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; If one considers the dynamics of Facebook and its worldwide number of members, one might assume that the two devices will do 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 Portal's announcement, Facebook revealed an even bigger data breach, and four days after Portal's announcement, the company announced new details of hack.
The company announced what personal data had been stolen: name, gender, electronic email, 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 Portale's announcement, Facebook has confirmed that it will use Portal to learn more about you so it can better target you with ads. The anecdote that Portal is another device that can use Facebook to spy on you is no longer an anecdote.
"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 may use this 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, the σελίδα Facebook products reports for the Portal "Private by design".
If after all of the above someone buys the devices for so long we are discussing privacy with an audience that does not care about their individual freedoms and online protection. So they'll be fine ...