Invaded Privacy👁️👁️
Oculus gives Facebook all its data com October💽, Apple digs its heels in 🍎, and there's a new bat in town🦇
Private Eye in the Sky
Six years after the acquisition of Oculus went through, Facebook is making it mandatory for new buyers of its head-mounted devices to log into the platform with Facebook accounts while existing users can continue to use their existing accounts until 2023. After this deadline, old devices will still be usable without using a Facebook login, but the functionality of some APPs might be limited or non-existent.
While the company says Oculus customers will be able to have a VR profile that’s distinct from the one on Facebook, many fear that linking the two in the background will give the company a lot of power when it comes to customizing and controlling their experience in VR in the future. With Facebook being an advertising-driven platform, most concerns come from the company’s future ability to serve targeted ads to users inside experiences like Horizon, Facebook’s VR version of Roblox that leans heavily on social mechanics. Oculus shared user data with Facebook in the past, but now that the latter is in charge of everything user-specific in the Oculus Store, the absorption will become absolute.
The move of integrating Facebook systems as the de facto social communication instruments inside Oculus VR experiences is a smart product move that is sure to increase retention for the platform, decrease user defection to competitors and consolidate other Facebook proprieties, but the real-name policy enforced on the social network means that your real identity will be shared with everyone on the platform, whether you like it or not. While the company committed to providing a safe experience for everyone and all, enforcing these policies in VR is new territory for everyone involved, so I expect holes to be patched as they show up.
This is somewhat worrisome considering that most ideas involving the eventual creation of a multiverse involve XR in some capacity and Facebook owning the largest platform early on. At this point in time, it’s impossible to see all the synergies coming out of combining the gathered VR data, ambient living room sounds, and personal information. Some people at Facebook might have a directional idea on this but I’d ponder to guess that they’re using the ‘gather data now, see how it will prove useful in the future’ method.
A Few Bad Apples
Apple’s action of terminating developer accounts for Epic Games last week just goes to show that the company continues to be oblivious to the requests of developers and consumers alike. In the meantime, gamers and other companies that find themselves in similar situations rallied behind Epic in boycotting the iPhone creator, making a big dent in Apple’s image as a company that focuses on the consumer; the fact that they hit a two trillion-dollar valuation recently doesn’t help their case either. As I said last week, what will happen when the Apple fanboys are overrun by the ‘others’? Which companies need to be part of an anti-Apple alliance in order to overcome the gravitational pull of the company?
At this point, it’s not exactly clear how this will play out. Will Apple remember they’re worth two trillion dollars and realize the bad press is hurting them more than they initially imagined? Will the lawsuit settle things out? Will developers pick up arms? Will the government report coming out next month provide a decisive blow? My thoughts are that it will be a combination of all of these leading Apple to change its pricing practices to a model that’s more suited for the times we live in. Until then, we’re just going to have to deal with the juvenile attacks thrown by Epic and Apple doing well in not lowering themselves to that level.
On another side, an interesting development came to light last week in the form of a European patent submission made by Apple recently. The patent goes to explain how a game store, executed and rendered on a remote server would have its video output streamed to a computing device over 5G networks. This is patent talk for cloud gaming, the exact services that Apple banned from the AppStore in the form of xCloud a few weeks ago, and Stadia before that.
Of course, companies file patents that they don’t end up using all the time. But on the other hand, cloud gaming would be a logical addition and natural evolution to Apple Arcade. This move would also be on-brand with old Apple, the Apple that looked to the market’s needs and tried to create a win-win-win situation for themselves, developers, and consumers alike. This would mean that Apple is not delusional like everyone appears to be thinking right now, just late to the game. Honestly, I don’t know which Steve would prefer if he was still around…
A lot of ink and podcast ‘tape’ was used over the past weeks discussing the reopening of universities around the world. In the meantime, Google has been acting in the background, disrupting the education system as we know it. The 6-month course provided by the tech giant will train people for in-demand jobs in a fraction of the time and for a fraction of the cost with the intent of separating economic security from college degrees. Considering how out of hand pricing has become at top universities in the US and given that Google can put together a solid program and follow up with hiring opportunities, I expect enrollments to be flowing in, come admission day 🎓🎓
The on-again-off-again IPO of Airbnb is on again for the end of the year with a Confidential Submission already in place. After a series of layoffs, the plan to postpone it for a future time was understandable, not a lot of vacationing going on right now, but the company is now betting on the fact that once people start traveling again they will do so over smaller distances closer to home, with the intent of discovering nature and supporting small businesses at the same time. With the stock market reaching new heights, bookings up to being only 30% down YoY in May, and Airbnb rentals available even in the most remote and isolated of places, this period should benefit the business; ‘should’ is the keyword here 🧳🏡🛏️
Pocket.Watch will be creating a new IP and mobile game around a six-year-old Youtube child star. It was a matter of time until gaming companies leveraged the personas of YouTube influencers after that of reality stars, but this particular one has a very immoral aspect surrounding it. The numbers around Diana’s persona are just staggering, not just for a six-year-old, but for any channel on the platform: she’s on 14! different channels with a total of 143M subscribers and 5B monthly views. The thought of a kid this age creating this much content is sickening, to say the least, let’s see how much time it will take regulators to consider this form of parent pressure as child abuse. My guess is: a lot 💰🤮
Only in theaters in ?0?1…
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