share photos, videos, and livestreaming to Facebook, allowing you to share your favorite moments to Facebook Groups from VR
  • Parties that any of your Oculus friends can join (previously parties were only invite-only)
  • Messenger friends can easily join you in VR when you send them links to join you where you’re playing

As
these changes roll out and we make it easier for people to connect and
build communities in VR, we’ll ask people to log into Facebook from the
Oculus Platform to use both the new social features above, as well as
existing social features like joining parties, adding friends, and
visiting other people’s Homes. These features are already powered by
Facebook, since Oculus is part of the Facebook family of apps. And now
first-party social interactions on the Oculus Platform will be backed by
Facebook identity, allowing us to help keep people safer in VR as we
grow the social VR ecosystem.


Personally, I'm not excited to see this, but I guess it's not surprising. I've never had a FB account, and haven't been interested in creating one, but we'll see how it goes--the obvious answer is to create one just for Oculus-related activity and not populate it with a lot of personally identifying information.

DK2, CV1, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Quest 3.


Try my game: Cyclops Island Demo
180 REPLIES 180

I have a Facebook account but very seldom use it. So far I've just shut down apps that ask for a Facebook link but was going to make an exception for Horizon. If it's now required for several apps, I may do what nalex suggested and create an account just for Oculus use, with no personal info at all on it.

I just feel I want to keep friends and family stuff separate from Oculus stuff for now. Maybe that will change in the future.

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
 As Zenbane suggests. Forget Oculus now it's FACEBOOK VR. I think this was mentioned by me and others a year or so back in jest, the transformation is finally complete. I get the feeling lots of people are not going to be happy about this. Precisely Kojack.

saulut4a4nt6.gif


System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.

RuneSR2
Grand Champion
I actually do not have a Facebook account - never did - don't plan to get one 😉

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

kojack
MVP
MVP
I don't mind if certain new facebook apps or features require facebook accounts (might be annoying, but not a major problem). To me the big issue here is that Facebook is removing features that existing users have, which is effectively punishing them for not contributing to ad views.




 I get the feeling lots of people are not going to be happy about this. Precisely Kojack.

saulut4a4nt6.gif


No, that's a shout of joy.
My facebook account reaction is closer to:
1bujnv2pfk7j.gif

Author: Oculus Monitor,  Auto Oculus Touch,  Forum Dark Mode, Phantom Touch Remover,  X-Plane Fixer
Hardware: Threadripper 1950x, MSI Gaming Trio 2080TI, Asrock X399 Taich
Headsets: Wrap 1200VR, DK1, DK2, CV1, Rift-S, GearVR, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Reverb G2

I think we should have known it.  It is a big deal and we all know there is no need to do this.

Many of our customers will not use Oculus hardware because of the Facebook association.  Oculus just think they now have enough of the market that they can drop this stink bomb.

You air a view that they don't agree with - you're out.
Big PC, all the headsets, now using Quest 3



 As Zenbane suggests. Forget Oculus now it's FACEBOOK VR. I think this was mentioned by me and others a year or so back in jest, the transformation is finally complete. I get the feeling lots of people are not going to be happy about this. Precisely Kojack.





If Facebook came out with a VR headset 3 years ago it would have died an instant death with most people.  Sure a few mums and kids would have bought it, but hmmm....
Big PC, all the headsets, now using Quest 3

RattyUK
Trustee
I do have a facebook account, I used to play a couple of the farming games until about 4 years ago...  Hibernated the account, made sure it was 'secured' (yet still have had about 5 notifications of 'unable to access') and it stays mothballed so far 🙂
I think it was the use of Flash cookies that finally made me go "blah!" and shut it down, not wanting persistent cookies tracking every internet move in order to feed me advertising I don't want!
PC info: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X - Sapphire 7900XTX - 32GB DDR4 4000 - 3 NVMe + 3SATA SSD - Quest 2 & 3


kojack said:

I don't mind if certain new facebook apps or features require facebook accounts (might be annoying, but not a major problem). To me the big issue here is that Facebook is removing features that existing users have, which is effectively punishing them for not contributing to ad views.


This is a good point, for me it's not so much about whether we should think of the company as Oculus or Facebook, it's about how changes are forced on people in order to benefit the company, possibly at the expense of the user.

If Facebook account linking remains limited to Facebook social apps then fair enough, I can definitely live with it, and as I say, I was kind of looking forward to trying out Horizon with my (pretty much dormant) Facebook account with a few select family members. Please though, don't introduce linking for Rift or Quest use globally, or for Oculus forum use!

(YouTube rant to follow)
Similar thing happened with YouTube app on my tablet and Sony Android TV a while back, an app update removed the ability to sign-off once you'd signed on, you can go incognito, but you can't sign off. The TV allows the original version of the app that came with the TV to be re-installed but not the tablet.

Recommended YouTube vids are never vids that I'd choose to view but are always vids that YouTube can monetize, particularly music channels that lead to promotion of their music service. Every time I say I'm not interested in a music channel, it's replaced with another music channel recommendation. When you're signed-off, you just get recommendations based on your history alone.

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
Interesting times we live in eh? If Orwell was still around he should write another book.


System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.

RattyUK
Trustee


Interesting times we live in eh? If Orwell was still around he should write another book.



2024: 40 Years After...   "Big Brother is not just watching you, listening to you, but is following you everywhere you go"
Tag line is a bit long though 🙂

PC info: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X - Sapphire 7900XTX - 32GB DDR4 4000 - 3 NVMe + 3SATA SSD - Quest 2 & 3