>We're don't view ourselves in competition with Meta
>...Meta sells reasonably good gaming headsets to customers who want to be entertained in VR; we're selling general-purpose productivity devices which are aimed at replacing PCs and laptops.
Hate to break it to you, but if you don't think that Mark Zuckerberg is actively trying to create VR devices that are general-purpose productivity devices aimed at replacing PCs and laptops, you haven't been watching some of their recent videos about the new headsets and prototype headsets they're working on. He very much is aiming for that market with future devices (not the Quest 2).
Also he's described their Project Cambria headset as intended for productivity, as in the following article:
"What’s different about Project Cambria?
The most important description we’ve received about Project Cambria comes from The Information; according to the publication, Meta employees have alternately described the headset as a “laptop for the face” or a “Chromebook for the face.” It’s a device Zuckerberg hopes people will use to get work done rather than being aimed primarily at gamers as with previous headsets."
It's hard to focus on multiple things at once, and we're skeptical that the bureaucratic forces in play at a large company like Meta will allow them to do a good job at making their gaming platform also one that people actually want to work in.
"We don't think they're competent enough to be a competitor" is a bad way to judge whether you're competing with someone. It's like Apple laughing at the IBM PC.
>It's hard to focus on multiple things at once, and we're skeptical that the bureaucratic forces in play at a large company like Meta will allow them to do a good job at making their gaming platform also one that people actually want to work in.
The problem with your assertion is that you over count how many multiple things Meta has to do. What will make for a very good gaming VR Headset will also be a very good professional and productivity headset.
The key aspects which Mark Zuckerberg laid out personally in the recent VR Prototypes unveil pretty universally hit both targets. Comfortable light weight headsets with incredible fidelity is desirable for all VR applications. Not just gaming.
> I don’t want to go too far given I’ve only tried Workrooms out once, but this feels like something real. And, just as importantly, there is, thanks to COVID, a real use case. Of course companies will need to be convinced, and hardware will need to be bought, but that’s another reason why the work angle is so compelling: companies are willing to pay for tools that increase productivity to a much greater extent than consumers are.
> Consider that Atari tried to compete with office PCs in the early 80s with their 8-bit family, and failed
I don't think that's very accurate. The Atari ST had a pretty good following compared to personal computers of the time much like the Amiga... The fact is that most computer companies from back then did not survive far beyond the decade but they had their time. So it's not really accurate to say they failed when Acorn, Amiga, Amstrad...etc, all "failed", in that they didn't produce more than a handful of unique and fairly incompatible computers with no clear future, but that had a market and sold with success in their time frame none the less.
"Do a good job" is different from intent to compete. Horizon Workrooms, keyboard passthrough, and multi-app support screams non-entertainment functionality. And that's just what's been released pre-Quest Pro...
As a very nearsighted programmer suffering from increasing age-related farsightedness, I often fantasize about a VR headset that would allow me to comfortably focus (say 6 feet away while wearing contacts) on a huge virtual tmux session for coding.
I don't know if this is even remotely a possibility but it sure would beat dealing with constant CSS (can't see s*t)
And there are plenty of instances of companies that have gone under when a big parent company decides to incorporate your business as a 'feature' in part of their big monster product.
I'm not saying it's going to definitely happen and the company is doomed or anything, it's certainly possible that SimulaVR will come out on top for productivity devices (or peacefully coexist as an alternative alongside Meta's offering). But it shouldn't ignore what Meta is doing either, especially when they're actively saying they're moving into their turf.
At the very least, it looks like Meta will put up a helluva fight.
As someone who used to work there, I would be significantly more afraid.
VR there has never been exclusively about gaming nor has gaming been the overall goal of VR since their acquisition. The way they talked about it back in the day was, if I recall accurately, that they were focused on three pillars: "The metaverse", "The overlay", and "The future of work". Social presence, real-life AR metadata, and expanding the screens and capabilities of working professionals, respectively.
The direction of their research and implementation has, at least to my knowledge, been oriented literally towards creating a new category of general purpose productivity devices and admitting as much in a very public blog post is a pretty big own-goal if the idea is to try to avoid the subpoena by distinguishing yourselves (assuming you're speaking on behalf of SimulaVR).
I think this is mixing up the mythology of Zuckerberg with the reality. There's no indication that he is exclusively or even primarily driven by money or power.
Go watch any long-form interview with him, such as with Lex Fridman. It becomes rather clear that he wants to be more like how Steve Jobs is seen by the wider public: as an innovator and pioneer, not as a power-hungry moneymaker.
>> >...Meta sells reasonably good gaming headsets to customers who want to be entertained in VR; we're selling general-purpose productivity devices which are aimed at replacing PCs and laptops.
> Hate to break it to you, but if you don't think that Mark Zuckerberg is actively trying to create VR devices that are general-purpose productivity devices aimed at replacing PCs and laptops, you haven't been watching some of their recent videos about the new headsets and prototype headsets they're working on. He very much is aiming for that market with future devices (not the Quest 2).
It sounds like they're saying that Meta doesn't currently sell anything that competes with what they're currently selling, and the info you give doesn't seem to contradict that. I'd question the premise that releasing a marketing video for a product that doesn't exist counts as being "in competition". They might be in competition in the future, but it doesn't seem like they are right now.
This is a weird take considering that simulavr is still taking preorders and doesn't plan to ship until 2023. They both have non-existent products right now
Or maybe I'm wrong and they are already selling a product? I didn't see it on the website.
There is a segment that uses the virtual desktop with the oculus quest 2 quite extensively, so you still have that argument with their current lineup of devices IMO.
If I am not wrong, this is an antitrust suit, meaning it is about what they are selling, not what they are developing. If the product has been launched, there literally cannot be a monopoly.
They are both selling VR headsets. Claiming they are not competitors is like trying to claim electric cars are not in competition with gas powered cars because they are different technology.
Maybe I've just been on a too-long coding stretch, but speaking for myself, it's just really unsavory to read so much "red/blue"-style sloganism around the big tech companies. Obviously I'm biased because I worked for one, and so I saw up close the process that produces the decisions that seem to routinely generate comment threads with people comparing Google/FB/MSFT/etc. to e.g. "Satan".
It's just not that simple folks: and a hallmark of why this forum is great is that we tackle "not that simple" with a relentless curiosity rather than 1-bit generalizations.
