Facebook owner Meta announces new virtual reality login system

By Katie Paul

(Reuters) – Meta Platforms Inc is modifying how customers log onto its digital actuality headsets, backtracking on an earlier change to require accounts from the corporate’s flagship Fb app on the units whereas preserving hyperlinks to social connections there.

The corporate will roll out its new “Meta accounts” beginning in August, Chief Govt Mark Zuckerberg mentioned in a Fb put up on Thursday.

The social media large introduced plans to take away the Fb login requirement final 12 months, after a backlash from customers who had beforehand accessed the headsets utilizing separate accounts from Oculus, the digital actuality firm that Meta, then generally known as Fb, acquired in 2014.

With the brand new login construction, Meta accounts will management device-level entry and handle app purchases, whereas Meta Horizon profiles will symbolize the customers’ social presence in digital actuality, with related consumer names and avatars, the corporate mentioned in a weblog put up.

Folks may also have the choice to attach their profiles in a unified Meta Accounts Heart, which is able to combine current social connections from Fb, Instagram or Messenger into their digital actuality experiences, it mentioned.

For accounts not added to the Accounts Heart, the corporate will solely mix consumer information throughout apps for counting customers and imposing security guidelines, a spokesperson informed Reuters.

In a memo final week, product chief Chris Cox alluded to the change, which he known as Undertaking Simile and mentioned would “energy continuity throughout the metaverse,” in keeping with a duplicate of the put up considered by Reuters.

Meta has been pushing to combine accounts and different merchandise throughout its “household of apps,” which provides customers cross-app performance whereas enabling the corporate to consolidate information about their conduct in several environments.

The corporate introduced plans to unify its messaging construction throughout apps in 2019 and later that 12 months rolled out a cost service, now referred to as Meta Pay, by which customers can course of transactions throughout Fb, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.

(Reporting by Katie Paul; Enhancing by Leslie Adler)