
Facebook Dives into Home Device Market with Video Chat Product Named “Portal” - uptown
https://cheddar.com/videos/exclusive-facebook-dives-into-home-device-market-with-video-chat-product-named-portal
======
sharkweek
My friends and I got into a debate the other night, ranking the Big Five in
order of trust. While nobody really reached a consensus on what company
belonged at the top (Apple was probably closest), we all agreed that Facebook
was at the bottom of the list, and that they were way, way below everyone
else.

There's honestly no way I would ever let Facebook have a device like this in
my home (and for those wondering, I don't have Facebook on my phone).

~~~
ysavir
Apple > Amazon > Google > Facebook

? Microsoft ?

Apple is a hardware and cloud company. Their incentive is to get you to buy
phones and computers and lock you into their ecosystem. Some shameful
behavior, but nothing that's not to be expected. Trustworthy, but in need of
the occasional reprimanding.

Amazon is a middle man company. They connect sellers to buyers and interact
with you to get you to use their platform. Over the past ten years they've
dipped into a bunch of other markets as well, but I don't think it's affected
_why_ they collect information so far. Untrustworthy, minorly invasive, but
not malicious. Yet.

Google wants to know everything about you so they can profit from your data
when selling advertisements, and do so by inserting themselves into everything
you do. Your calendar, your email, your browser; any place where they can
squeeze in a call to their servers. Untrustworthy and highly invasive, but not
malicious.

Facebook, like Google, wants to know everything about you so they can sell
that data to advertisers. But whereas Google attempts to integrate itself into
your natural flow of life, Facebook tries to change your behavior so that you
interact with it more often. Facebook actually wants to control you.
Untrustworthy, highly invasive, and malicious.

Microsoft is in the process of reinventing itself and it's too early to tell
what sort of trust it will deserve, if any. But I don't think anyone is
preaching optimism.

~~~
drdaeman
I don't feel Facebook is anywhere close to the levels of omnipresence Google
has.

It's rare if some random webpage doesn't talk to Google servers, be it
analytics, fonts, CAPTCHAs, "sign in with Google" buttons or whatever. And
they're in every other smartphone. And they handle lots of payments. And so
on.

Facebook, on the contrary, rarely shows up. Sometimes there are like buttons,
but I'd say they're rare. Or maybe I'm visiting the kind of sites where
they're rare.

They may try to spam me (usually with some "you have new friend suggestion"
with another person I've never ever met) but not like my mail filters care
about that. And I occasionally log in there to check if someone had posted
something (usually nope). I fed it some public information, never _ever_ fed
it anything non-public (not just private but non-public - even though I tag
some public stuff as "private" there is no harm if that becomes public), and
don't post anything there myself.

I'm going to say a heresy but... that's feels basically harmless (and
absolutely useless) to me.

~~~
ysavir
I think you missed my point. Facebook's goal has always been to control the
users. There have been numerous articles recently about how Facebook was
designed to mess with user psychology to increase their engagement. They're
practicing social engineering, and that to me is incredibly harmful.

And while Google is much more omnipresent (no argument there!), at least their
tactics involve letting the users do what they would normally do, even if
they're spying in on it. Google might be watching, but at least they aren't
controlling.

~~~
drdaeman
Got it now.

Yeah, I guess you're right - Facebook is insistent on suggesting their way of
doing things, constantly trying to tell me what to read and what to do.

\---

In my _personal_ experiences they have failed, though.

All their suggestions were way off and totally useless. So I just auto-ignore
their mails, dismiss the notifications just by type without checking and
whatever and use only what I want to use (they have some good uses).

Heck, even their Android apps are so awful, so even though I wanted some of
features they sort of forced me to not install any apps and just use a
browser. ;)

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adjkant
> "According to people familiar with Facebook’s plans, Portal will be equipped
> with a wide-angle lens that is capable of recognizing individual faces and
> associating them with their Facebook accounts."

In addition to Facebook being viewed as the least trustworthy as mentioned in
other comments, let's just casually add in facial recognition cameras into our
homes too!