I routinely whack these megacorps for their shady dealings. But this "Marg bar Āmrikā" shit is an unflattering look for such a thoughtful community and it ignores that huge parts of this community are a direct personal object of very nasty remarks made "in general" on a fairly daily basis.
People are quite pleased to enjoy the corporate funding of all the open-source projects that wouldn't exist without the megacorps: try saying something bad about Kubernetes if you don't believe me.
It's not a 1-bit thing, and Hacker News is Hacker News because when people (and I've been that guy) throw rocks, we demand better.
I agree, and just want to reiterate what was written in the article: we genuinely feel no animosity towards Meta and its gaming headsets. We don't even feel animosity that they have leveraged their economies of scale to provide them very cheaply to consumers (something we aren't able to do yet[1]). We just disagree with their product vision, and are pursuing our own. We also think subpoenaing us for this case seems unreasonable.
I suspect that with all such things, that a hacker's opinion on the relevant law is probably `/r/ConfidentlyIncorrect`.
I have no opinion on the substantial legal matters at question. It's been my observation that the ranking folks at Meta in the VR world are as ethical as fiduciary obligation permits, but YMMV.
I thank you for your reply and hope that you agree that a substantial legal matter which will inevitably be resolved by people competent to do so shouldn't become a political football in a small but influential forum of people who on average know as little about IP law as I do :)
GET OFF THE INTERNET AND HIRE A LAWYER TO HANDLE THIS
You guys want to run a business, well, start acting like businessmen. Your company will occasionally get subpoenaed or - heaven forbid! - be sued. You got a third-party subpoena for documents in a litigation. Guess what, this will happen from time to time. Your attorney should be negotiating with Meta to figure out what documents/testimony your company will provide.
Honestly, your behavior makes me question your maturity. Treat this as a learning experience about the reality of the American business/legal world. Get a lawyer to handle it and shut up about the case.
> corporate funding of all the open-source projects that wouldn't exist without the megacorps
This is a fallacy: It's possible comparable open source contributions could have been made without the graces of the corporates.
For example: The giants tend to buy out their competition early, so how could it mature enough to be able to contribute comparably, or possibly better, to open source?
IMHO the open source contributions of these companies are a form of tech-washing, regardless of the honest and best intentions of their employees.
There really isn't any way to confirm or refute that kind of argument. What would happen if regulation or social norms or whatever prevented big tech companies from existing? I don't know and (frankly) you don't either.
I use emacs a dozen plus hours a day, and GNU wouldn't exist if RMS hadn't been bullied at the lunch room in the MIT AI Lab. Would the world be a better or worse place if he didn't have a personal jihad against Symbolics draped in a GNU bumper sticker?
Sidebar: I don't know what "tech-washing" means. When I see that a company is laundering some bias or some social advantage through a machine learning model I just call it money laundering, because the inputs and outputs are both money and I think we've coined enough new victimhood words per year every year for many years.
If a company is profiting off it's "open-source" contributions, getting out more than it's putting in, then it's washing money through GitHub I guess. That's fair.
But "tech-washing" has this implication that any computer hacker is in a bad way, which is just silly: back when we had to go to the office the freeway overpasses we drove on had tent encampments under them.
Take that up with the Ayn Rand idiots who are not uncommon in these parts.
> People are quite pleased to enjoy the corporate funding of all the open-source projects that wouldn't exist without the megacorps
I used to be in that boat. But after seeing where Chrome ended up, and how this affects the web today, I can't help but think that long-term, we'd be better off if the megacorps disappeared together with the funding.
I think you're giving HN too much credit. Threads involving certain topics (e.g. big tech) are completely overrun with snark and hate that I don't see much of the relentless curiosity you're talking about.
Agreed, it has become more and more frequent that HN threads are overrun by comments that seem more like they're straight out of reddit or even just your local newspaper comment section. With all the snark or aggressive dismissive pessimism they involve.
It's really sad to see because I love the HN comment section for how easily you can say a thing and everyone understands there's nuance and lots of angles to address the topic.
I've made posts about an app and the author appears curious about the issue (I'm not asking for support, just fun that folks are curious). Other people who understand the complexity (or just that there is complexity) involved are around to explore the issue / ask great questions.
Where other places the response would be the typical cynical "Oh that's just because they want you to upgrade!" and so on.
I know what you're talking about in only the way that someone who too often has been part of the problem can :)
But this forum is coming up on two decades and has like one or two full-time moderators and somehow remains an island of rational discourse in an Internet full of "I'm trained in gorilla warfare".
It has it's good days and it's bad days, (just as I do as a participant) but I think it's pretty unique.
Yeah it's definitely been making me pull my engagement back on HN. It even motivated me to get onto Twitter lol. At some point I want to read something a bit more stimulating than Tech Nextdoor. I originally came here from Digg and Slashdot because I enjoyed talking with other engineers and founders in the weeds, but I think the HN crowd has drifted far away from that start.
That said the conversation quality here on the non-hellthreads is still quite high. I enjoyed the thread on C yesterday. It's just that hellthreads and strident comments "feel" like they're becoming the norm here and it's harder to escape from them.
I think its good for the society as a whole to always view Mega Corps. which have more money than several governments combined with suspicion, Because even when they get punished for their 'shady dealings' the fines are usually a rounding error for their weekly revenue;
Meta's recent $400M fine for Instagram not protecting children's data comes to mind.
Public opinion on the brand seem to hold more accountability than the courts for these Mega Corps, After all Facebook did become Meta FWIW.
> try saying something bad about Kubernetes if you don't believe me
Kubernetes is an absolute mess, and I would never willingly subject myself to it.
If a humongous corporation is giving something away for free, it’s either because it suits their agenda, or because it’s so irrelevant to them they do not care.
FB definitely deserves some shade: the “move fast and break things” philosophy is real, and they’ve (we’ve) played fast-and-loose with things we didn’t fully understand, some of that ended very badly.
But as megacorps go, FB seems to have had a “come to Jesus” moment on those kinds of mistakes and done a hard pivot to a more responsible and adult posture. It was built by people barely out of childhood, certainly I was still a child when I worked there and putting a 20-something in charge of a powerful company is going to create some collateral damage. No one can say with a straight face that FB hasn’t fucked up more than once or twice.
But those kids grew up a bit, whether via altruism or pragmatism have decided to step quite a bit more carefully, and unlike 10 years ago, FB is probably closer to “don’t be evil” than Google is. It’s still a ruthless megacorp answering to shareholders, but I wouldn’t say that in 2022 it’s even close to the worst of the bunch.
