The American computer scientist, who coined the term ‘virtual reality,’ cautions against online ‘psychological operatives’
Jaron Lanier, the eminent American computer scientist, composer and artist, is no stranger to skepticism around social media, but his current interpretations of its effects are becoming darker and his warnings more trenchant.
Lanier, a dreadlocked free-thinker credited with coining the term “virtual reality”, has long sounded dire sirens about the dangers of a world over-reliant on the internet and at the increasing mercy of tech lords, their social media platforms and those who work for them.
Popluar VR free running game, Stride, has returned to the Quest store after being taken down more than a month ago in a move from Meta to unlist apps with “financial entities” based in Russia.
Stride is developed by indie studio Joy Way, and was removed from sale on Quest in late March. During that time, it remained on sale on Steam, though some PSVR users also reported issues with finding the game.
Stride Returns To Oculus Store
However, in a statement issued over email to UploadVR in March, a Meta spokesperson suggested that economic restrictions placed on Russia in light of its invasion of Ukraine had led the company to de-list certain apps. “Due to difficulties in making financial transactions and processing payments in and from Russia, we will not be able to list any applications on Quest that require payment to financial entities based in Russia,” the statement reads.
“While we do not sell Quest devices in Russia, those who have acquired a device through a resale market or other means have likely been impacted by various restrictions that have been placed.”
Over the course of Stride’s absence, Joy Way, repeatedly told us that it did not know why Stride was removed from the store. In emails to UploadVR a representative said that, whilst the studio was established by a mix of European and Russian developers, the company is “majorly controlled by Cypriots” and was registered as a Cyprus company in September 2021 with its main development office now located there.
“During the early stage the company’s IT development team was based in Russia,” the Joy Way rep wrote. “Later on after the successful launch of Stride we initiated a process of company restructuring and incorporated a Cyprus company. This was made for certain reasons. First of all, the European jurisdiction is claimed to be more favorable and reliable for doing business. Secondly, the majority shareholders are Cypriots and this was their mandatory requirement to structure the business in Cyprus.”
This weekend, however, Stride returned to the Quest Store without warning. “Speaking of this whole situation, we still don’t know the exact reason why the game was taken down on Quest,” Joy Way said in a follow-up statement. “Meta asked us to provide legal information about Joy Way LTD and STRIDE in particular. After doing so, they took their time to make a decision, and we were not informed of any specific details of their internal discussion, we only had an approximate time frame for this decision.”
“So it was pretty stressful and we’re glad that STRIDE is back to the store.”
The company says it now has “very few employees” left in Russia, with many relocated. Those that remain due to “family circumstances or due to lack of necessary documents” are mainly within the studio’s quality assurance department, according to a Joy Way representative. Ukrainian developers have also relocated, the studio claims.
“It is impossible not to feel pain seeing the situation in Ukraine,” the studio added. “Fortunately we have managed to give every assistance to our Ukrainian team mates and their families and evacuate the majority of our employees to a safe place.”
Facebook and Instagram have been blocked in the Russian Federation, with both social media platforms now completely inaccessible to users in that country. Meta’s VR services haven’t been mentioned by name in the bans, although they’re also likely to become inaccessible as a side effect.
The ongoing invasion of Ukraine has caused a huge backlash from businesses around the world, which has resulted in a laundry list of consumer products and services pulling out of both Russia and its ally Belarus.
Last week Reutersrevealed that Meta was taking a temporary stance on how it’s addressing hate speech on Facebook and Instagram. The report maintained that users in many of the former Eastern Bloc countries who called for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion wouldn’t be considered a breach in terms of service. It was later clarified that only users in Ukraine would be exempt, and not the wider list of surrounding countries.
Now both Facebook and Instagram have been banned outright in Russia, with the country cutting those services off to some 70 million users in response to Meta’s now fairly obvious stance on just who it supports in the conflict. Meta messaging app WhatsApp hasn’t been specifically included in the ban, although that has the distinct possibility of changing fairly soon.
The Russian government opened a criminal probe last week against Meta in hopes of classifying it as an “extremist organization,” which Business Insiderreports may see a complete prohibition of its activities in Russia. It’s a growing and frankly nebulous designation levied by Russia on organizations such as al-Qaida… but also Jehovah’s Witnesses, so it’s not certain what effect it will have on users who try to bypass bans by using Meta’s services through virtual private networks (VPNs).
Unsupported, Unwanted Business
Countries not included in Meta’s list of supported regions can’t buy VR headsets directly from Meta, although residents can import hardware from elsewhere and access the digital side of the platform without issue; supported regions include Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom and the United States.
Still, over the years getting a Quest or Rift in Russia wasn’t like buying one in Germany or Mexico (both unsupported regions), where you can simply login to Amazon and purchase with one click. In Russia, importing things from outside—especially European countries—has been notoriously difficult and costly, making a $300 Quest 2 significantly more expensive whether you decide to import or buy through a local reseller.
Image courtesy Meta
Russian Quests and Rifts aren’t expensive paper weights just yet though, although it looks like it’s moving in that direction. Since March 2nd, Russian banks have been banned from SWIFT transactions, the leading payment system for international bank transfers, and Russian-issued Visa and Mastercard have also become useless outside of the country.
Effectively all digital sales for services such as the Quest Store, Steam, Epic, etc., are now dead as a result, meaning Russian users can’t buy games online.
Quest Gets Caught in the Dragnet
Russia’s version of the FCC, Roskomnadzor, has the power to ban or slow down any service it deems inappropriate. Last year the agency announced it was reducing the loading speed of Twitter in response in response to the website hosting “illegal images,” bringing the service to a crawl for its users. Hitting the F5 button resulted in multiple minute-long waits to refresh your feed, something which ultimately was designed to stymy the user’s ability to view and share video and images. The year-long slowdown is over though. Twitter is also now blocked.
And then the agency targeted Facebook and Instagram, which got on the blacklist when Roskomnadzor said those services were allowing for “calls for violence against Russians.” At the same time, Quest users weren’t able to login since some ISPs in that country seemed to have enacted their own interpretations of the ban. At this point, Quest users in Russia aren’t certain whether it’s intentional or accidental.
Photo by Road to VR
Speaking to Russia-based VR users, we learned that Roskomnadzor doesn’t appear to have the same degree of control over service providers as China does with its ‘Great Firewall’—not yet anyhow. For now it appears some Russian ISPs are being more heavy-handed than others when it comes to blocking peripheral services. Blocking web services not explicitly mentioned in bans could be anticipatory, overzealous, inaccurate—or some combination of the three.
Back in 2018, Roskomnadzor moved to block messaging app Telegram, which resulted in a host of unrelated web services, such as PlayStation Network, being inaccessible to users. It was a decidedly indelicate way of shutting down Telegram in Russia, so it’s possible Russians may be experiencing a similar situation, albeit on a much larger scale now.
For Russia-based users, the first and most obvious workaround to accessing any of the blocked services mentioned above is setting up a VPN, but it’s still too early to tell if that’s an enduring strategy. Meta may soon be considered an “extremist organization” by the Russian government, and interacting with its services surreptitiously may be even be considered a criminal act. And that would probably go for Quest users and developers alike.
Sony has stopped selling PlayStation consoles and software in Russia, making it the latest major brand to pull out of the country over the war in Ukraine.
