Meta bought Oculus VR technology in 2014. The attempt to make Meta Quest a mainstream hit cost $8.3 billion this year alone. Despite the lack of enthusiasm from gamers, Mark Zuckerberg does not plan to give up. Since the end of 2020, Oculus VR rebranded as Reality Labs, has accumulated losses of around $50 billion. These are not final amounts; the latest results are even worse than in the first quarter 2024.
Despite the obvious lack of success, Meta is neither giving up nor even slowing down. Efforts in this technology unrelated to gaming have become the subject of jokes, such as Mark Zuckerberg’s infamous VR selfie. The entire Metaverse concept is currently rarely mentioned, although there is no indication that Meta plans to abandon it.
What fer0n probably was hinting at (and I agree with): Yeah, there are some people, especially concentrated in bubbles like Lemmy, who care a lot about privacy, security, ownership (soft and hard) and all that good stuff.
But if, for example, Meta releases a product for price x and a privacy-conscious company releases functionally the same product, but with a truly open system, for 200 bucks more, most people outside our bubble (and even a lot inside) will buy the Meta product.
Why?
Because they don’t care about anything but short-term functionality. And, in a lof of minds, if they’ll get the same functionality for cheaper elsewhere, they’d be pretty stupid to not buy that one.
Folks in general couldn’t give less of a fuck about their privacy and ethics in products and services they buy and use. Usability, Features and Service reign supreme.
That’s an counterfactual argument, because there is a third option: not buy at all, which is what people are doing.
And it’s largely because Facebook, even outside of Lemmy circles. Heck, the sale of the original Quest was even forbidden for quite some time in large parts of Europe because of shady business practiceses of Facebook. This is not a privacy bubble fringe problem, at least not in Europe.