Hey, I've been around here a long time and I mouth off more often than most: no moral judgements from me.
But yeah, it's a pretty gritty tone and at times it tends to blur a bit with the complaints about the interviews being too hard and the pay being too high, which isn't an awesome vibe.
I'm the last person to judge someone for shooting off, I get heated myself, but I try to be honest about what exactly the pebble in my shoe is.
Well that is unfortunate. I would not want to be in Simula's position, I'm sure they've got enough on their plate without having to deal with stuff like this that they barely have an impact on in the first place.
I understand that Meta needs to prove they're not a monopoly, and apparently the way to do that is through other companies laying their cards on the table, but my goodness would I feel uncomfortable giving core business plans, outlooks, and associated data to a huge (and arguably unethical) company like Meta.
It's unreal that this is just a thing that can be done, but I'd expect those documents to never reach the eyes of anyone who guides business decisions at Meta. Or so I hope. Or maybe this kind of information isn't as sensitive as I think, I don't run a business and have no plans to currently, so I'm not savvy in that department.
Surely if Meta need another company to help them prove something, Meta should have to compensate them. Sure, the government should be able to COMMAND a company to appear, but for one legal entity to COMMAND another legal entity to perform work and make an appearance at a place, in my mind as a Brit, seems entirely wrong.
Time to throw my Quest on eBay, not sure I want to be a part of this.
I thought it was clear in the post that Meta is being compelled by the federal government to prove they are not a monopoly and as part of this they need to present a case where they establish they have legitimate competitors. This requires information about the competitors.
There is no need for the executives at Meta to see these documents themselves to derive value from them. A lawyer seeing them and providing a verbal summary is more than good enough when deciding on strategy.
> I understand that Meta needs to prove they're not a monopoly, and apparently the way to do that is through other companies laying their cards on the table, but my goodness would I feel uncomfortable giving core business plans, outlooks, and associated data to a huge (and arguably unethical) company like Meta.
This seems too considerate to Meta. IMO, part of Meta's intention is to hurt SimulaVR. It wouldn't be by accident.
IANAL, but it came from a court because it's a court order. Failing to respond would be contempt of court - an imprison able offense.
AIUI, the reason that courts order cooperation for this sort of thing is that every party deserves the right in court to defend themselves as best as is possible. If in order to defend themselves they require information that they cannot present themselves but that someone else can (say your alibi was being at work - your boss could confirm that), then it becomes that party's civic duty to cooperate with the courts and make sure that the appropriate information can be yielded to ensure a just decision. If there are concerns about cost or potential secrecy/privacy implications, someone who is subpoenaed can bring that up with the judge who can then work with all parties to appropriately manage the situation.
This is not Meta demanding to see some privilege information that exists in Simula's drawers, but rather commandeering the entire competing organization to do market research for Meta. It is clever and evil, and nothing anybody says after this will make me think that Meta is not anti-competitive nor that they have an once of ethics. As a consumer, I doubt I will ever again consider their VR products; I rather give my money to Satan, or even Google.
This seems like a wildly emotional response that is completely out of line with what is being asked.
The FTC is suing Meta, and it has a right to get other companies to admit that they are in fact competitors to Meta in the VR Space. SimulaVR is being pretty bad faith in claiming that:
"Meta sells reasonably good gaming headsets to customers who want to be entertained in VR; we're selling general-purpose productivity devices which are aimed at replacing PCs"
Meta pretty clearly intends to compete not just in the gaming VR space but to have general purpose and professional use VR Headsets. Likely all that will come from this is a few internal graphs which include Meta as a competitor in the space.
> SimulaVR is being pretty bad faith in claiming that:...
> Meta pretty clearly intends to compete not just in the gaming VR space but to have general purpose and professional use VR Headsets. Likely all that will come from this is a few internal graphs which include Meta as a competitor in the space.
Part of the antitrust action is determining the boundaries of the market.
If company A has a monopoly in market X, and company B competes in related market Y, ... the fact that company A intends to enter market Y does not mean company B is preventing company A from having a monopoly in market X. (But if X and Y are the same market, they are!)
Not sure if "wildly emotional" is fair to them either.
> In fairness to Meta: the FTC is the one who initiated this fight, leaving them with the burden of demonstrating it isn't behaving "anti-competitively".
But I agree, the post does seem similar to an individual trying to get attention for their cause, ie. 'Google locked me out...'. To me the tone is probably trying to help sell their narrative of them being this small thing not worth subpoenaing.
Eyeroll. Meta did nothing wrong here. This isn't them going after their competition; they're the defendant in this lawsuit. As the article says:
> In fairness to Meta: the FTC is the one who initiated this fight, leaving them with the burden of demonstrating it isn't behaving "anti-competitively". So naturally, one of the primary (only?) things Meta can do to demonstrate this is to subpoena...well...its competition...to demand documents which might help them in court
To the extent that you have a problem with the subpoena, blame the judge who authorized it, or perhaps the legal system that makes such subpoenas possible. Meta is not the aggressor here.
Facebook is very much the aggressor -- in response to the FTC suit, their immediate response was to try and use the courts to strong-arm hundreds of competitors into giving up massive troves of highly sensitive commercial secrets without any kind of formal protection, such as limiting document review to FB's outside counsel. It's ridiculous, it's abusive, it's overbroad, and it's transparently an effort to burden Facebook's competitors while snowing the FTC with massive amounts of paper.
Doesn't this depend on whether Meta is actually guilty of what the FTC is accusing them of? If they are, then clearly the wrong thing they did was behave anti-competitively.
If they are guilty of that, then it is fair to blame them for being dragged into their defense. While everyone has the right to defend themselves, it is fair to be upset at having to be called in the defense of someone who broke the law.
> I doubt I will ever again consider their VR products
I made this mistake and ordered an Oculus earlier this year. While I waited for it to arrive, I setup a facebook/meta account since that is a requirement. Before the headset arrived, Meta had flagged my account as fake, and the process to prove that I was in fact a real person would not accept my cell phone number. There was nothing else I could do to prove I was real. So, fake me returned the headset when it arrived, and then fake me felt a sense of relief in the giant bullet I had just dodged.
This is a subpoena from a legal team, NOT a court. You are free to write “we don’t know” for much of the questions or even write “too burdensome to answer”. Such subpoenas have little teeth.
