facebook To Track Facial Expressions On Virtual Reality Devices By Kimberley Watkins-Swenk
T
he Gift Of The Season. one of the big hits of last holiday season was the Oculus VR device. Both of my boys spent the vast majority of Christmas Day on their devices. I loved it because they were out of my hair and not fighting.
And guess what? There is nothing you can do about it at the moment besides not using these VR devices. Facebook is determined to make virtual reality mainstream (if it isn’t already) and collect data from those interactions.
I am not exactly sure how my youngest logged into my Facebook account via his Oculus VR account and started broadcasting his VR experience in real-time on my Facebook page, but he did. The funny thing is some of my friends started commenting on the live feed. “Great job, Kimberly!” Like I would ever play virtual reality ninja wars and broadcast it on my Facebook page.
Why do you ask? To make money by selling the information to people like myself. If I know your eyes spend more time in the upper left-hand corner, guess where I will place an ad? The upper left-hand corner. If I understand you scrunch your eyes when my ad appears, I need to make the ad easier to read. You, my friend, are the product.
And just so you know, you need a Facebook account to use Oculus, hence why my page was highjacked by a ninja warrior fighting ten-year-old. The Sneaky, Sneaky As with most things in life, nothing is free. This affordable, highly addictive, immensely entertaining experience has a cost. And it turns out the latest cost of this VR experience is losing some, or some would say, more, personal data. Data more intimate than which sites you visit and causes you follow - your facial expressions and eye movements will become data points for marketers like myself shortly. Any idea who owns Oculus? Facebook. Don’t worry. Facebook isn’t tracking your eye movements and facial expressions on your computer or smartphones - just on virtual reality, specifically Oculus VR and the new Ray-Ban smart glasses. Additionally, Facebook is pushing out VR hardware at cost (hence, Oculus VR is so affordable) to grow its data collection pool.
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Some people are more bothered by personal data collection than others. I usually have a very laissez-faire attitude to private data collection because I understand its uses. But something about facial recognition tracking unnerves me. Maybe it is the newness, perhaps because I haven’t used those data points in my work. Virtual reality is no longer a big thing in my house, so I don’t have to confront this issue in the immediate future, but there is no promise my boys won’t pick their Oculus devices tomorrow. How will I react if and when my boys decide to jump back into the VR? No clue. Will I tell the boys their eye movements and facial expressions are being tracked? Yes. Not sure what I will do beyond that - maybe leave it up to them to decide? Or maybe bounce the responsibility over to my husband?!?!?!? Kimberly Watkins-Swenk is a social media professional and also OTM’s Digital Content Director & Editor. Kimberly and her family split their time between Smyrna and Durango, Colorado. She is married to Jason and has two sons, Luke and Chase, and two cats she loves more than anything.
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