Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has responded to a comment from Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak expressing disappointment in the Oculus Rift inventor.
Luckey left Oculus owner Facebook in late March after months of silence following the revelation that he had funded a controversial political campaign. As reported by Forbes, Wozniak recently stated that he was “disappointed” in Luckey’s actions, adding: “Why do you hide and try and do something anonymously — it’s because you feel it’s wrong. He didn’t want to take personal responsibility.”
This story was flagged up on Reddit, where Luckey himself recently resurfaced, three weeks after leaving Facebook.
Replying specifically to the above comment, he said: “Some people want founders to keep their politics private and away from their business, others think they should do everything out in the open in a vocal way. You can’t make everyone happy, and there are good arguments on both sides, but it is clear that people who happen to align with opinions held by the majority of the media come out ahead either way.”
Luckey went on to refute the idea idea that doing something anonymously implied doing something wrong, calling it a “dangerous” idea. “It is a significant factor in the ongoing erosion of our digital liberties, and is used to justify things like mass data collection and encryption backdoors,” he said.
It’s the first time Luckey has addressed the events since issuing an apology in September 2016.
“All of the outright lies by the media demonstrated exactly why you should stay out of the spotlight if your views don’t happen to align with the mainstream press,” Luckey later added.
Luckey’s comments are particularly interesting given the nature of his departure from Facebook, and seem to broadly address the vast amount of criticism the 24 year old faced late last year. Now that he’s separate from the company, though, the big question is what he’ll do next.
