The US Internet company Meta wants to lift the Facebook requirement for the use of its virtual reality glasses Meta Quest 2 in August. Meta now announced this in a blog entry. “If you don’t want to use your Facebook and/or Instagram accounts in VR, that’s up to you,” the company writes. Instead, users will create a meta account and a meta horizon profile in the future, which can be independent of the previous log-ins for other services of the meta group. In addition to Facebook, Meta also includes Instagram and WhatsApp.
After the Facebook compulsion that the company introduced for the use of its VR glasses in October 2020, there was an outcry from previous VR users and Facebook critics. In Germany, the compulsion exacerbated the dispute between Facebook and the Federal Cartel Office, which had previously taken action against the merging of user data from different sources. In the meantime, several courts, including the Federal Court of Justice, have dealt with it. Abuse proceedings by the Cartel Office have been initiated.
Since October 2020, Meta has been selling its VR glasses Oculus Quest 2, which new users can only use with a Facebook account. Critics see this as a violation of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which provides for a ban on coupling. The collection of personal data as a prerequisite for the conclusion of a purchase contract is therefore prohibited. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is now also dealing with the matter.
Facebook bought VR provider Oculus for $2 billion in 2014. The group no longer uses the Oculus brand for the glasses, the current device is called Meta Quest 2 and, according to market researcher IDC, has been sold almost 15 million times worldwide. Meta itself does not give any numbers. Just under three weeks ago, Meta gave an insight into its development laboratories and showed which prototypes the group is currently working on.
In Germany, Meta officially stopped the sale of the VR glasses Meta Quest 2 after the lawyers had dealt with it intensively, according to company circles. Since then, anyone who wants to buy glasses in this country has to have them imported from abroad. This is a setback for Meta, because Germany is one of the most important foreign markets for the company. By renaming Facebook to Meta, Zuckerberg has also made it clear that he sees the future of his business in the Metaverse. According to Meta, it will one day replace the mobile Internet.
The company describes the metaverse as a collection of three-dimensional virtual spaces that are connected to one another and in which people move in the form of avatars. These rooms cannot currently be used without VR glasses. So far, Germany has been a blank spot in Zuckerberg’s budding metaverse.
The end of the Facebook compulsion could help the company in its dispute with the antitrust authorities. However, the company does not want to confirm that sales of the VR glasses Meta Quest 2 will soon start in Germany. In fact, the cartel office should continue to monitor the future handling of the data.
In the blog entry, Meta announces a completely new login for the group’s VR services, which will also affect all previous users. “When we announced that Meta Quest would require a Facebook login, we received a lot of feedback from the Quest community,” it reads. “We took this feedback into account when designing a new meta account structure that gives people flexibility and control.”
New users and those who have had to merge their Oculus account with the Facebook account in the past should now create a new meta account and then create a meta horizon profile. Users who have not yet merged their Oculus account with Facebook can continue to use their old account until the end of the year, but will then have to create a new one. The meta account can then be connected to the Facebook and Instagram accounts in an account center. In the end, that would be the prerequisite, for example, to invite Instagram followers to a joint VR game or to chat with Facebook friends in VR via Messenger.
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