Facebook announced the rollout of their new hardware, the Facebook Portal, on Oct. 9.
Like many new tech announcements of present day, the news came with a fancy video complete with subliminal messages of togetherness combined with a new focus on personal privacy.
However, in classic Facebook fashion, the reception has been lukewarm and the product is more than a little flawed.
Facebook’s Portal is described as a home assistant that is supposed to “feel less like a video call and more like you’re in the same room — even when you’re miles apart,” according to Facebook’s website for the product. It looks like a rounded version of the Amazon Echo Show or the Google Home Hub, both of which accomplish many of the same integral purposes and were released earlier this year.
There are some things unique to Facebook’s entry into an already-crowded market. The premise appears to be that the customer can have all the best of Facebook at their disposal in one place, given that the people they wish to communicate with have the same enthusiasm for all of Facebook’s services.
Jonah Baker | Argonaut
Portal is also equipped with a wide-angle camera that is designed to track everyone in the room and keep them in frame, freeing up the user to go about their lives and conduct a conversation as if their audience were still in the room.
Outside of that feature, there is almost nothing new here. It can give Alexa commands and play music through any music streaming service of choice. Everything else that Portal offers, you can replicate with just about any smartphone.
Limited new technologies combined with a not-insignificant price tag ($199 for the Portal, $349 for the Portal+) beg the question, where is the demand for this product?
And of course, that comes before even considering Facebook’s long-standing issues with privacy. Massive data breaches, the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the fact the company’s business model is based entirely upon repurposing every click and data point supplied by their users for sale makes it difficult to put faith in a device that is theoretically capable of watching and listening to an entire room within your home.
There is undoubtedly some section of the population that has longed for an upgrade to the face-to-face calling technologies that require a device to be carried around, limiting the user. Additionally, some people might have their entire online presences encapsulated by Facebook, Messenger and Spotify, making Portal a useful hub that could downplay the importance of having a tablet or other smart home devices. The people in this sect probably have dispatched of privacy concerns a long time ago as a losing effort.
For the rest of the world that sees Facebook as little more than a way to organize groups and the most likely entity to invade our privacy, there is no real reason to bring a Portal into your home. What use could we have for a less-functional iPad that follows us around and gives our parents a high-resolution window into our lives whenever they want it?
Obviously a lot of this is projecting worst-case scenarios. However, at the end of the day, the fact remains that Facebook made a product that already exists, and their legacy does not give much hope for a revolutionary future for Portal or our privacies.
Jonah Baker can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @jonahpbaker