Hire a lawyer for a few hours to confirm what I say since I’m some random internet guy.
We've also been commanded to drop everything we're doing and go tesify on these matters _in person_, thousands of miles away from us, by the stated deadline :|
So it's not just a matter of writing "we don't know". They have to produce a lot of material and then travel 1000's of miles to show up in the court in person.
It still find it odd that people think large corporations actively engage in ethics in any other capacity than for PR and manipulating public opinion. I have never in my life seen anything other than the smallest of private companies make a decision based on "ethical" reasons where there was a competing financial reason. Can you recall, over your entire career, where a product decision was made for ethical (rather than purely PR or legal) reasons? I have witness several companies where bringing up ethical concerns about company behavior ultimately leads to termination.
The most obvious example of this non-ethical nature of corporations is record companies bringing up the "unethical" behavior of piracy. It's not like the heads of these companies had a big ethics meeting and decided "hey piracy is not ethical, we need to fight it!" or otherwise they would have also been like "and... next on the agenda is the unethical profiting of black musicians in the 50s and 60s, we should start cutting some checks now since that was clearly wrong."
Ethics is a social construction, created by participants in a society, as a way of organizing and regulating behavior. Ethics is subtle, flexible and perpetually evolving. We as a collective can develop and evolve our ethics overtime, but the essential part is that everyone is playing the same game.
Corporations are not playing the game at all, "ethics" from the view of a corporate entity is just another tool they can use to manipulate public opinion, but they don't participate in the ethics game.
The problem is that they participating in society in an asymmetric way. They want everyone else to adhere to an ethical system when interacting with them, but consider themself completely outside the realm of ethics.
When normal humans decide that they do not want to participate in the ethics game there are consequences ranging from mild chastisement to complete estrangement from society depending on the degree one individual refuses to participate in the ethical system of the larger society.
This is not to say corporations are evil, but that are absolutely amoral in that they are not participating the moral and ethical game. Bears are amoral in the same way. We don't expect bears to make ethical decisions, but when they habitually violate the ethical code of the humans they interact with, they are usually put down as a threat to society.
> Can you recall, over your entire career, where a product decision was made for ethical (rather than purely PR or legal) reasons?
Yes, because I made them.
As a nation built on capitalism, it is those who are able to influence the decisions of corporations that bear the burden and responsibility of the decisions made by those corporations. Whether those individuals are held accountable or not is irrelevant to the fact that ethics certainly ought to be considered for any individual involved who believes themselves to be "acting ethically".
I've worked hard in my career to get a seat at the table where those decisions are made because I recognize that is a place where good can be done, at scale.
We should hold ourselves, and capitalism, to higher standards. And for those of us who are leaders, whether that is a small start-up or a major conglomerate, we are responsible for creating an environment where ethical decisions can be made.
I'm not against having Simula foot the bill in preparing whatever materials they may need to prepare to aid in the FCC's investigation - I think that's a reasonable cost of doing business, one that ought to scale with the size of the company, no? However, I agree that there may be valuable information you'd rather your competitor not have access to at your expense. Is there instances of, or analogues in other domains, of information relevant to the persecution of one party, belonging to another party, being reviewed in confidence by a third party? Or failing to find a fair solution in terms of that approach, how much can that information be trimmed?
> I rather give my money to Satan, or even Google<
I giggled. When you go from "don't be evil" to this, you know you fucked up big time. This has to be the tagline of the decade in regards to Google ("Google!, the boss of Satan", hi hi hi).
As modern capitalism goes, Meta is not on the low end of the scale WRT whatever we're calling ethical in a system that has legal penalties for leaving money on the table.
It's a ruthless, profit-drive, shareholder-owned, S&P 500-dominating company like all the rest, so you get all of that into the mix. It's not a particularly flattering group to be in if you're big into modern northern european social-good democracy.
But the idea that Meta is like, worse than the sovereign wealth fund in Riyadh that YC routinely connects founders with, or worse than Exxon, or worse than the pharma cartels, or? I could go on.
I don’t really know the rules of evidence, but I don’t think this is coming directly from Meta, nor that they’re allowed to review these documents themselves. The subpoena has to come from the court, and so I imagine it’s the court reviewing the documents, not Meta. I sure hope that’s how it works. I’d love for a lawyer to chime in, though.
? It is literally coming from Meta. That's what the subpoena and court filings that are screenshotted on that page show. Meta sought the subpoena, the court granted it, and now Simula has to testify at a deposition where the questions will be asked by Meta.
And... it sort of has to work this way? It's not the job of the court to do Meta or FTC's advocacy for them.
IANAL, but I would imagine that at the very least, Meta's lawyers would need to be able to see the documentation so that they can adequately prepare their argument/defense.
If this is actually how US's justice system works it is even more bonkers than I thought. Could someone versed in this legal system explain, please? Is is any accused that can demand documents/data/free research from vaguely related third parties, or only large companies? Enquiring minds want to know!
If one is accused of antitrust practices (as Meta is by the FTC), your defense is to show that there's actually competition. It's not that Meta that wants the documents for corporate espionage (or whatever), but that they want to prove that SimulaVR is competing just fine in the market that contains Meta. This is explained in the article, which many here clearly didn't read past the headline. This is roughly the same as subpoenaing someone as a witness; you don't really have a choice.
In fact, Meta themselves won't be looking at the documents; their lawyers, the FCC, and the rest of the court will. This is standard procedure, and no different from if SMALL_CORP sued BIG_CORP; BIG_CORP would still have to comply with subpoenas from SMALL_CORP.
Yeah, and we’re reacting to how crazy it is that Meta’s competitors are required to divulge internal documents to Meta so Meta can make a case that they aren’t anticompetitive.
> It's not that Meta that wants the documents for corporate espionage
Yes I’m sure we all trust Meta will behave ethically when given private information.
So someone is sued for anticompetitive practices and that gives them alibi for looking directly into others' books, and they're just supposed to trust Meta will forget all the information afterwards?
But by doing this, they are inadvertently showing that a company like SimulaVR cannot compete in this space, as the small team in charge of actually doing some work now has to devote its time to take care of this.
What happens if SimulaVR tells these lawyers to pound sand? I cannot imagine if I ran a small buisness and I was the victim of this how I would afford it.
