Facebook wants to put the ‘social’ in virtual reality
Samsung’s Galaxy S7 keynote was full of surprises. The ultimate one: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg strode out on stage to explain how putting on a VR headset can actually be social.
“Pretty soon, we’re going to live in a world where everyone has the power to share and experience whole scenes, as if we’re there in person,” said Zuckerberg. He explained how he plans to use a 360-degree camera like the just-announced Samsung Gear 360 to share immersive videos of his new daughter’s first experiences with his parents.
According to Zuckerberg, more than one million hours of video have already been viewed in Samsung’s Gear VR headset, and millions of new people will get to try the Gear VR this year. (Samsung will include a free Gear VR, a $99 value, with every Galaxy S7 pre-order.)
Watch this: Mark Zuckerberg touts 360 video and social VR in Barcelona
Zuckerberg’s surprise appearance, which caused a stampede of journalists to rush the stage for photos and selfies, is his latest push to bring virtual reality to the mainstream. Facebook, through its Oculus unit, is one of many companies banking on VR as the next technology to excite consumers.
And while Oculus will begin shipping its headset to early adopters next month, Oculus has never shown a Facebook app running on the platform, or really any way to interact with your Facebook family and friends in virtual reality.
Journalists mobbed the stage to get Zuckerberg’s autograph shortly after this picture was taken.
But that may soon change. At the moment Zuckerberg took the stage, Facebook simultaneously announced the creation of a dedicated “Social VR” team.
The new team will work with both Oculus and other teams at Facebook to explore the future of social interaction in VR. “This team will explore how people can connect and share using today’s VR technology, as well as long-term possibilities as VR evolves into an increasingly important computing platform,” the company wrote in an official blog post.
It’s not the first time that Facebook has talked about making VR more social. One year ago, Facebook chief product officer Chris Cox admitted that the company was working on its own VR apps at Recode’s Code/Media conference. And separately, Oculus has released a “Social Alpha” experience on the Samsung Gear VR headset which lets owners watch videos on Vimeo or Twitch with other Gear VR owners — but not necessarily their Facebook friends.
Facebook has struggled with how much to steer its own VR ambitions. Originally, Oculus VR was the grassroots success story of the boy genius — Oculus founder Palmer Luckey — who managed to raise $2 million on Kickstarter on the strength of the idea that cheap smartphone components could make VR affordable. When Facebook bought the company for $2 billion in 2014, some of the goodwill evaporated.
To counter complaints that he had sold out, Luckey told me that Oculus would stay an independent company within Facebook. According to Luckey, staying independent was one of the conditions of the Facebook / Oculus deal. And though CNET understands that most Oculus staff have relocated from the company’s original Irvine, California offices to Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, it appears that Facebook has mostly stuck to its word.
There’s another image problem that Facebook may need to combat, though: the notion that people become antisocial, shutting out the world, when they put on a VR headset. It would be strange for the world’s biggest social network to produce a product like that.
Any image problem could be an issue right now, before consumers have decided whether or not virtual reality might be a fad.
Full disclosure: My wife works at Facebook, owner of Oculus VR, as a business-to-business video producer.
Facebook Faces Yet Another Outage: Platform Encounters Technical Issues Again
Uppdated: It seems that today’s issues with Facebook haven’t affected as many users as the last time. A smaller group of people appears to be impacted this time around, which is a relief compared to the larger incident before. Nevertheless, it’s still frustrating for those affected, and hopefully, the issues will be resolved soon by the Facebook team.
Facebook had another problem today (March 20, 2024). According to Downdetector, a website that shows when other websites are not working, many people had trouble using Facebook.
This isn’t the first time Facebook has had issues. Just a little while ago, there was another problem that stopped people from using the site. Today, when people tried to use Facebook, it didn’t work like it should. People couldn’t see their friends’ posts, and sometimes the website wouldn’t even load.
Downdetector, which watches out for problems on websites, showed that lots of people were having trouble with Facebook. People from all over the world said they couldn’t use the site, and they were not happy about it.
When websites like Facebook have problems, it affects a lot of people. It’s not just about not being able to see posts or chat with friends. It can also impact businesses that use Facebook to reach customers.
Since Facebook owns Messenger and Instagram, the problems with Facebook also meant that people had trouble using these apps. It made the situation even more frustrating for many users, who rely on these apps to stay connected with others.
During this recent problem, one thing is obvious: the internet is always changing, and even big websites like Facebook can have problems. While people wait for Facebook to fix the issue, it shows us how easily things online can go wrong. It’s a good reminder that we should have backup plans for staying connected online, just in case something like this happens again.
Christian family goes in hiding after being cleared of blasphemy
LAHORE, Pakistan — A court in Pakistan granted bail to a Christian falsely charged with blasphemy, but he and his family have separated and gone into hiding amid threats to their lives, sources said.
Haroon Shahzad, 45, was released from Sargodha District Jail on Nov. 15, said his attorney, Aneeqa Maria. Shahzad was charged with blasphemy on June 30 after posting Bible verses on Facebook that infuriated Muslims, causing dozens of Christian families in Chak 49 Shumaali, near Sargodha in Punjab Province, to flee their homes.
