Speaker 1: Hi everyone, it's Piega Cary and this week on Decrypted,
Speaker 1: we're bringing you our holiday gift guide to help with
Speaker 1: your holiday shopping. We've spent this entire season exploring the
Speaker 1: unintended consequences of technology that it's creators and often us
Speaker 1: the consumers, never quite anticipated, So this week we're applying
Speaker 1: that to the gifts you might be thinking of buying
Speaker 1: for the holidays. But of course there's a few things
Speaker 1: that you really need to know before buying these gifts.
Speaker 1: So first up, we're going to be taking a look
Speaker 1: at one of the newest gadgets on the market, the
Speaker 1: Facebook Video Portal. So Sarah Fryer, Hello, Hi, thanks for
Speaker 1: joining us and telling us about this. So let's just
Speaker 1: quickly run over the basics. How much is the portal
Speaker 1: and who's it for? So the portal you can buy
Speaker 1: a small version for a hundred dollars and a lar
Speaker 1: version for three forty nine. It's basically these beautiful big
Speaker 1: screens that you can put in your home, in your
Speaker 1: living room or kitchen, and they have these cameras attached
Speaker 1: that can follow you around as you're talking so that
Speaker 1: you don't have to move your your phone. Um, so it.
Speaker 1: Actually it's you know, it's a it's a pretty cool technology,
Speaker 1: But the question is do people really need this? And
Speaker 1: even more, do people really need this from Facebook? A
Speaker 1: company that they're all very concerned about the privacy implications
Speaker 1: of giving data to. So this is a company Facebook,
Speaker 1: who is as their first hardware device, is coming out
Speaker 1: with a product that really is representative the company's problems
Speaker 1: and privacy combined with the product that basically nobody is
Speaker 1: asking for. So I think we'll see pretty soon that
Speaker 1: this thing was a dud. I'm sure they haven't sold
Speaker 1: many of them, and I don't really think people want
Speaker 1: a dedicated video chat device in their homes, especially one
Speaker 1: made by Facebook, when you can get the exact same
Speaker 1: funk reality in a more mobile setting with more features
Speaker 1: through a phone, whether that's an iPhone or an Android phone,
Speaker 1: or just your computer itself. Sarah, what's the business case
Speaker 1: for Facebook coming out with a product like this? Facebook
Speaker 1: needs to come up with some sort of way to
Speaker 1: get more integrated into your more intimate relationships. Right, They
Speaker 1: have your your Facebook friends, and for a lot of us,
Speaker 1: are Facebook friends are just all the people we've met
Speaker 1: over the course of our entire life for as long
Speaker 1: as Facebook has existed, so at that point they become
Speaker 1: less friends and more just a phone book or acquaintances,
Speaker 1: and in that case, people don't share is intimately. So
Speaker 1: Facebook has been trying to diversify the kinds of messaging
Speaker 1: that people want to do with Facebook products, so they've
Speaker 1: been investing more in messaging products. This portal device is
Speaker 1: a spinoff of Facebook Messenger, and I think they just
Speaker 1: want to become essential in that way. At the same
Speaker 1: time they're seeing Alexa and Google Home and all these
Speaker 1: other devices entering your home. And remember Facebook missed the
Speaker 1: move to mobile phones back in They didn't have a
Speaker 1: mobile phone when all their competitors did. So they've been
Speaker 1: playing in other companies ecosystems for a long time, and
Speaker 1: the Google ecosystem or the Apple ecosystem. Now everyone's moving
Speaker 1: to these home products, or at least in terms of marketing,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen a huge catch on. Mark probably knows
Speaker 1: more about that, but they don't want to miss the
Speaker 1: boat on this next trend, right. But in a couple
Speaker 1: of key ways, the portal is is different from some
Speaker 1: of the voice activated devices or systems that are already
Speaker 1: on the market for example, Alexa is basically dormant until
Speaker 1: it hears the wake word, which is alexa UM. But
Speaker 1: if I understand correctly, the portal is always listening and
Speaker 1: always watching, right, Mark yes. So the interesting thing about
Speaker 1: the portal is that it has two voice assistance. Right,
Speaker 1: it has Alexa, which could be triggered by the Alexa
Speaker 1: weake word or if you set another weight word, if
Speaker 1: that's an option on this device. But then there's a
Speaker 1: separate one for controlling basic functions like beginning a video
Speaker 1: conference or controlling your volume or basic settings here. And
Speaker 1: instead of going all the way and creating its own
Speaker 1: voice assistant, or instead of leveraging Alexa all the way
Speaker 1: to control everything, they split it off into two, which
Speaker 1: I think raises even bagger privacy concerns because you have
Speaker 1: two different voice assistance and what if you're wanting to
Speaker 1: speak to one, but instead it sends that data to
Speaker 1: the other. Right, So there's a lot at stake here
Speaker 1: already with one voice assistant. Now they have two different
Speaker 1: companies potentially listening into and recording your data. Right, And
Speaker 1: to make matters worse, Facebook has sort of flip flopped
Speaker 1: a little bit on exactly what UM it's plans are
Speaker 1: for using the data that comes from the portal and
Speaker 1: how that would feed into its advertising model. Right there.