Yes, but in practice, this is just an opening offer in a negotiation. Parties will typically counter with something like: depose me in my home town for no more than x hours, and I'll produce what docs I have if you sign a protective order that makes produced info attorney's-eyes-only, i.e., business people cannot review. Unlikely a court would require more than this.
That negotiation still requires lawyers. Overall less legal expense assuming it succeeds, but we're still talking about a 5-figure legal bill at minimum, which for a small startup is a big hit. The employee distraction will probably double the cost at least, so it's reasonable to expect they'll lose 6 figures on this, which is equivalent to hiring another employee.
In-between Meta’s “to show that we have competition, we would like to show company Foo’s documents on X, Y and Z” and this subpoena is a judge who decides on whether those documents would help them reach a decision in this case, and whether it’s reasonable to ask Foo to do that work.
Also, the data you provide goes to the court, not (directly) to Meta.
I also think you can ask the court to keep (parts of) the data from the public record. That would require an argument as to why making it public would harm you.
It's not nearly as crazy as it sounds. If you were accused of murder and your alibi was you were at a bar, then the court could force the bar to produce any video footage they had, any records of transactions etc. If it was claimed that I was at said bar on said night, I could be forced to appear in court and produce any diary entries I had, any photos on my phone from that night. These are reasonable requests.
Meta is allowed to defend themselves against lawsuits. SimulaVR is a startup in the space. They have a shot in VR, or at least believe they do. SimulaVR a great example for Meta to use to defend themselves against a stupid lawsuit.
The FTC shouldn't be bringing this case. VR is still up for grabs. Defining the relevant market as the "dedicated fitness virtual reality app market" is questionable, and the idea it "proves the value of virtual reality" is nonsense.
The idea that meta have some dominant position that can't be overcome is like suggesting Excite or Altavista had a dominant position in search that couldn't be overcome in the 90's, or MySpace in social in the early 00's. It's too early to call this market "won".
Curious statement, considering the FTC is trying to preserve competition in the space. Excite and Altavista weren't trying to buy up the biggest websites around at the time.
Yes and they are overreaching in response to a perceived miss many years ago when FB bought Instagram. The VR market is so young and small that it doesn't need regulatory intervention. Let's allow it play out a little bit before we get regulators involved who think things like: this app is something which "proves the value of virtual reality to users".
And yeah, they were, and they were being bought and sold, and Yahoo too. There was lots of m&a action in the space. Virtually everyone involved went under despite having a dominant position for a hot minute.
Though I'm not a lawyer, I believe defendants in court cases are entitled to command witnesses (signed off by a judge) to provide evidence that could be used in their defense.
It makes sense in the abstract: e.g. imagine you're accused of murder, and you know someone saw you somewhere else at the supposed time of the crime, yet they refuse to provide evidence to help you. It would seem reasonable they could compel you under that circumstance to testify.
Since the FTC has initiated a court case against Meta, I assume they are provided a similar legal right to command competitors to provide evidence that they haven't behaved "anti-competitively".
The question becomes whether, in this particular instance, they're abusing that privilege by demanding information they shouldn't be entitled to from unrelated/extraneous parties.
Heh, demand that the court provide you immunity from prosecution for being a monopoly, or refuse to testify on the fifth (because you obviously are a monopoly planning on buying Meta).
It's explained in the post. The FTC accused them of being anti-competitive. The only way to show you're not anti-competitive is to demand documents of your opponents that demonstrate you still have competition.
Seems like a "I'll know when I see it" situation. In that, if the FTC thinks they are anti-competitive, they probably are and at least should be blocked from acquiring their competition.
Breaking them up or taking actual action against them would require deeper investigation with FTC taking the lead rather than potentially handing sensitive documents over to the offending company.
If the company wants to fight the block of acquisitions would foot the bill for everyone being supeonaed along with the FTC's expenses regardless of the case's success.
IANAL, so take this with some salt, but I don’t think Meta is directly requesting the documents, and Meta is probably never going to see them. I don’t think they get to request everything and pick through it to find a defense.
Subpoenas come from the court (which is how they’re able to be legally binding, i.e. you can be held liable—-in contempt—-for not complying), so my guess is that the court will review the various documents for evidence that Simula is or isn’t a competitor, so as to decide both whether they fit the bill as a competitor, and whether they’ll be needed during a trial. I imagine that the court can even decide that Simula does not provide evidence in either direction, so they’ll uninvolve Simula.
Documents have to be given to both sides or it's a pretty easy mistrial. It is likely nobody but Meta's lawyers will ever look at any of it, but they will look to try to build a defense.
And if something interesting WAS found, it would get out. And some of these things would become public record, either way.
I don't begrudge them their annoyance (or click-through harvesting) but there is a straightforward legal process for objecting to and quashing a subpoena. Seems like it might apply here, at least in part: https://www.klgates.com/Litigation-Minute-Responding-to-Thir...
Also RE some speculation in this thread, it seems very unlikely to me that Meta's legal team was looking to get some free market research, but it is interesting to consider.
If you never been through discovery, it can seem that way, but nothing is straightforward or cheap about responding to a subpoena in a high profile case with a $500B company.
Samsung, Nintendo, and the other parties listed likely will spent $1-2m on these subpoenas. It likely involves thousands and thousands of messages and documents. A lot of back and forth with lawyers ("Each of these 12 employees exported everything with the word 'roadmap' in their email? what about Sandy's personal phone; I see a reference to an SMS elsewhere"), IP council to redact things, and then prep and support for the deposition.
SimulaVR is a tiny startup. It very well could kill them.
yeesh – one would hope that would fall under "undue burden or expense" but yeah I guess you never know how this kinda thing plays out until you've been through the ringer (like everything). Thinking again, I can't believe I included the descriptor "straightforward"
Readit News
>...Meta sells reasonably good gaming headsets to customers who want to be entertained in VR; we're selling general-purpose productivity devices which are aimed at replacing PCs and laptops.
Hate to break it to you, but if you don't think that Mark Zuckerberg is actively trying to create VR devices that are general-purpose productivity devices aimed at replacing PCs and laptops, you haven't been watching some of their recent videos about the new headsets and prototype headsets they're working on. He very much is aiming for that market with future devices (not the Quest 2).
Here's a couple:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMpWH6vDZ8E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zHDkdkqd1I
Also he's described their Project Cambria headset as intended for productivity, as in the following article:
"What’s different about Project Cambria?
