So Facebook announced the Portal last week,its version of the in-home voice-activated speaker to rival its competitors which include Google, Apple and Amazon. Furthermore the question on everyone’s minds is that why should anyone even put their faith on Facebook-powered microphones and their video cameras in the living room or the kitchen given the fact that Facebook is not the most trustworthy source when it comes to the ways in which Facebook gathers data from its users and how they use this data.
Last week as per the what Facebook executives had to say about this operation, they assured us that no data collected from the portal will be used to target users with ads on Facebook not even call-log or app-data but Facebook went on to change that by stating that Portal does not have ads but data collected from the portal can however be used to target the users with ads on other Facebook-owned platforms.
Portal voice-calling is built in the Messenger app, hence when you make a call on the Portal, data will be collected in form of information such as the data usage, or length of calls. Data which is collected from other Messenger-enabled devices. Furthermore they might use this information to inform the ads that Facebook shows. Now that you think about it, this isn’t that surprising given Facebook’s reputation. The biggest benefit of Facebook owning a device in your household is that it provides the company with another data stream for its ad based business model.
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This is not what was conveyed by Facebook executives at the Portal launch But in a follow-up call with Rafa Camargo who is the Vice President in charge of the Portal, he went on to apologize for conveying in-accurate information about the process and said that while this data can be used for ad targeting, he is still not sure if that will be the case. He further added that the portal team does not plan to do any such thing but there is always that possibility that it can in-fact be used to carry out any such function on other Facebook-owned applications.
“I think my colleague was intending to say that we don’t intend to use to use it but potentially it can be used for that purpose” Camargo said. Hence the confusion, though is exactly why people will find it hard to trust the Portal and can also influence people using other Facebook-owned applications or decices now. Facebook so far has failed transparency to show exactly why and how this date is used and collected. Now properly explaining why they need such data for a in-home device equipped with microphones and a video camera is even more important in the case of Facebook
