Facebook Wants To Watch You And Your Friends Watch TV
Hahahahaha this gives me anxiety.
All jokes aside, this is horrifying. How anyone trusts Facebook at all is beyond me; the only explanation for trusting this company enough to PAY them to put an always-watching camera in one of the most intimate spaces in your home is blissful ignorance.
In perfect Facebook fashion, they’re trying to pass off this new “product,” Facebook Portal TV, as a unique way to connect with your friends while enjoying their video content, as if FaceTime and Skype aren’t good enough.
In any case, the Facebook Portal TV (cute name for a surveillance device, btw), despite having a name that suggests it would serve as a functional set top box like an Apple TV or Roku, doesn’t actually work with Netflix, Hulu, or really any other popular video service—just videos from Facebook Watch (whatever the hell that is). Despite the fact that it’s nearly useless, this isn’t all that surprising. After all, why wouldn’t Facebook make the most of this new “product” as a way to serve you more of their own ads? And with the built in camera (to which they have unfettered access because it’s their own hardware and they control all of the privacy permissions and device settings), they can gauge not only your reactions to the content and ads they’re showing you, but also the combined reactions of you and whichever of your friends you may be connected to via the built in video chat service.
Bottom line: if you buy this, you’re a moron.