There are plenty of reasons to be wary of home devices no matter the company,
but holy fuck I wouldn't touch this one with a 10-foot pole.

As an alternative to this, I love Google's personal recognition solution of
recognizing voice with a small model so that while it can distinguish between
(I think up to 10?) people, it is in no way good enough to fingerprint your
voice.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
I won't go into homes with an active Portal, for as long as that's remotely
practical. Jesus christ.

~~~
rconti
They sure didn't think through this name, at the very least.

~~~
mintplant
I imagine it narrowly beat out "Telescreen".

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minton
I’m not sure I would trust Facebook with an always-on wide-angle lens and
microphone in my house. I can’t imagine the next-level of creepy ads that will
enable. It’s creepy enough when they start showing ads for physical stores
I’ve visited.

~~~
paulie_a
Oddly enough Facebook has the lowest quality of ads in my opinion. For the
large amounts of data they have on me, they don't seem to utilize it
effectively

~~~
kaybe
Have you seen anyone using it effectively?

~~~
lakechfoma
Absolutely not. I'm really amazed by how bad Amazon is sometimes.

I buy cat food once for a friend - eternally and constantly get
recommendations for more cat stuff.

I buy coffee filters every 6 months - I get "buy it again" a week later. This
lasts for a month. Then it goes away. 5 months later, end of my regular buying
period, and they seem to have forgotten all about them.

~~~
Balgair
Ads/recommendations are shown to you at an 'auction', companies bid in micro-
second level timing to show you an ad/recommendation.

So, when you say that you get low quality ads, you are telling us that the
bidders think you aren't worth much. Hence, you get the same ad over and over,
because you are being targeted by the 'long tail' of the bidders. Also, they
'forget' you for the same reason, because you aren't worth enough to them to
become a 'regular'.

It's not the bidders, it's that you wisely don't respond well to
ads/recommendations on the internet.

No offense ;)

~~~
lakechfoma
Ah well that put a positive note on my morning coffee. I didn't know that.

But still wouldn't it be valuable to the bidders for Amazon to fix this? Or
shouldn't Amazon value better targeting because relevant ads convince users to
engage with the platform more? The people selling the coffee filters are still
guaranteed my business, just not before 6 months. I always buy from the same
seller too so it could be a good opportunity for a competitor to sneak in
right at the 6 month mark and make a new repeat customer.

I guess the answer to that is probably "well the system works well enough
elsewhere so that would just be hyper-optimization"

~~~
Balgair
Yeah, with large companies like Amazon, never discount bureaucratic log-jams
and just regular stupidity. I agree with you that optimizations can be made,
but the system may be in a 'not broken, don't fix' local maximum. The inertia
and complexity may be too hard to over come. Twitter only recently upped the
character limit after nearly a decade because the old code-base was spaghetti
and didn't allow improvement.

But these are the reasons why the large CEOs have always been terrified of
'two guys in a garage'. They know they have issues like this, and that the
little scrappers don't. If anything, these little issues are the camel's nose
under the tent of Amazon.

------
ArchReaper
Now here's a device that actually is a straight wiretap.

I wonder if they just hope that people don't care, or if they are actually
going to design it in some kind of not-a-wiretap way (hopefully following
Google/Amazon's example)

------
chrischen
I’m surprised they aren’t releasing it for free to align with their mission of
connecting the world, always on, all the time.

Of course the catch would be it watches you, knows you by your face, and
builds your advertising profile.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
The catch is that it automatically builds a social graph based on recognizing
the faces of people who visit you. No facebook account and don't pose for
pictures? No problem, we'll just install facial recognition cameras in the
houses of your friends.

