That Facebook has taken this step was anticipated. Back in May, Facebook in public rebuked rumors that it was working on a fully-immersive Facebook Oculus VR experience using its new Portal and Portal+ hardware. But internally, it was working on VR porn, a source told Forbes at the time. And recently, it has become increasingly clear that Facebook is really just executing on that bossy-boss plan to make sure users feel like they have the best experience by forcing them to actually interact with their friends on their phones rather than in a real space.
Chatbots to identify potential sales leads; spam to promote social events; fish/nest listings to interact with virtual pet owners; and vacation rentals to access packages to share with friends via Facebook Messenger are some of the other ideas that have surfaced.
In this social-media-gone-bizarre new world, when the monotony of Twitter and Facebook fades, the urge is to escape, to escape online, to re-establish that isolation inherent to social media. And many Facebook critics are cheering Facebook for making it clear it isn’t okay with this.
But what Facebook is doing is like when a dentist calls his patient and says, “Hello, my name is Terry. I’m here to clean your teeth.” I know my teeth are clean because the dentist tells me so. It’s not that Facebook can’t take a few more steps to be more realistic about how users interact. But the answers we’ve gotten up to this point are going to keep me in my room.
Read the full story at Forbes.
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