Speaker 1: The company has been extremely insistent about how privacy safe
Speaker 1: the poor it will be. They'll store the data on
Speaker 1: the device, they won't communicate with the cloud unless you're
Speaker 1: trying to make a call over a messenger. Um. There
Speaker 1: are not any ways to actually record video uh from
Speaker 1: the device. The only way that they would send something
Speaker 1: back is if there was some bug and they had
Speaker 1: to take a snippet of what kind of software problem
Speaker 1: there was to fix it. Um. So all of those
Speaker 1: things come into play, and then you know, we've also
Speaker 1: talked about what Mark said, and then there are the
Speaker 1: questions about whether they'll use the data for advertising. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I think the bigger problem is not the portal device.
Speaker 1: It is the current climate in how people think about
Speaker 1: Facebook and how much trust they've lost with the company
Speaker 1: over this year or two of privacy scandals. Actually should say,
Speaker 1: over the course of fourteen years of privacy scandals, because
Speaker 1: this company has always perennially had to apologize for for
Speaker 1: taking too much of someone's data or not being clear
Speaker 1: about how they were going to use it. And so
Speaker 1: I think that that you despite despite the steps they've
Speaker 1: taken with the portal, it'll still be extremely difficult to
Speaker 1: convince users to use it. And you know, add that
Speaker 1: on top of the fact that they're late entrance into
Speaker 1: this relatively crowded market. Now, all right, so what we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about next is the Echo Show and
Speaker 1: the Echo spots. So these are pretty mainstream gifts by now,
Speaker 1: good for parents, spouses, and Nico Grant is here to
Speaker 1: talk with us about that. These days, prices have really dropped, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Echo doll is now thirty dollars. That's one without
Speaker 1: its display. They have two with screens now, the spot
Speaker 1: in the show that's a hundred and thirty dollars and
Speaker 1: two and thirty dollars. But for these types of devices,
Speaker 1: that's not a lot of money. That's pretty much at
Speaker 1: the bottom of the range for you know, the latest
Speaker 1: and greatest consumer products, especially from a major player like Amazon.
Speaker 1: And what's also dropped is our concerns as consumers about
Speaker 1: what it means to have a listening device in our homes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's remarkable the extent to which people are
Speaker 1: willing to adopt this a completely different product category than
Speaker 1: they're used to. When we've seen at least anecdotally instances
Speaker 1: in which there were, you know, creepy events that happened
Speaker 1: involving Amazon Echo devices. There was one in particular, in
Speaker 1: which a police department requested the audio and the transcript
Speaker 1: of an echo conversation over the course of a night
Speaker 1: to see whether a man had killed h an acquaintance
Speaker 1: of his who came over to his house. Now, we
Speaker 1: did a whole episode on Decrypted about that about a
Speaker 1: year and a half ago, and you can check that
Speaker 1: out if you want to hear, you know, some of
Speaker 1: the darker sides of home recording. Nice plug for your
Speaker 1: old episode, Nico. But you know, since that came out
Speaker 1: eighteen months ago or so, there have been other instances
Speaker 1: of Alexa getting involved in some rather all quid mix ups.
