Benjamin Mayo:

When a normal person sees a Portal, I don’t think they are going to turn a blind eye to it because of the existential fears of personal data exploitation. There are a handful of reasons why this product is going to fail in the market, but I don’t see privacy worries as a legitimate death-on-arrival poison.

I have to say, I don’t worry so much about the exploitation of my data, as much as I worry about Big Brother looking over my shoulder; The surveillance aspect more than the profiling aspect.

The key marketing point that Facebook is pushing here is video calls, through Messenger. I don’t get it. It just seems so much easier to talk on something that you can hold in your hand — be it a phone, tablet, or laptop in your lap — that you can freely move around with.

I totally agree with this take. I see little appeal to a non-portable video conferencing device. I do think Benjamin is right on this: The Facebook Portal will face an uphill battle in both perceived usability and security fears.