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Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by rl3 on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:00PM (#31815035)
>... but I think beyond that, deep down, he's just a nerd who wants to live in a VR dreamland to shut out the millions of people who call him a weird lizard.

I mean, in his defense he might be pretty normal by lizard standards, I don't know. Calling him weird just seems unnecessary in that context.

>He of course wants every human interaction to be monetizable by Facebook, total control of our dopamine channels, ...

I agree. It'd be a much better future for everyone if he'd just throw his advertising biz in the garbage. Apple is going to kick Meta's ass in the long run just by virtue of their privacy stance—which isn't all that great to begin with, but it sure does beat "our intent is to sell every iota of information we collect on you."

Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by ethbr0 on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:14PM (#31815265)
> Apple is going to kick Meta's ass in the long run just by virtue of their privacy stance

I think you're discounting (ha) the allure of free/cheap to people who don't have disposable income. Which is to say, most people.

Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by bee_rider on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:32PM (#31815534)
It'll be interesting to see where this goes. If VR becomes a big thing and we get to the point where an appreciable chunk of social interactions start to take place over it (huge if), the device would at least be as significant as your phone.

People in the US are willing to spend extra on the Apple phone. There's already drama over the stupid blue text/green text thing, imagine a world where you know that your social interactions with a Facebook user are snooped on. I think it could lead to some significant ostracization. Private party -- no Facebookers.

Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by germinalphrase on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:40PM (#31815636)
Reality shaping, not snooping, will be the primary concern.
Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by bee_rider on Monday June 20, 2022 @10:45PM (#31819228)
What's reality shaping and why will it be a concern?
Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by germinalphrase on Monday June 20, 2022 @11:51PM (#31819644)
There’s a Philip K Dick line that goes - “reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away”.

Reality shaping is like that - but coercive and in reverse. How much do I need to nudge your perceptual world with ubiquitous, desirable lizard-brain augmentations before you stop believing in reality?

Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by bee_rider on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @10:54PM (#31831525)
I mean, we already have religion, advertising, and "influencers" so I guess this is a current problem. With VR, at least it will be obvious when headset is on.
Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by germinalphrase on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @11:52PM (#31831850)
A problem as old as humankind.

Ideally, one would attempt to tie the user’s livelihood to the platform to keep them engaged.

Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by kmonsen on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:53PM (#31815808)
Isn't part of the reason people are spending on iPhone that they can signal wealth to friends? From what I remember Apple always sells more when then introduce new golden colors so people can show they have the new device.
Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by tjr225 on Monday June 20, 2022 @06:24PM (#31816943)
Have you ever been in the Apple ecosystem? Its not perfect but it beats anything else as far as UX is concerned.
Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by kmonsen on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @12:31AM (#31819902)
I have an iPhone and I like it. I have little need to update it even though it is almost 3 years old.

I also agree it is far from perfect but pretty good. Used to be on android but it was easier to use the same devices as my wife.

Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by bee_rider on Monday June 20, 2022 @10:42PM (#31819202)
I have never seen a gold iPhone in real life, even though more than half of my friends/family have iPhones. IIRC they did better overseas(?). Not sure.

I don't think iPhones signal much (in the US at least) -- they have like 50% market share here.

Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by amelius on Monday June 20, 2022 @05:50PM (#31816531)
Inside VR you can have a phone with diamonds for no extra $.

Thinking about it, those diamond-lacking iPhones look quite shabby, already!

Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by intrasight on Monday June 20, 2022 @09:32PM (#31818705)
Wow. I've just had a glance at the not too distant future!
Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by rl3 on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:23PM (#31815376)
You're probably right, though I don't think it all comes down to disposable income.

Laziness, apathy and network effects are perhaps equally powerful forces. After all, I continue to use Google and Instagram despite my knowing how the sausage is made there.

Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by FredPret on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:32PM (#31815533)
But there is zero money to be made out of people who have zero money.
Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by rl3 on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:47PM (#31815735)
>But there is zero money to be made out of people who have zero money.

That's not true. That's why credit exists. Selling poor people shit they can't afford with terrible terms is a long-standing American tradition.

When a debtor is unable to pay (often times through no fault of their own), the creditor eats the cost because their margins are good enough to allow for it. That effectively represents a wealth transfer between corporations providing the services and the corporations providing the credit.

Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by echelon on Monday June 20, 2022 @06:13PM (#31816836)
The creditor doesn't put a lien on the debtor's house, repossess their goods, or take them to court?

Obviously this happens with mortgages, cars, and other extremely high value things. IRS debts, student loan debts...

But what about credit cards? Don't they have mechanisms other than tanking your credit report? And if not, why don't poor indebted people simply default all the time to remove debt?

Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by rl3 on Monday June 20, 2022 @07:52PM (#31817840)
Sure, but you also can't squeeze blood from a stone.

That said, I was mostly talking credit cards, since that's what most tech services would fall under in a zero-money consumer situation.

>And if not, why don't poor indebted people simply default all the time to remove debt?

Some do, but having your credit ruined for seven years sucks for most people. Likewise the courts don't exactly smile upon those who run up huge debts with the intention of defaulting.

Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by kwizzt on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:40PM (#31815637)
I would argue there is money to be made out of people with zero money. Student loans are an example. Instead of zero money, they now have negative money. This is terrible ofc.
Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by germinalphrase on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:41PM (#31815647)
Zero money now - but one must be ready to skim the cream off their raw human potential.
Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by cyanydeez on Monday June 20, 2022 @06:57PM (#31817303)
You refer to poor people.