------
soared
I've never heard of cheddar - it is almost more interesting than facebook's
portal. Looks like tech broadcast news that is not on tv but digital only.

~~~
rwc
Ironically enough, they've grown on the back of their live broadcast primarily
distributed via Facebook Live.

------
alistproducer2
While I understand that my smartphone can be used as a listening device, the
day when I will purchase a dedicated wire tap for my house will be never. I've
been to people's houses that have them and sure they're fun when you're having
some beers and want to hear a song I don't mind taking 2 seconds to manual
select a song on my phone to keep a hot mic out of my house.

------
krisives
That sounds like an absurd waste of time. Anyone who wants to do most of that
can already do so, just they won't have the "luxury" of Facebook monetizing
it.

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hbosch
I don’t see yet how this can possibly be more than a clone of the Echo Show,
but twice as expensive and with Facebook-y features. I don’t spot anything
particularly significant in this article that differentiates it — even the
leaked image looks similar to the hardware. I have to assume most of the price
difference would come down to screen size or resolution.

In any case, it’s very interesting to think about Facebook getting into video
as they are leaning into Live already. I wonder if there is also more Live
programming products in the works as they continue to ramp up against YouTube,
and explore content creation... but still, I don’t know many people now who
video chat via FB (or any FB properties), but I’m on iOS and pretty much
exclusively use FaceTime for that so I’m in a bubble there.

------
soared
Comical that they will charge $500. The data (revenue) they gain from me
owning a portal I'd imagine would off set the cost to build and develop this
product.

~~~
cryptoz
Same price point and similar privacy invasion as a smartphone.

------
BigSlowTarget
I'm making a note here: huge success...

Seriously Facebook guys, do you check nothing? There is no way the internet
isn't going to connect wide angle lenses, invasion of privacy and a
psychopathic if lovable computer program with Aperture Science. I hope that's
what you're going for.

------
tinyhouse
I was hoping for a device with VR experience. I've been waiting for something
like this since they acquired Oculus.

------
tw04
Did they all sit down and go - you know, that Facebook phone thing was such a
huge success... let's do that again!

~~~
r00fus
No, they know FaceOS and Fire(sale)phone did poorly but that Amazon is getting
the side-angle with Echo/Show so they figured they might get a good 2nd place
with the "I don't care if it's creepy" crowd.

~~~
tw04
Echo did well because it was the first to market and quickly built up an
ecosystem. Google home did well because google and because of the integration
with their video/music/phone services. There's no incentive to jump on the
facebook bandwagon, they offer nothing unique. And even among uneducated
consumers, they've got a bad reputation WRT privacy.

If their best and brightest couldn't see that coming... they're in trouble.

~~~
fps
This is a video chat hardware device, not an assistant. Facebook has become
the de-facto messaging platform for most of the people I know, and Facebook's
Video chat is typically what I suggest when I want to do a video conference
with a non-technical user. Google totally blew their commanding network and
technical lead by the repeated gchat -> hangouts -> duo migrations. No one I
know is typically logged into hangouts anymore, and I've never even had a
single contact sign up for duo or allo. Facetime is a non-starter for the 80%
of the population that uses something other than a Mac and an iOS device.
Facebook works everywhere, has all my contacts, and is something people know
and use.

------
aviv
I wonder how this ties into the recent rumors circling about Facebook buying
RingCentral.

------
Jyaif
That's a brilliant product. Assuming it's reliable and user friendly, that's
the kind of product I'd give my parents (or even grand mother) so that they
can easily video chat with the rest of the family.

~~~
bartman
I gave my 90 year old grandmother an Echo Show for Christmas and she loves it.
My main goal was video chat (which she can also initiate herself), but she’s
actively using it as a radio, weather station and calendar for the trash pick
up.

To help her remember the commands I made a reference sheet with the most
common phrases, but what mainly helped her was to think of talking to Alexa as
if she was talking to a dog: Giving clear, loudly spoken commands.

~~~
wallflower
Did you see the recent SNL skit? I think that a real Alexa for Seniors would
incorporate some of what this spoof Alexa does.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvT_gqs5ETk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvT_gqs5ETk)

~~~
bartman
Heh, the difficulty in remembering the wake word actually rings true. We tried
it with „Alexa“ first which is somewhat difficult to pronounce for a German
speaker who doesn’t known any English. „Echo“ however worked well and she had
no problem remembering it.

------
bigphishy
Facebook has jumped the shark.

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sandov
Who would be so stupid to buy one of these?

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tzakrajs
Portal to hell.

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myaso
Lolz. That's some awesome industrial design -- did they use _1984_ as
inspiration?

