Facebook Accidentally Shipped 'Tens of Thousands' of VR Controllers With Hidden Messages Like 'Big Brother is Watching' and 'The Masons Were Here' (businessinsider.com)

Facebook accidentally shipped "tens of thousands" of virtual reality (VR) controllers with bizarre hidden messages, including "Big Brother is Watching" and "The Masons Were Here," reports BusinessInsider. From the report: Nate Mitchell, the cofounder of Facebook-owned VR organisation Oculus, wrote on Twitter on Friday that the company inadvertently printed some unusual messages inside its Touch controllers, handheld devices for playing games and navigating inside VR. These messages were intended only for prototypes, he said -- but a mistake meant they were included in regular production devices. "Unfortunately, some 'easter egg' labels meant for prototypes accidentally made it onto the internal hardware for tens of thousands of Touch controllers," the tech executive wrote.

Comments

IT WAS AN ACCIDENT!

[Rick Schumann]

..or was it? YOU decide.
Meanwhile the members of The Resistance who were responsible for this have been rounded up and 're-educated' in Facebooks' private re-education (blacksite) facility, no doubt. Or perhaps straight into unmarked graves.

Help im trapped in this factory

[kushks]

It reads like one of those fortune cookies with a fortune that reads as an SOS help me message The engineers are trying to tell us somthing

treat all systems as if they are production

[unity]

"These messages were intended only for prototypes, he said"

This is why you always treat data in test and devel systems as if it was a production or a demo system.

It is not good when you are demoing to a customer and they login with a test account and are greeted with the message, "Welcome back, Big Asshole."

Re:treat all systems as if they are production

[michiganbob]

It is not good when you are demoing to a customer and they login with a test account and are greeted with the message, "Welcome back, Big Asshole."

Ah yes, like the time a previous developer decided to have the database connection error display "Fuck! Can't connect to database!". Of course the database didn't fail until well after he left. Fun times when the client called about that one...

Re:treat all systems as if they are production

[NicknameUnavailable]

This is why you always treat data in test and devel systems as if it was a production or a demo system.

While not untrue, the issue here is that Facebook is a government data collection organization masquerading as a publicly traded company. These messages are indicative of internal corporate culture because people are people - the shady government snoops are just benevolent, they have to make people buy their bullshit well enough to get it implemented. That means they have to make it fun/quirky/acceptable - THAT is what this shows.

Lesson to learn

[enriquevagu]

Easter eggs may be funny, but they should never be against the public image of your company. "Big Brother is watching"

Re:Lesson to learn

[Anonymous Coward]

Really says a lot about how privacy concerns are viewed within facebook. They think it's all a big joke.

IT WAS VIRAL MARKETING!

[tomhath]

Run out and buy one quick - they'll be more collectable than Beanie Babies. And the marketing drones who thought this up will get nice bonuses.

Re:IT WAS VIRAL MARKETING!

[v1s10nary]

Run out and buy one quick - they'll be more collectable than Beanie Babies. And the marketing drones who thought this up will get nice bonuses.

Indeed.... FaceBook is the master of social manipulation.

who needs to worry about Russia/China?

[WindBourne]

It seems like lots of BS comes from our own companies, who are always working for China or Russia as well.

Title is missleading

[HannethCom]

To be clear, most of these have not shipped yet. This is the batch to go with the Quest and Rift S kits.
If you currently have touch controllers, the insides of them do not have these sayings.

The exception is the dev kits for these have shipped and they have the sayings, "Big Brother is Watching" and "Hi iFixit! We See You!"

The consumer touch controllers that are about to ship say, "This Space For Rent" & "The Masons Were Here."
Facebook does not plan to recall any of these. You have to unscrew your controller and open it up to see these messages.

And let's not forget the email passwords

[bill_mcgonigle]

What a freakshow it must be over there. Their corporate culture permits this kind of crap to make it to production:

https://arstechnica.com/inform...

Who is still working at Facebook? The backroom guys who keep those servers running must be mortified to be associated with these bozos.

Re:IT WAS A REELECTION!

[jwhyche]

If there was ever a cautionary tale of a dystopian, post-apocalyptic future, it'd be one where Trump gets another 4 years to continue destroying the United States and torturing human beings.

According to a theory of physics there is a universe out there where Trump is doing exactly that. It is a good thing we don't live in that universe. I imagine in that universe Trump wouldn't be getting another 4 years, but currently in our universe Trump has 2020 in the bag.