This morning Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced they’re dropping mandatory Facebook accounts for using their Quest virtual reality headsets.
“You won’t need a Facebook account to log into Quest starting next month,” Zuckerberg said. “We’re rolling out new Meta accounts tha you can use with our VR headsets instead.”
He added, “This will give everyone more choice about how you show up in the metaverse.”
The official Meta Quest VR social media noted the change with the message “You asked, we listened.”
Popular VR YouTuber Nathie immediately replied asking for clarification as to the difference between a Facebook account and a Meta account.
After Facebook acquired Oculus, they later rebranded Facebook proper to “Meta,” which eventually got Oculus and its headsets rebranded to simply “Meta”, like Meta Quest.
Since then any separation of Meta, formerly Oculus, has been slowly eroded as the company and its products are fully integrated into the Facebook/Meta ecosystem – and ultimately their content moderation.
This is a point of contention for Meta Quest VR gamers and content creators due to a previous stance from Facebook that having negative strikes on your Facebook account could get your Oculus / Quest account and purchased content removed, permanently.
As with most social media policy enforcement – we likely won’t get clarification as to how different a Meta account is from a Facebook account. The other remaining question is will Quest VR users have to associate their new Meta accounts with a Facebook account.
