With a press release, Meta has formalized some important changes in terms of access to the Metaverse. including the birth of Meta accounts, the conversion of Oculus profiles into Meta Horizon, that of friends into contacts, and many new features for privacy.
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In the course of a note released by the CEO of Meta, former Facebook Inc, Mark Zuckerberg, it was made known that, from next August, to use the Quest viewers, it will no longer be necessary to associate a Facebook account, thus resolving both the criticisms born within the users (e.g. on the occasion of the launch of the Quest 2 viewer), that the doubts relating to competition raised by some national authorities (e.g. in Germany). The news, however, do not stop there.
The long press release at Menlo Park, after having stated that it is still possible to remove (during the viewer configuration phase) the Facebook account if it is joined to that of Oculus, took the opportunity to formalize the birth Meta accounts, which can be used with Quest headsets. Specifically, to open an account of this type, new Meta VR users will be able to use Instagram or Facebook, as well as email (in which case, the connected experiences relating to Instagram and Facebook can always be activated later).
If you are already a user of the Meta VR platform, you can proceed to configure the new type of account using Facebook or activate the connected experiences using the Instagram one, from the Account Center, accessible from the viewer, from the Oculus mobile app, or from the Meta website, generally used for the management of both accounts and connected experiences (just think of the synchronization of profiles) between Meta’s realities.
Once the Meta account has been created (multiple ones can be created), personal data, not made public, will be stored inside it, such as name, date of birth (essential, given that in Spain and South Korea the creation of the account is forbidden to anyone under 14, and elsewhere to anyone under 13), the telephone number, and the e-mail address. Still on the subject of personal data, once the Meta account is created, the previously purchased apps will be available again while, by using the App Sharing function, it will be possible to share the apps among multiple Meta accounts that may have been created.
Once the Meta account has been created, the next step, with the benefit of being able to use it not only in VR but also on the web, will be to create a Meta Horizon profile (replacing the Oculus one), personalizing it with data of the caliber of a public photo, of the name of the profile and an avatar, which can also be synchronized between the various Meta Horizon profiles, given that one can be created for each Meta account.
A further round of changes due to debut in August concerns contacts and privacy controls. In order to facilitate the sharing of updates and statuses, contacts will become followers: this will happen automatically for previous owners of an Oculus viewer, who – however – can always decide to remove some followers and not follow anyone. With regard to privacy, users will be able to choose to make their Horizon profile private (which will be the default for the range of 13-17 years), with the consequence that from the outside only the displayed name and that of the user will be seen. , the profile picture and its avatar, but not the list of followers, visible only to followers. In giving control over interactions in VR, perhaps to avoid unpleasant encounters, three settings will be provided, including the most permissive one (open to all), an intermediate one (friends and family), and the most restrictive of all (just me).