We’ve long done a series of posts with the title, “Oh Samsung”. This is the (long overdue, I think) very first “Oh Facebook”.

This started with this tweet:

Here’s some mind-blowing technology being developed by @boztank and his team for our AR glasses: wrist-based sensors that let you control devices using the same electrical motor nerve signals you use to move your handshttps://t.co/UsVsGA7tm6 pic.twitter.com/T6xZzfoEdM

— Mike Schroepfer (@schrep) March 18, 2021

That’s Facebook’s Mike Schroepfer, showing off some cool wrist-mapping interface work for Facebook’s Project Aria (AR glasses/wearables).

Watch the video, and watch this follow-on tweet video, showing a virtual keyboard that works on any surface.

This is cool stuff, very exciting. But.

On your Mac, follow the headline link to Facebook’s Inside Reality Labs page. Scroll down a bit and click play to watch that embedded video. As you may have seen in other Facebook places, you’ll immediately get this alert:

That last sentence is critical: “This will allow “facebook.com” to track your activity.

That is wildly open-ended. And if you want to watch the video, you have to agree to this. Click Don’t Allow and the video immediately shuts down. Like a honeytrap, they are luring you in with the promise of content.

Watch the video on your iPhone and a big cookie alert appears. It lets you watch the video without agreeing, but is there tracking going on behind the scenes?

Perhaps there’s nothing more nefarious going on here than a simple cookie. But how hard is it to believe that there’s more to it than that.

And I’m puzzled why the behavior is so different between the macOS and iOS treatments of this page. Facebook has a trust issue. At least for me.