Another device to spy on people? A privacy audit needs to be done on anything FB touches or produces. They cannot be trusted.
Facebook launches Portal TV, a $149 video chat set-top box
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Re: Facebook launches Portal TV, a $149 video chat set-top box
#72I'm sure lots of smart people spent a lot of time and effort working on this, but unfortunately my answer is: Hell no!
As someone in the same boat as you, it does seem like Portal webpage is directly acknowledging this sentiment and addressing them[0]. Whether or not this page can be trusted, we'll have to see what people find out (I sure ain't going to pay for it to do that myself). [0]: https://portal.facebook.com/privacy/
Because of "move fast and break things" I expect that we will find some unauthorized third party ended up getting access to live audio and video from customer's Portal devices. There will be remediation of the loophole and then we'll all forget about it.
Re: Facebook launches Portal TV, a $149 video chat set-top box
#73I'm sure lots of smart people spent a lot of time and effort working on this, but unfortunately my answer is: Hell no!
The WhatsApp brand is trusted a lot more and is a lot cooler than the Facebook brand. They'd probably get a lot more success if they used the WhatsApp brand here.
This would actually cause me to abandon WhatsApp. Hard for me to explain why. I guess it's that they've finally obviously decided to monetize WhatsApp.
Re: Facebook launches Portal TV, a $149 video chat set-top box
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you trust Facebook to adhere to their publicly stated privacy policy? Do you think they have honored those policies in the past?
>Do you trust Facebook to adhere to their publicly stated privacy policy? Yes. Definitely. > Do you think they have honored those policies in the past? I believe they have though I have not been at Facebook very long so I don't have full visibility on this. But I don't think that's the most important question. The most important question is: were these policies strong enough? The answer is definitely no and that's wh…
There we have it. New guy trusts them so we're good folks.
Re: Facebook launches Portal TV, a $149 video chat set-top box
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you trust Facebook to adhere to their publicly stated privacy policy? Do you think they have honored those policies in the past?
>Do you trust Facebook to adhere to their publicly stated privacy policy? Yes. Definitely. > Do you think they have honored those policies in the past? I believe they have though I have not been at Facebook very long so I don't have full visibility on this. But I don't think that's the most important question. The most important question is: were these policies strong enough? The answer is definitely no and that's wh…
You really don't have to do this. No one believes a person with a vested interest anyways.
Re: Facebook launches Portal TV, a $149 video chat set-top box
#76They've solved some real business problems here and there's a lot of cool engineering tech. I'm surprised this is buried so far that I had to use HN search to find it. Unfortunately the fact that this comes from Facebook is the albatross hanging around this product's neck as illustrated by most of the comments on here.
I couldn't convince any of my friends or family to get one of the last-gen Portals even with the discounts. I still don't know anybody who actually has one.
Re: Facebook launches Portal TV, a $149 video chat set-top box
#77> The Portal TV is genius No.
Objectively, it kind of is though. No one is claiming you have to buy it or that it's a good product (privacy-wise, usability-wise, execution-wise, etc. it's all tbd IMO), it's a very interesting move that makes a lot of sense, and there are some good ideas here.
It's relatively cheap since you're not buying a touch enabled LCD panel with the device. You want the best audio and video quality? Piggyback off TV and sound system manufacturers and the fact that people who care about these things probably already sunk a lot of money on nice home entertainment hardware.
People won't have to worry about where to put another screen. You also have the fact that the living room is semantically already a "social" space, with a "stage". Most people have a couch to fit several people in front of their TV, it's essentially a room already built for video calling.
Strategy-wise, they're using their core competence (social networking) to move into the living room— which is pretty cool and unique in a world where the other options (Roku, Apple TV, Chromecast, etc) mostly rely on entertainment. Also, technology that right now only Portal has— the whole smart camera to find you in the frame thing. They probably released the other Portals before this to battle test it, since this device will probably rely more on it than previous ones.
Honestly, why don't more companies make smarter TV boxes like this? It'd be cool if Google made Chromecast more "Google". Imagine a Chromecast with Assistant built-in, that makes smarter use of your TV when you're not watching it (Google News, Google Finance, Traffic info before your commute, a couple of important calendar reminders, etc). Now I'm thinking an Apple TV with FaceTime and and Siri built-in could be cool too. I could use FaceTime on my TV more than another smart speaker, and would buy it over a HomePod, personally.
There's good ideas here. Of course, wether you want to buy is a separate issue. Honestly kind of sad there's all the privacy concerns, because it sounds like a cool device.
Re: Facebook launches Portal TV, a $149 video chat set-top box
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> I can see this being a fun interaction. Oh for sure, unfortunately, it's the Facebook label that makes this cool product toxic. Since the Facebook brand is synonymous with poor privacy practices (Firefox even has a 'facebook container' to help reduce tracking), I don't see how someone didn't think to market this under a different parent company and make it 'facebook compatible'.
That would become another press bomb in the future. They can’t keep that a secret forever.
The “Whatsapp box”. The “Instagram Connect”. The “Zukerberg eye”. There are many names better than Facebook.
Re: Facebook launches Portal TV, a $149 video chat set-top box
#79> The Portal TV is genius No.
Objectively, it kind of is though. No one is claiming you have to buy it or that it's a good product (privacy-wise, usability-wise, execution-wise, etc. it's all tbd IMO), it's a very interesting move that makes a lot of sense, and there are some good ideas here. It's relatively cheap since you're not buying a touch enabled LCD panel with the device. You want the best audio and video quality? Piggyback off TV and sou…
The bulk of your argument seems to boil down to "video calls on TV, much wow". This is not brilliant, or new. My kids were doing that on the Wii U in 2012. Probably at least a third of all conference rooms in America are equipped to do that.
Re: Facebook launches Portal TV, a $149 video chat set-top box
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Objectively, it kind of is though. No one is claiming you have to buy it or that it's a good product (privacy-wise, usability-wise, execution-wise, etc. it's all tbd IMO), it's a very interesting move that makes a lot of sense, and there are some good ideas here. It's relatively cheap since you're not buying a touch enabled LCD panel with the device. You want the best audio and video quality? Piggyback off TV and sou…
The bulk of your argument seems to boil down to "video calls on TV, much wow". This is not brilliant, or new. My kids were doing that on the Wii U in 2012. Probably at least a third of all conference rooms in America are equipped to do that.
Too much work to edit my comment on my phone. Obviously the Wii U chat only enabled communication with a limited audience, and I think it might be deprecated now anyway. But the Kinect does Skype.