The most important description we’ve received about Project Cambria comes from The Information; according to the publication, Meta employees have alternately described the headset as a “laptop for the face” or a “Chromebook for the face.” It’s a device Zuckerberg hopes people will use to get work done rather than being aimed primarily at gamers as with previous headsets."
https://thenextweb.com/news/meta-project-cambria-what-we-kno...
Consider that Atari tried to compete with office PCs in the early 80s with their 8-bit family, and failed: https://images.fastcompany.net/image/upload/w_596,c_limit,q_...
It's hard to focus on multiple things at once, and we're skeptical that the bureaucratic forces in play at a large company like Meta will allow them to do a good job at making their gaming platform also one that people actually want to work in.
The problem with your assertion is that you over count how many multiple things Meta has to do. What will make for a very good gaming VR Headset will also be a very good professional and productivity headset.
The key aspects which Mark Zuckerberg laid out personally in the recent VR Prototypes unveil pretty universally hit both targets. Comfortable light weight headsets with incredible fidelity is desirable for all VR applications. Not just gaming.
> I don’t want to go too far given I’ve only tried Workrooms out once, but this feels like something real. And, just as importantly, there is, thanks to COVID, a real use case. Of course companies will need to be convinced, and hardware will need to be bought, but that’s another reason why the work angle is so compelling: companies are willing to pay for tools that increase productivity to a much greater extent than consumers are.
I don't think that's very accurate. The Atari ST had a pretty good following compared to personal computers of the time much like the Amiga... The fact is that most computer companies from back then did not survive far beyond the decade but they had their time. So it's not really accurate to say they failed when Acorn, Amiga, Amstrad...etc, all "failed", in that they didn't produce more than a handful of unique and fairly incompatible computers with no clear future, but that had a market and sold with success in their time frame none the less.
I don't know if this is even remotely a possibility but it sure would beat dealing with constant CSS (can't see s*t)
I'm not saying it's going to definitely happen and the company is doomed or anything, it's certainly possible that SimulaVR will come out on top for productivity devices (or peacefully coexist as an alternative alongside Meta's offering). But it shouldn't ignore what Meta is doing either, especially when they're actively saying they're moving into their turf.
At the very least, it looks like Meta will put up a helluva fight.
VR there has never been exclusively about gaming nor has gaming been the overall goal of VR since their acquisition. The way they talked about it back in the day was, if I recall accurately, that they were focused on three pillars: "The metaverse", "The overlay", and "The future of work". Social presence, real-life AR metadata, and expanding the screens and capabilities of working professionals, respectively.
The direction of their research and implementation has, at least to my knowledge, been oriented literally towards creating a new category of general purpose productivity devices and admitting as much in a very public blog post is a pretty big own-goal if the idea is to try to avoid the subpoena by distinguishing yourselves (assuming you're speaking on behalf of SimulaVR).
I assume you've read?
He missed the boat on browsers and smartphones, so he is aiming for total monopoly of what he believes is the next-big-thing™.
Go watch any long-form interview with him, such as with Lex Fridman. It becomes rather clear that he wants to be more like how Steve Jobs is seen by the wider public: as an innovator and pioneer, not as a power-hungry moneymaker.
I wonder if Zuckerberg suspects it might not be as well but, hey, Hail Mary!
> Hate to break it to you, but if you don't think that Mark Zuckerberg is actively trying to create VR devices that are general-purpose productivity devices aimed at replacing PCs and laptops, you haven't been watching some of their recent videos about the new headsets and prototype headsets they're working on. He very much is aiming for that market with future devices (not the Quest 2).
It sounds like they're saying that Meta doesn't currently sell anything that competes with what they're currently selling, and the info you give doesn't seem to contradict that. I'd question the premise that releasing a marketing video for a product that doesn't exist counts as being "in competition". They might be in competition in the future, but it doesn't seem like they are right now.
Or maybe I'm wrong and they are already selling a product? I didn't see it on the website.
It's just not that simple folks: and a hallmark of why this forum is great is that we tackle "not that simple" with a relentless curiosity rather than 1-bit generalizations.
I routinely whack these megacorps for their shady dealings. But this "Marg bar Āmrikā" shit is an unflattering look for such a thoughtful community and it ignores that huge parts of this community are a direct personal object of very nasty remarks made "in general" on a fairly daily basis.
People are quite pleased to enjoy the corporate funding of all the open-source projects that wouldn't exist without the megacorps: try saying something bad about Kubernetes if you don't believe me.
It's not a 1-bit thing, and Hacker News is Hacker News because when people (and I've been that guy) throw rocks, we demand better.
[1] https://simulavr.com/blog/why-is-the-simula-one-so-expensive...
I have no opinion on the substantial legal matters at question. It's been my observation that the ranking folks at Meta in the VR world are as ethical as fiduciary obligation permits, but YMMV.
I thank you for your reply and hope that you agree that a substantial legal matter which will inevitably be resolved by people competent to do so shouldn't become a political football in a small but influential forum of people who on average know as little about IP law as I do :)
You guys want to run a business, well, start acting like businessmen. Your company will occasionally get subpoenaed or - heaven forbid! - be sued. You got a third-party subpoena for documents in a litigation. Guess what, this will happen from time to time. Your attorney should be negotiating with Meta to figure out what documents/testimony your company will provide.
Honestly, your behavior makes me question your maturity. Treat this as a learning experience about the reality of the American business/legal world. Get a lawyer to handle it and shut up about the case.
This is a fallacy: It's possible comparable open source contributions could have been made without the graces of the corporates.
For example: The giants tend to buy out their competition early, so how could it mature enough to be able to contribute comparably, or possibly better, to open source?
IMHO the open source contributions of these companies are a form of tech-washing, regardless of the honest and best intentions of their employees.
I use emacs a dozen plus hours a day, and GNU wouldn't exist if RMS hadn't been bullied at the lunch room in the MIT AI Lab. Would the world be a better or worse place if he didn't have a personal jihad against Symbolics draped in a GNU bumper sticker?
I don't know.
If a company is profiting off it's "open-source" contributions, getting out more than it's putting in, then it's washing money through GitHub I guess. That's fair.
But "tech-washing" has this implication that any computer hacker is in a bad way, which is just silly: back when we had to go to the office the freeway overpasses we drove on had tent encampments under them.
Take that up with the Ayn Rand idiots who are not uncommon in these parts.
