Just when I thought technology couldn’t get anymore involved in personal life, it surprises me once again.
Facebook recently released its pair of smart speakers known as “Portal.” Portal is a voice-controlled mechanism similar to Amazon’s Alexa or Google Home. However, it also includes a video call feature that utilizes a camera with vision software that detects people in its sight. This allows them to detect your movement in order to “follow” you around.
Just the word “follow” freaks me out. It seems like Facebook and social media are always watching us – like they know every detail about us.
Have you ever had a conversation with someone about pizza and 10 seconds after the conversation you check Facebook and the first ad that pops up is a pizza ad?
It happens to me all the time. Whenever I get acne, I always end up seeing so many ads on Facebook relating to acne. When I’m hungry, I see food. When I need a new purse, I see purse ads. When I need a new watch, I see watch ads. It feels like no matter where we are and what we say, Facebook is always listening and watching to gather as much information as it can about us.
I understand that technology can be helpful sometimes. It’s good to keep developing new ideas and machines. However, we must understand where the line is between “cool machines” and “creepy machines.”
The speaker can “follow” people around the room. It’s freaky when a person is watching or following me. I don’t understand how Facebook thinks a camera following us is completely normal.
But my biggest issue with Portal is that it’s made by Facebook. Facebook has been known to have security issues in the past. After many of these issues, Facebook didn’t even apologize to its users. They just continued without discussing what had happened.
In December of 2007, companies could track purchases by Facebook users and then notify their Facebook friends of what had been bought without the user’s permission. In June of 2013, a bug exposed the email addresses and phone numbers of 6 million Facebook users to anyone who had some connection to the person. And it’s hard to forget the Cambridge Analytica data selling incident from earlier this year.
After reading about these privacy issues that Facebook has had in the past, it’s hard to believe anyone could trust a camera made by the company that follows you around.