Today Facebook appear their new Portal smart video calling device, consummate with Alexa built-in, to aid reinvent video chatting… but with their privacy rails record, is this something you lot want?

On the confront of information technology, having a actually unproblematic way for Facebook-loving grandmothers to rapidly run across their grandchildren makes a lot of sense. Facebook is about connecting people, after all. It's a revolutionary manner for relatives to go on in impact with family unit members they can't see on a regular footing. My own grandmother checks Facebook every single day to see how the kids are growing.

The new Portal smart camera lets you connect over Messenger, share content, evidence photos and notifications. The video calling looks impressive—you can move around the room while you are talking and the camera volition follow you. They as well have integrations with Spotify, Pandora, iHeartRadio, and Nutrient Network, and a lot more stuff coming soon, and so yous can watch and mind to music or videos on the big huge screen.

It also has privacy features—y'all can disable the camera and microphone with a tap, just like Amazon's Echo devices let you—and it comes with an integrated photographic camera cover, which is something we actually recommend. Facebook claims that they don't record the contents of your calls, and just like whatever other smart speaker, it only actually listens to yous when you lot say "Hey Portal", to trigger Facebook features, or "Alexa", for smarthome and other features.

If you put information technology all together and just look at the features, information technology can easily compete with any other smart display on the market. It starts at $199 for a x" display and goes up to $349 with a huge xv.6" display for the Portal+ model. Information technology looks like a really great mode to video chat in very high quality on a screen that your older relatives can actually see.

Just didn't Facebook merely get hacked? What about their privacy problems? And how many people are going to make jokes about Facebook opening a portal to… somewhere?

Would You Trust Facebook Enough to Put a Smart Device in Your House?

Facebook just had to acknowledge that they got hacked, and 50 one thousand thousand people's profiles were probably accessed. They were forced to log out xc meg people to resolve the problem.

And of course, that comes correct after we found out that Facebook is using your phone number to target yous with ads—and at that place's absolutely no style for you to opt out of that part, fifty-fifty if you want to.

People already think that Facebook is listening to them through their microphone, and they are unhappy with the ads that follow them around the internet. And while Facebook might not be actually listening to your microphone, they are tracking y'all in shocking ways, similar tracking your phone's location, edifice a shadow profile on you, or scanning other people'southward photos for your face. Then in that location was the whole Cambridge Analytica scandal.

So are you really going to trust Facebook, a company that doesn't have a great rails record, and put a smart device from them in your house?