I used to be in that boat. But after seeing where Chrome ended up, and how this affects the web today, I can't help but think that long-term, we'd be better off if the megacorps disappeared together with the funding.
It's really sad to see because I love the HN comment section for how easily you can say a thing and everyone understands there's nuance and lots of angles to address the topic.
I've made posts about an app and the author appears curious about the issue (I'm not asking for support, just fun that folks are curious). Other people who understand the complexity (or just that there is complexity) involved are around to explore the issue / ask great questions.
Where other places the response would be the typical cynical "Oh that's just because they want you to upgrade!" and so on.
But this forum is coming up on two decades and has like one or two full-time moderators and somehow remains an island of rational discourse in an Internet full of "I'm trained in gorilla warfare".
It has it's good days and it's bad days, (just as I do as a participant) but I think it's pretty unique.
That said the conversation quality here on the non-hellthreads is still quite high. I enjoyed the thread on C yesterday. It's just that hellthreads and strident comments "feel" like they're becoming the norm here and it's harder to escape from them.
Public opinion on the brand seem to hold more accountability than the courts for these Mega Corps, After all Facebook did become Meta FWIW.
Kubernetes is an absolute mess, and I would never willingly subject myself to it.
If a humongous corporation is giving something away for free, it’s either because it suits their agenda, or because it’s so irrelevant to them they do not care.
But as megacorps go, FB seems to have had a “come to Jesus” moment on those kinds of mistakes and done a hard pivot to a more responsible and adult posture. It was built by people barely out of childhood, certainly I was still a child when I worked there and putting a 20-something in charge of a powerful company is going to create some collateral damage. No one can say with a straight face that FB hasn’t fucked up more than once or twice.
But those kids grew up a bit, whether via altruism or pragmatism have decided to step quite a bit more carefully, and unlike 10 years ago, FB is probably closer to “don’t be evil” than Google is. It’s still a ruthless megacorp answering to shareholders, but I wouldn’t say that in 2022 it’s even close to the worst of the bunch.
But yeah, it's a pretty gritty tone and at times it tends to blur a bit with the complaints about the interviews being too hard and the pay being too high, which isn't an awesome vibe.
I'm the last person to judge someone for shooting off, I get heated myself, but I try to be honest about what exactly the pebble in my shoe is.
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I understand that Meta needs to prove they're not a monopoly, and apparently the way to do that is through other companies laying their cards on the table, but my goodness would I feel uncomfortable giving core business plans, outlooks, and associated data to a huge (and arguably unethical) company like Meta.
It's unreal that this is just a thing that can be done, but I'd expect those documents to never reach the eyes of anyone who guides business decisions at Meta. Or so I hope. Or maybe this kind of information isn't as sensitive as I think, I don't run a business and have no plans to currently, so I'm not savvy in that department.
Time to throw my Quest on eBay, not sure I want to be a part of this.
The federal government is compelling action.
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I guess Meta is following the "If you have money, you are not wrong" strategy.
This seems too considerate to Meta. IMO, part of Meta's intention is to hurt SimulaVR. It wouldn't be by accident.
AIUI, the reason that courts order cooperation for this sort of thing is that every party deserves the right in court to defend themselves as best as is possible. If in order to defend themselves they require information that they cannot present themselves but that someone else can (say your alibi was being at work - your boss could confirm that), then it becomes that party's civic duty to cooperate with the courts and make sure that the appropriate information can be yielded to ensure a just decision. If there are concerns about cost or potential secrecy/privacy implications, someone who is subpoenaed can bring that up with the judge who can then work with all parties to appropriately manage the situation.
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The FTC is suing Meta, and it has a right to get other companies to admit that they are in fact competitors to Meta in the VR Space. SimulaVR is being pretty bad faith in claiming that:
"Meta sells reasonably good gaming headsets to customers who want to be entertained in VR; we're selling general-purpose productivity devices which are aimed at replacing PCs"
Meta pretty clearly intends to compete not just in the gaming VR space but to have general purpose and professional use VR Headsets. Likely all that will come from this is a few internal graphs which include Meta as a competitor in the space.
> Meta pretty clearly intends to compete not just in the gaming VR space but to have general purpose and professional use VR Headsets. Likely all that will come from this is a few internal graphs which include Meta as a competitor in the space.
Part of the antitrust action is determining the boundaries of the market.
If company A has a monopoly in market X, and company B competes in related market Y, ... the fact that company A intends to enter market Y does not mean company B is preventing company A from having a monopoly in market X. (But if X and Y are the same market, they are!)
> In fairness to Meta: the FTC is the one who initiated this fight, leaving them with the burden of demonstrating it isn't behaving "anti-competitively".
But I agree, the post does seem similar to an individual trying to get attention for their cause, ie. 'Google locked me out...'. To me the tone is probably trying to help sell their narrative of them being this small thing not worth subpoenaing.
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> In fairness to Meta: the FTC is the one who initiated this fight, leaving them with the burden of demonstrating it isn't behaving "anti-competitively". So naturally, one of the primary (only?) things Meta can do to demonstrate this is to subpoena...well...its competition...to demand documents which might help them in court
To the extent that you have a problem with the subpoena, blame the judge who authorized it, or perhaps the legal system that makes such subpoenas possible. Meta is not the aggressor here.
Doesn't this depend on whether Meta is actually guilty of what the FTC is accusing them of? If they are, then clearly the wrong thing they did was behave anti-competitively.
If they are guilty of that, then it is fair to blame them for being dragged into their defense. While everyone has the right to defend themselves, it is fair to be upset at having to be called in the defense of someone who broke the law.
I made this mistake and ordered an Oculus earlier this year. While I waited for it to arrive, I setup a facebook/meta account since that is a requirement. Before the headset arrived, Meta had flagged my account as fake, and the process to prove that I was in fact a real person would not accept my cell phone number. There was nothing else I could do to prove I was real. So, fake me returned the headset when it arrived, and then fake me felt a sense of relief in the giant bullet I had just dodged.
Hire a lawyer for a few hours to confirm what I say since I’m some random internet guy.
We've also been commanded to drop everything we're doing and go tesify on these matters _in person_, thousands of miles away from us, by the stated deadline :|
So it's not just a matter of writing "we don't know". They have to produce a lot of material and then travel 1000's of miles to show up in the court in person.