Lahore High Court Judge Ali Baqir Najfi granted bail on Nov. 6, but the decision and his release on Nov. 15 were not made public until now due to security fears for his life, Maria said.
Shahzad told Morning Star News by telephone from an undisclosed location that the false accusation has changed his family’s lives forever.
“My family has been on the run from the time I was implicated in this false charge and arrested by the police under mob pressure,” Shahzad told Morning Star News. “My eldest daughter had just started her second year in college, but it’s been more than four months now that she hasn’t been able to return to her institution. My other children are also unable to resume their education as my family is compelled to change their location after 15-20 days as a security precaution.”
Though he was not tortured during incarceration, he said, the pain of being away from his family and thinking about their well-being and safety gave him countless sleepless nights.
“All of this is due to the fact that the complainant, Imran Ladhar, has widely shared my photo on social media and declared me liable for death for alleged blasphemy,” he said in a choked voice. “As soon as Ladhar heard about my bail, he and his accomplices started gathering people in the village and incited them against me and my family. He’s trying his best to ensure that we are never able to go back to the village.”
Shahzad has met with his family only once since his release on bail, and they are unable to return to their village in the foreseeable future, he said.
“We are not together,” he told Morning Star News. “They are living at a relative’s house while I’m taking refuge elsewhere. I don’t know when this agonizing situation will come to an end.”
The Christian said the complainant, said to be a member of Islamist extremist party Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan and also allegedly connected with banned terrorist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, filed the charge because of a grudge. Shahzad said he and his family had obtained valuable government land and allotted it for construction of a church building, and Ladhar and others had filed multiple cases against the allotment and lost all of them after a four-year legal battle.
“Another probable reason for Ladhar’s jealousy could be that we were financially better off than most Christian families of the village,” he said. “I was running a successful paint business in Sargodha city, but that too has shut down due to this case.”
Regarding the social media post, Shahzad said he had no intention of hurting Muslim sentiments by sharing the biblical verse on his Facebook page.
“I posted the verse a week before Eid Al Adha [Feast of the Sacrifice] but I had no idea that it would be used to target me and my family,” he said. “In fact, when I came to know that Ladhar was provoking the villagers against me, I deleted the post and decided to meet the village elders to explain my position.”
The village elders were already influenced by Ladhar and refused to listen to him, Shahzad said.
“I was left with no option but to flee the village when I heard that Ladhar was amassing a mob to attack me,” he said.
Shahzad pleaded with government authorities for justice, saying he should not be punished for sharing a verse from the Bible that in no way constituted blasphemy.
Similar to other cases
Shahzad’s attorney, Maria, told Morning Star News that events in Shahzad’s case were similar to other blasphemy cases filed against Christians.
“Defective investigation, mala fide on the part of the police and complainant, violent protests against the accused persons and threats to them and their families, forcing their displacement from their ancestral areas, have become hallmarks of all blasphemy allegations in Pakistan,” said Maria, head of The Voice Society, a Christian paralegal organization.
She said that the case filed against Shahzad was gross violation of Section 196 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), which states that police cannot register a case under the Section 295-A blasphemy statute against a private citizen without the approval of the provincial government or federal agencies.
Maria added that Shahzad and his family have continued to suffer even though there was no evidence of blasphemy.
“The social stigma attached with a blasphemy accusation will likely have a long-lasting impact on their lives, whereas his accuser, Imran Ladhar, would not have to face any consequence of his false accusation,” she said.
The judge who granted bail noted that Shahzad was charged with blasphemy under Section 295-A, which is a non-cognizable offense, and Section 298, which is bailable. The judge also noted that police had not submitted the forensic report of Shahzad’s cell phone and said evidence was required to prove that the social media was blasphemous, according to Maria.
Bail was set at 100,000 Pakistani rupees (US $350) and two personal sureties, and the judge ordered police to further investigate, she said.
Shahzad, a paint contractor, on June 29 posted on his Facebook page 1 Cor. 10:18-21 regarding food sacrificed to idols, as Muslims were beginning the four-day festival of Eid al-Adha, which involves slaughtering an animal and sharing the meat.
A Muslim villager took a screenshot of the post, sent it to local social media groups and accused Shahzad of likening Muslims to pagans and disrespecting the Abrahamic tradition of animal sacrifice.
Though Shahzad made no comment in the post, inflammatory or otherwise, the situation became tense after Friday prayers when announcements were made from mosque loudspeakers telling people to gather for a protest, family sources previously told Morning Star News.
Fearing violence as mobs grew in the village, most Christian families fled their homes, leaving everything behind.
In a bid to restore order, the police registered a case against Shahzad under Sections 295-A and 298. Section 295-A relates to “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs” and is punishable with imprisonment of up to 10 years and fine, or both. Section 298 prescribes up to one year in prison and a fine, or both, for hurting religious sentiments.
Pakistan ranked seventh on Open Doors’ 2023 World Watch List of the most difficult places to be a Christian, up from eighth the previous year.
Morning Star News is the only independent news service focusing exclusively on the persecution of Christians. The nonprofit’s mission is to provide complete, reliable, even-handed news in order to empower those in the free world to help persecuted Christians, and to encourage persecuted Christians by informing them that they are not alone in their suffering.
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