Facebook has accidentally printed several bizarre phrases onto its touch controllers that are a part of the company’s Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift S VR headsets. Oculus executive Nate Mitchell tweeted that phrases such as “This Space For Rent” and “The Masons Were Here” have been printed on components for “tens of thousands” of Touch controllers. The easter eggs were only supposed to be printed on prototypes, but Mitchell says they “accidentally made it onto the internal hardware for tens of thousands of Touch controllers.”
“While I appreciate Easter eggs, these were inappropriate and should have been removed. The integrity and functionality of the hardware were not compromised, and we’ve fixed our process so this won’t happen again,” Mitchell tweeted. He added that a small number of development kits included the messages “Big Brother is Watching” or “Hi iFixit! We See You!”–a reference to a prominent hardware repair site. Supposedly, these won’t appear in any consumer devices.
Unfortunately, some “easter egg” labels meant for prototypes accidentally made it onto the internal hardware for tens of thousands of Touch controllers. [1/3]
— Nate Mitchell (@natemitchell) April 12, 2019
“[T]hese messages were inside our Touch controllers for the upcoming [Oculus] Quest and Rift S headsets. We’ve already removed the messages from hardware moving forward, but tens of thousands of consumer units will contain these messages when Quest and Rift S ship in the spring,” Facebook representative Johanna Peace said in an email.
While I appreciate easter eggs, these were inappropriate and should have been removed. The integrity and functionality of the hardware were not compromised, and we've fixed our process so this won't happen again. [3/3]
— Nate Mitchell (@natemitchell) April 12, 2019
The tweets were reported by Business Insider today making the story public after Mitchell’s apology tweet. The new headsets are slated to come to the market within next month and Oculus apparently discovered the messages when they had already been incorporated into some consumer hardware.
While Facebook has been constantly in news regarding its misuse of privacy policy, this is distinctly one of the funnier and more innocuous things that Facebook had to apologize for.
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