"You're forgetting the poor people"

Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by umanwizard on Monday June 20, 2022 @06:10PM (#31816798)
Facebook does not sell users’ information. It uses their information to target ads, which it sells.

You might also be against the latter, fine! That’s a perfectly reasonable position to hold. But don’t muddy the waters by calling it something fundamentally different.

Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by rl3 on Monday June 20, 2022 @07:36PM (#31817700)
>But don’t muddy the waters by calling it something fundamentally different.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46618582

"In total, it said the social network had special arrangements with more than 150 companies to share its members' personal data. Most of these, it said, were other tech firms, but the list also included online retailers, car-makers and media organisations, including the NYT itself, among others."

Suffice it to say Facebook's track record with PII is pretty terrible. At some point the word sell really becomes a matter of semantics.

Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by charcircuit on Monday June 20, 2022 @08:52PM (#31818366)
Again you are bumping the waters. Users were asked permission for Facebook to share their user data. Saying Facebook has a poor track record because they had a more open platform in the past isn't true. Now Facebook is more closed and locked down because giving people the option to share their information is apparently a bad thing according to the public.
Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by rl3 on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @02:55AM (#31820865)
I don't buy that narrative. As if things were somehow fine until the stupid public ruined it all.

Facebook is and always has been deep in adtech, which is fundamentally slimy. It's no surprise that led to a history littered with data privacy blunders.

>Again you are bumping the waters.

On the contrary, my chemistry knowledge is too poor to do such a thing.

Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by lettergram on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:28PM (#31815455)
Apple scans your iCloud for illicit photos and sends them to police. I don’t think Apple has any privacy stance worth recognizing.

https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/05/apple-icloud-photos-scanni...

Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by swatcoder on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:36PM (#31815595)
It may not be good enough, but I think we can acknowledge that caving to political pressure is a very different posture than building your entire business model around monetizing antiprivacy.
Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by rl3 on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:34PM (#31815564)
Right, but the comparison here is that Meta also does this, in addition to selling every iota of information they have you.

Content scanning is just an assumed part of every major tech platform these days. That of course doesn't necessarily make it right, but it still places Apple's privacy stance significantly ahead of Meta.

Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by murderfs on Monday June 20, 2022 @05:49PM (#31816524)
People keep repeating the refrain of Google/Facebook selling your data, but is there any evidence of a single case where this actually happened? They use your data, to let advertisers target specific subgroups of the population. The companies that you should be concerned about selling your data aren't the advertising companies, they're the financial companies that are literally selling your transaction data to those and other companies.
Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by rl3 on Monday June 20, 2022 @07:46PM (#31817787)
I think it's a rather common dysphemism used in context of targeted advertising. Monetizing user data—while not actually selling the data (in the literal sense of the term)—is considered by many to constitute having their data sold, albeit with a layer of indirection.

My understanding is that while this is certainly superior to your data being actually sold, privacy is nonetheless adversely affected in fairly significant ways.

Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by oneplane on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:37PM (#31815605)
Yep, just like Google, Dropbox, Box, Microsoft and pretty much anyone else who wants to store photos in the US.
Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by snowwrestler on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:49PM (#31815762)
One month later…

> Apple delays plans to roll out CSAM detection in iOS 15 after privacy backlash

https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/03/apple-csam-detection-delay...

Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by Rebelgecko on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:59PM (#31815871)
That article is talking about the on-device scanning which IIRC never actually rolled out. That's separate from the iCloud scanning which they still do.
Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by zdragnar on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:58PM (#31815860)
They poisoned the well by showing they were willing to do it in the first place.

Instead of the baseline being they probably are privacy first, now it is "carefully inspect every announcement to see if they are backtracking yet again"

I don't really envy their position; if I built a business that sold hardware and software and found out that customers were using my product to distribute child porn, I would probably be willing to abandon lesser principals too.

Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by planetsprite on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:33PM (#31815544)
There's a reconciliation, necessarily in a civil society, between promoting privacy and doing what's possible to stop child abuse. Should Apple allow child porn to be hosted on its cloud servers since that's the pro-privacy stance?
Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by ahtihn on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:49PM (#31815763)
I don't think they should knowingly allow it. On the other hand I don't think they should do anything about it proactively.
Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by bckr on Monday June 20, 2022 @05:06PM (#31815934)
> Should Apple allow [child abuse material] to be hosted on its cloud servers since that's the pro-privacy stance?

No they should not.

Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by ntoskrnl on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:04PM (#31815108)
I've never heard of any other lizard that eats Sweet Baby Rays. By lizard standards that's pretty weird.
Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by lvass on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:59PM (#31815866)
Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by mortenjorck on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:23PM (#31815387)
There's an alternate universe where Zuckerberg takes Yahoo's $1B offer for Facebook in 2006 (which Yahoo sells a decade later to Pinboard for $100k) and becomes more of an Elon Musk figure, investing in and running a handful of forward-thinking businesses.

Imagine Oculus becoming Meta without the Facebook baggage – a hardware-focused company with a major services play, but no adtech business.

Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by rl3 on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:38PM (#31815623)
>Imagine Oculus becoming Meta without the Facebook baggage – a hardware-focused company with a major services play, but no adtech business.

I think this was called Magic Leap. I don't know, I think I still prefer Rony Abovitz awkwardly dancing around in a space suit rather than Zuck.

Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by intrasight on Monday June 20, 2022 @09:36PM (#31818740)
There's only a hand-full of companies that can make the kind of investment that VR will require. FB is one of them. So is ByteDance.
Re:Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from... by germinalphrase on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:42PM (#31815665)
A cautionary tale - for a certain kind of person.