That's true, but then, I'm not saying that the Quest is an offline-only device without cloud features. I'm saying that Meta didn't invest $63 billion just to create a "suction pipe for hoovering up that data". They have much bigger ambitions than that.

If they have other ambitions, those ambitions haven't materialised yet. Selling decent hardware at a loss and profiting from hoovering up user data is all Facebook has accomplished with the Quest so far from what I can see.

Did they back off of that? I have an older oculus I can dig out if I can safely walk its data off from Meta

The last time I complained about this someone mentioned they "only" force a Meta account and not a whole Facebook identity.

That's a distinction without a difference to me. I will not be purchasing hardware that requires a cloud account. Especially not a peripheral.

Xbox is pretty popular while requiring a Microsoft account.

Since we are in this thread - Apple requires you to use an Apple account on laptops, phones, watches, tablets, etc.