Facebook’s VR isn’t about gaming, it’s about data — surprise, surprise
Why does Facebook make virtual reality headsets?
Facebook acquired VR company Oculus in 2014 foran estimated US$2.3 billion. But where Oculus originally aimed at gamers, Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg wants VR for social media.
At the same event last year, Zuckerberg said Facebook sees VR as a pathway to a new kind of “social computing platform” using the enhanced feeling of “presence” that VR affords. For Facebook, the introduction of VR-based computing will be like the leap from text-based command line interfaces to the graphical user interfaces we use today.
This may well be right. VR affords a strong feeling of embodied presence that offers new possibilities for entertainment, training, learning, and connecting with others at a distance.
But if the VR future is the one Facebook is “working in the lab” on, it will function via the company’s existing social computing platform and business model of extracting data to deliver targeted advertisements.
Virtual reality collects real data
A VR headset collects data about the user, but also about the outside world. This is one of the keyethical issuesof emerging “mixed reality” technologies.
As American VR researcherJeremy Bailenson has written:
The way you move your body can beused to identify you, like a fingerprint, so everything you do in VR could be traced back to your individual identity.
Facebook’s Oculus Quest headsets also use outward-facing cameras to track and map their surroundings.
In late 2019Facebook saidthey “don’t collect and store images or 3D maps of your environment on our servers today.” Note the wordtoday, which tech journalistBen Lang notesmakes clear the company is not ruling out anything in the future.
Virtual reality leads to augmented reality
Facebook wants to collect this data to facilitate its plans for augmented reality (AR).
Where VR takes a user to a fully virtual environment, AR combines virtual elements with our real surroundings.
Last year Facebook unveiled the Live Maps application, a vision of an expansive surveillance apparatus presumably powered by AR glasses and data collected from Oculus Insight. Live Maps will provide many minor conveniences for Facebook users, like letting you know you’ve left your keys on the coffee table.
Now, Facebook has announced its first steps towards making this a reality:Project Aria. This will involve people wearing glasses-like sensors around Seattle and the San Francisco Bay area, to collect the data to build what Wired co-founder Kevin Kelly calls“the mirrorworld,” the next big tech platform.
People are rightly concerned about the ethical implications of this kind of data extraction. Alongside Project Aria, Facebook launched itsResponsible Innovation Principlespage, and they’re already quick to emphasize that faces and license plates will be blurred in this data collection.
As we haveargued elsewhere, framing questions about VR and AR surveillance in terms of individual privacy suits companies like Facebook very well. That’s because their previous failings are actually in the (un)ethical use of data (as in the case ofCambridge Analytica) and theirasymmetric platform power.
We need more than just ‘tech ethics’
Groups like theXR Safety Initiativerecognize these emerging issues and are beginning to work onstandards, guidelines, and privacy frameworksto shape VR and AR development.
Many emerging technologies encounter what is known asthe Collingridge problem: it is hard to predict the various impacts of a technology until it is extensively developed and widely used, but by then it is almost impossible to control or change.
We see this playing out right now, in efforts toregulate Google and Facebook’s power over news media.
As David Watts argues, big tech designs its own rules of ethics toavoid scrutiny and accountability:
What might the regulation of Facebook’s VR look like? Germany offers one such response – their antitrust regulations have resulted in Facebookwithdrawing the headset from sale. We can only hope the technology doesn’t become too entrenched to be changed or challenged.
But regulation has not always stopped Facebook in the past, who paid outUS$550 millionto settle a lawsuit for breaching biometric privacy laws. In the multi-billion dollar world of big-tech, it’s all a cost of doing business.
Another question we might ask ourselves is whether Facebook’s virtual-reality future and others like it really need to exist. Maybe there are other ways to avoid forgetting your keys.
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This article is republished fromThe ConversationbyMarcus Carter, Senior Lecturer in Digital Cultures, SOAR Fellow.,University of SydneyandBen Egliston, Postdoctoral research fellow, Digital Media Research Centre,Queensland University of Technologyunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.
Story byThe Conversation
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