I don't understand how gamers can so vehemently hate Facebook and Instagram, but salivate so heavily over the Meta Quest. A VR system that explicitly requires you to have a Meta account and will send all of your data up to them. All the same things they claim to hate about FB.
As one of those gamers, the answer imho is quite simple: Ignoring the awful data practices of Meta, the Quest 2/3 as a product is great. Over the years, my Q2 kept improving, with constant updates, new features and general performance improvements. I just got a Q3, and the technological jump is enormous. Add to that the absolute lack of (affordable) alternatives, and you have an easy choice: recognize that Meta has done more for the VR space than anyone else, or don't do VR.
I mean they're a mega corp willing to lose billions upon billions to own the market. That none of their competitors are willing to bleed money like that isn't surprising, and buying into such an obviously poisoned platform is not a good idea for the future of the industry unless you want it to be owned by Meta.
As an individual consumer... Not much. Still wouldn't buy their product as it's showing support with whatever little power you have.
In a better world there would be market regulations or something to keep a massive company from burning all their money in a market to have an unfair advantage over all others.
I'm sorry, but it's not. Same as the alternative to a meat-based diet isn't "have you tried starving?". Only other inside-out tracking headsets are made by Apple and Pico (Bytedance). Both companies that are as bad as Meta. You can debate whether humanity needs VR/AR, but that's a different topic. VR in it's current state is driven by Meta.
There aren't many viable alternatives, so I do understand it. Valve Index is probably the most free but it's expensive and starting to become out of date. The Reverb G2 will get no further updates in 2025, and will require you to stay on an old version of Windows (and using Windows in general isn't great from a data privacy perspective). Any of the remaining alternatives are expensive and/or very niche.
It sucks, and I hope Valve does come out with the rumoured Deckard headset, because we need something that is well supported and not tied to the whims of Facebook or Microsoft.
Society’s mechanisms are far too slow and lack the precision to deal with Mark Zuckerberg — a man that acts with a lack of morality that I find putrid — and the complex machine he's used to torture humans for profit and power. And as I’ve mentioned before, Mark Zuckerberg can never be fired. We’re stuck with him forever. He can — and will — run this company into the ground.
While Elon musk is a greedy and churlish executive, and a disgusting, shameful man, Mark Zuckerberg is something entirely different. He is far from stupid, and unlike Musk seemingly feels no compulsion for anyone to like him. He craves numerical dominance, at any cost. He must force human beings to use Facebook, and once they are there, he must make them move in the way wishes and do the things he wishes all so that he can see the number go up.