Comment by beshrkayali
6 years ago
Unpopular opinion: although I hate how oculus sold out to Facebook (possibly backstab of the decade, after the initial crowdfunding), and although I’m a strong advocate of leaving Facebook regardless of their VR BS, there’s really nothing wrong with them requiring a Facebook account to use it. I have no idea how much the manufacturing/R&D costs of Quest are, but I doubt it makes sense for Facebook to sell it this cheap without requiring users to link/create a Facebook account. Don’t expect stuff to be free/cheap for no reason.
My point is that regulating this space of tech will only lead to less innovation. There’s an extremely easy solution that every single one of us can do: don’t buy it, don’t be tempted by the cheap price Facebook is offering. I closed my Fb account ~5 years ago now (after being on it for about 10 years) and I’m very tempted to buy Quest 2, but I won’t. If enough people do this, what ever scummy plan Facebook is weaving will fail, but even if it doesn’t, you’d be out of it.
> regulating this space of tech will only lead to less innovation
You might be ultimately right about this, but you certainly haven't proved it. A common theme is a large company will use its leverage to make a product that is better and cheaper than the alternatives, demolish their competition, and the sit on their laurels for the next decade, with the exception of a few updates that provide vendor specific features to encourage vendor lock-in.
In short, Occulus could become the new IE 5/6.
I wasn’t really trying to prove that point, I also didn’t think it needs proving. But your point somewhat does it I think. There are many examples in tech specifically over the last couple of decades on how free unregulated competition was the reason why we had accelerated development, lower cost, and “democratizations” of tools and information. As long as there’s no regulation preventing others from coming up with a better solution (however “better” is defined), there’s no reason why others can’t come up with a viable alternative. Friendster -> MySpace -> Facebag. IE -> FF and Chrome. Nokias -> iPhone and co, and so on.