Platforms’ Dark Patterns: Facebook Portal

In June, I was writing about « Platforms’ Dark Patterns » as a cautionary forecast on how the GAFA / BATX will evolve to sustain their constant push for pervasiveness in our daily lives.

Today, Facebook announced « Portal,» an always-on connected home camera to keep in contact with family and friends… through the Facebook servers:

This is exactly what we were talking about, and you can expect an acceleration of such devices, competing to get more and more footholds in our daily lives.

It will be very educative to see how Facebook will try to reassure us about the blatant privacy issues or if they will ignore the problem entirely (which I’m betting on).

It is difficult to predict where they will pop next. But, if you think in terms of « problem to solve » ask yourself: if you were Facebook, at what moments are you most disconnected from your users? Are we going to see a Facebook watch on the market? (Probably not, Apple has secured that space now.)

What about your car? Or, more to the point: when?