Oculus Rift Allowing Pornography?

It was recently announced that the Oculus Rift wouldn’t do anything to prohibit their customers from viewing X-rated material on their devices. While many websites are reporting that this will indeed happen, website Fusion says otherwise. Time to find out what’s going on, and what people are saying.

UK website Daily Mail reported that Oculus Rift founder Palmer Luckey wouldn’t do anything to deter adult entertainment groups from getting involved with his device. He said, “The Rift is an open platform. We don’t control what software can run on it and that’s a big deal.” Although he’s right, his product is going to be picked up by families. Unless there are parental locks on the device, concerning what their children can see, then expect some trouble.

He would also add, “If you go back in history and look at any new medium in the past, porn is a key driver. Now for some reason, or for a good reason in Japan, VR in porn is big. A lot of people are working on it because it is going to make a lot of money. Can you imagine a virtual retail option for the Victoria Secret brand?” Now here, it sounds like that he wants people to use his device for porn, and expects his sales to rise because of it. And on a side note, the Japanese have already designed certain “things” to go along with the X-rated VR market.

What’s surprising is that Facebook hasn’t made a public statement about this (but they did say something to someone). Even though they own the Oculus Rift, shouldn’t they have standards concerning this VR device? If people aren’t allowed to post naked pictures of themselves on their social media site, then why would continue supporting something like this?

However, CNet did receive a statement from Facebook. The social media simply said, “[The}Oculus is a more personal experience.” Yes, the VR device is meant to be a personal experience. But like the CNet author says, “There is, however, something potentially disconcerting about a human being one day walking down a busy street, wearing his Rift and making peculiar guttural noises.”

Now here’s where things get interesting. Website Fusion reports that the Oculus will not future pornographic content. According to the author, Facebook actually told her, ““Oculus curates the content which will be distributed through the Oculus Store. Oculus only distributes developer content that meets their terms of service which forbid pornographic content from being a part of the Oculus Store.” Wait, what? How can they say that when their founder entertained the idea of it being a key factor in driving VR tech? Shouldn’t they go public with this?

The situation is confusing. While many are reporting that this will happen, it seems odd that Facebook would tell Fusion that such ideas are against their standards. What are you thoughts on the situation? Will we be seeing pornographic content on the Oculus?