Facebook mocks privacy concerns with messages hidden in Oculus controllers

Facebook thinks your privacy concerns are a laughing matter. 

That much was once again made clear today when the social media giant was forced to admit it had “accidentally” shipped “tens of thousands” of Oculus Touch controllers with secret messages embedded inside the devices. The messages, which Facebook definitely did not intend the public to see, include breezy references to it being an all-knowing surveillance entity watching your every move. 

The unintentionally revealing hidden warnings include the following: “?The Masons Were Here.?,” and “?Big Brother is Watching?.”

Yes, you read that correctly.

“Unfortunately, some ‘easter egg’ labels meant for prototypes accidentally made it onto the internal hardware for tens of thousands of Touch controllers,” tweeted Nate Mitchel, the head of Facebook’s virtual reality product. “The messages on final production hardware say ‘This Space For Rent’ & ‘?The Masons Were Here.?’ A few dev kits shipped with ‘?Big Brother is Watching?’ and ‘Hi iFixit! We See You!?’ but those were limited to non-consumer units.”

Facebook, of course, has received justifiable criticism over the years for a never-ending series of scandals relating to its cavalier approach toward user privacy. This latest news — that its Oculus Touch developers consider user privacy a joke — should thus perhaps come as no surprise. 

Still, it’s shocking to see a physical manifestation of what giving absolutely zero fucks looks like. And yet here we are.