Facebook unveiled last week the Portal and Portal + smart speakers that can follow you while making a video call. The devices are expected to ship in early November.
What will happen; Considering the dynamics of Facebook and the global number of its members, one could assume that the two devices will go very well in sales.
Let's think a little more systematically:
To be clear: I do not make a strategic commentary and it's not a hardware or software review since nobody has tried Portal and Portal +.
This is a different perspective.
Facebook is an Internet company that stands out for offering "free" advertising services. The company delayed the release of Portal due to the scandals we all know. If there was no story with her Cambridge Analytica Portal devices would have been announced in May, which eventually took place in October.
But ten days before the Portal announcement, Facebook revealed an even bigger data breach, and four days after the Portal announcement, the company announced new details about hack.
The company announced what personal data had been stolen: name, gender, electronic post office, phone number, language, relationship status, types of devices used to access Facebook, and recent searches.
So if Cambridge Analytica was enough to delay Portal traffic, that's it the hack should have permanently excluded the product.
Let's go ahead:
Eight days after Portal was announced, Facebook confirmed it will use Portal to learn more about you so it can target you better with ads. The joke that Portal is another device Facebook can use to spy on you is no longer a joke.
"Portal voice calling is based on Messenger infrastructure, so when you make a video call to Portal, we collect the same types of information (eg usage data, call duration, call frequency) that we collect from other Messenger messages," said a Facebook spokesperson at Recode.
"We can use these information to update the ads we show you across our platforms. Other general usage data, such as total app usage, etc., may also be used in the information we use to projection advertisements.”
However, Facebook's Facebook page reports about Portal "Private by design".
If, after all the above, someone buys the devices, we are probably talking about privacy for a long time with a public that does not care about individual freedoms and their online protection. So good luck...