It still find it odd that people think large corporations actively engage in ethics in any other capacity than for PR and manipulating public opinion. I have never in my life seen anything other than the smallest of private companies make a decision based on "ethical" reasons where there was a competing financial reason. Can you recall, over your entire career, where a product decision was made for ethical (rather than purely PR or legal) reasons? I have witness several companies where bringing up ethical concerns about company behavior ultimately leads to termination.
The most obvious example of this non-ethical nature of corporations is record companies bringing up the "unethical" behavior of piracy. It's not like the heads of these companies had a big ethics meeting and decided "hey piracy is not ethical, we need to fight it!" or otherwise they would have also been like "and... next on the agenda is the unethical profiting of black musicians in the 50s and 60s, we should start cutting some checks now since that was clearly wrong."
Ethics is a social construction, created by participants in a society, as a way of organizing and regulating behavior. Ethics is subtle, flexible and perpetually evolving. We as a collective can develop and evolve our ethics overtime, but the essential part is that everyone is playing the same game.
Corporations are not playing the game at all, "ethics" from the view of a corporate entity is just another tool they can use to manipulate public opinion, but they don't participate in the ethics game.
The problem is that they participating in society in an asymmetric way. They want everyone else to adhere to an ethical system when interacting with them, but consider themself completely outside the realm of ethics.
When normal humans decide that they do not want to participate in the ethics game there are consequences ranging from mild chastisement to complete estrangement from society depending on the degree one individual refuses to participate in the ethical system of the larger society.
This is not to say corporations are evil, but that are absolutely amoral in that they are not participating the moral and ethical game. Bears are amoral in the same way. We don't expect bears to make ethical decisions, but when they habitually violate the ethical code of the humans they interact with, they are usually put down as a threat to society.
Yes, because I made them.
As a nation built on capitalism, it is those who are able to influence the decisions of corporations that bear the burden and responsibility of the decisions made by those corporations. Whether those individuals are held accountable or not is irrelevant to the fact that ethics certainly ought to be considered for any individual involved who believes themselves to be "acting ethically".
I've worked hard in my career to get a seat at the table where those decisions are made because I recognize that is a place where good can be done, at scale.
We should hold ourselves, and capitalism, to higher standards. And for those of us who are leaders, whether that is a small start-up or a major conglomerate, we are responsible for creating an environment where ethical decisions can be made.
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I giggled. When you go from "don't be evil" to this, you know you fucked up big time. This has to be the tagline of the decade in regards to Google ("Google!, the boss of Satan", hi hi hi).
Google still provides android, Google maps, Gmail for free. World changing at it's time still helping people around the globe.
Their research blog is fantastic and shows what they value.
Google Io focus on people and security and trust.
Google is much further away from evil than plenty of other companies.
Did they kill stadia? Yes.
Did actually anyone care? No. Because stadia didn't matter anyway.
It's a ruthless, profit-drive, shareholder-owned, S&P 500-dominating company like all the rest, so you get all of that into the mix. It's not a particularly flattering group to be in if you're big into modern northern european social-good democracy.
But the idea that Meta is like, worse than the sovereign wealth fund in Riyadh that YC routinely connects founders with, or worse than Exxon, or worse than the pharma cartels, or? I could go on.
That's just silly now, come on.
And... it sort of has to work this way? It's not the job of the court to do Meta or FTC's advocacy for them.
In fact, Meta themselves won't be looking at the documents; their lawyers, the FCC, and the rest of the court will. This is standard procedure, and no different from if SMALL_CORP sued BIG_CORP; BIG_CORP would still have to comply with subpoenas from SMALL_CORP.
> It's not that Meta that wants the documents for corporate espionage
Yes I’m sure we all trust Meta will behave ethically when given private information.
Also, the data you provide goes to the court, not (directly) to Meta.
I also think you can ask the court to keep (parts of) the data from the public record. That would require an argument as to why making it public would harm you.
The FTC shouldn't be bringing this case. VR is still up for grabs. Defining the relevant market as the "dedicated fitness virtual reality app market" is questionable, and the idea it "proves the value of virtual reality" is nonsense.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/07/...
The idea that meta have some dominant position that can't be overcome is like suggesting Excite or Altavista had a dominant position in search that couldn't be overcome in the 90's, or MySpace in social in the early 00's. It's too early to call this market "won".
Curious statement, considering the FTC is trying to preserve competition in the space. Excite and Altavista weren't trying to buy up the biggest websites around at the time.
And yeah, they were, and they were being bought and sold, and Yahoo too. There was lots of m&a action in the space. Virtually everyone involved went under despite having a dominant position for a hot minute.
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It makes sense in the abstract: e.g. imagine you're accused of murder, and you know someone saw you somewhere else at the supposed time of the crime, yet they refuse to provide evidence to help you. It would seem reasonable they could compel you under that circumstance to testify.
Since the FTC has initiated a court case against Meta, I assume they are provided a similar legal right to command competitors to provide evidence that they haven't behaved "anti-competitively".
The question becomes whether, in this particular instance, they're abusing that privilege by demanding information they shouldn't be entitled to from unrelated/extraneous parties.
As you can see, also not a lawyer.
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Breaking them up or taking actual action against them would require deeper investigation with FTC taking the lead rather than potentially handing sensitive documents over to the offending company.
If the company wants to fight the block of acquisitions would foot the bill for everyone being supeonaed along with the FTC's expenses regardless of the case's success.
Subpoenas come from the court (which is how they’re able to be legally binding, i.e. you can be held liable—-in contempt—-for not complying), so my guess is that the court will review the various documents for evidence that Simula is or isn’t a competitor, so as to decide both whether they fit the bill as a competitor, and whether they’ll be needed during a trial. I imagine that the court can even decide that Simula does not provide evidence in either direction, so they’ll uninvolve Simula.
And if something interesting WAS found, it would get out. And some of these things would become public record, either way.
You are confusing signed off by the court with issued by the court.
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Also RE some speculation in this thread, it seems very unlikely to me that Meta's legal team was looking to get some free market research, but it is interesting to consider.
Samsung, Nintendo, and the other parties listed likely will spent $1-2m on these subpoenas. It likely involves thousands and thousands of messages and documents. A lot of back and forth with lawyers ("Each of these 12 employees exported everything with the word 'roadmap' in their email? what about Sandy's personal phone; I see a reference to an SMS elsewhere"), IP council to redact things, and then prep and support for the deposition.
SimulaVR is a tiny startup. It very well could kill them.