Meta’s services have almost exclusively been about finding new ways to gather user data. This is especially true of the company’s hardware. If it’s able to provide an additional service at the same time, as was the case with the now-defunct Portal surveillance gear smart speakers, all the better. It should come as no surprise that the company’s VR kit will be the next Meta-owned hardware to start reporting back to the mothership.
Well, reporting back… more. The Meta Quest and its successors have always shared some information with Meta but it has been confined to info required to keep your virtual reality hardware ticking over correctly. That’ll ramp up shortly to include “anonymized data” about how you (and everyone else) use the company’s VR hardware.
The new Meta
The data up for collection, according to various privacy policies, includes audio and other voice-related data, hand and tracking data, and health information like calories burned and other movement info. Some details on your surroundings, captured by the headset’s external cameras, will be uploaded to Meta’s servers. Finally, the virtual events you attend and any voice interactions you might have with the Quest and its companions will also be collected.
Don’t expect that your data will be turned to any especially nefarious purposes, unless ‘capitalism’ is high on your list of hatred. It’ll instead “improve the hardware and software that powers your experiences with Meta VR Products.” We suspect some of it will find its way into advertisers’ hands so those faceless corporate entities can better target you with prescient advertising. Meta’s being silent about anything along those lines as usual.
If we were being super paranoid, using a virtual reality headset (or anything with a camera) in a home would be a neat way of figuring out what brands are already present there. Advertisers would probably be very interested in that data. Whether it’s legal for them to find that data out is another question.