Speaker 1: Like there was one person who had a private conversation
Speaker 1: that was taped at home sent to of his employees. Yes,
Speaker 1: there was one instance back in May. Its surfaced and
Speaker 1: basically there was a couple, this married couple. They were
Speaker 1: at home, they were having a conversation. I don't think
Speaker 1: they've ever fully confirmed what they were talking about, but um,
Speaker 1: the end result was that their echo device thought that
Speaker 1: it heard them prompt by saying Alexa, and then thought
Speaker 1: that one of them said to start recording, and then
Speaker 1: thought that they said to send the recording, and thought
Speaker 1: that they heard a contact name, and then thought that
Speaker 1: there was a confirmation to send when one of the
Speaker 1: spouses said the word right in conversation. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was truly a series of unfortunate events, and the end
Speaker 1: result was that this private conversation between a couple became
Speaker 1: public with one of their contacts. And frankly, if you
Speaker 1: talk about someone in your life, you know, with your
Speaker 1: spouse in your home, where can you Pia? That's quite right, Niko,
Speaker 1: I mean, Mark, I don't know how you think about this,
Speaker 1: that this is a sort of the sort of nightmare
Speaker 1: scenario that people like. Early on, we're worried about when
Speaker 1: Alexa you know devices hit the market, But as the
Speaker 1: number of skills um on the device has grown and
Speaker 1: now it's you know, in the tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: skills that come with these Alexa devices, do you think
Speaker 1: the risk of something like this happening is going up?
Speaker 1: Here's my opinion, Amazon, Apple, Google, they all have to
Speaker 1: do better. In terms of safeguarding data. A lot of
Speaker 1: them are making really big strides. Apple has been really
Speaker 1: vocal about this. Both Google and Amazon have protections in place,
Speaker 1: had to prevent the circumstances that do occasionally happen. As
Speaker 1: Nico was explaining, but I think this just comes as
Speaker 1: part of new waves of major, new modern technologies. But
Speaker 1: to your point about skills. Now, with tens and thousands
Speaker 1: of skills, I believe about fifty skills on the marketplace
Speaker 1: right now for Alexa devices across so many different products.
Speaker 1: As they add you features like Apple Music was coming
Speaker 1: this month, more and more people are going to buy
Speaker 1: these devices, raising those concerns even further. And Nico, you've
Speaker 1: actually been looking around at what some of the more
Speaker 1: interesting skills are. Yeah, you can really play some Russian
Speaker 1: roulette um with a hypnotherapist on the Alexa. So I'm
Speaker 1: going to lull you to sleep and and perhaps share
Speaker 1: some secrets with And there's also a fun truth or
Speaker 1: dare game, UM, So imagine that. Imagine Alexa recording your secrets.
Speaker 1: That's going to be really interesting when your employee finds out. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: thanks very much, Nico, thank you. Okay, So Next up,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the Amazon microwave, and we
Speaker 1: have Garrett dvinc here to tell us about that. Garrett,
Speaker 1: who in your family is getting a microwave for Christmas? Well,
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to get myself microwave for Christmas
Speaker 1: and Amazon Alexa one, because you know, I have a
Speaker 1: regular microwave, the technology of which has not changed noticeably
Speaker 1: in the last fifty years as far as I know,
Speaker 1: but I don't really know how to use it. It's
Speaker 1: a bunch of random numbers and I essentially just keep
Speaker 1: pressing one more minute, one more minute, one more minute
Speaker 1: into whatever I'm trying to cook is invariably burned on
Speaker 1: the outside and still cold on the inside. And I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'm I'm kind of making fun of
Speaker 1: myself here, but I do think microwave tech hasn't changed
Speaker 1: much and it might be something that's actually useful for
Speaker 1: voice where you can just say to your microwave what
Speaker 1: you have inside of it, and the microwave computer itself
Speaker 1: will know exactly how to cook that perfectly. Okay, So
Speaker 1: Garrett tell us about the microwave. It's a microwave like
Speaker 1: any other, except you can control it with voice just
Speaker 1: like any other Alexa product. It goes for you know,
Speaker 1: the pretty decent price of sixty bucks. So my assumption
Speaker 1: here is that Amazon has price is pretty low just
Speaker 1: to get one more device into your home that is
Speaker 1: within the Amazon ecosystem. Now you do need to have
Speaker 1: another co device to make this work. Now that's a
Speaker 1: pretty big drawback, right. You're paying sixty bucks for the
Speaker 1: microwave itself, and I think that's standard pricing for a
Speaker 1: pretty you know, low end, rudimentary microwave. This is an
Speaker 1: Amazon Basics. This is not some high end microwave that
Speaker 1: you'll get Best Buy or something like that. So you're
Speaker 1: paying the sixty dollars plus thirty dollars for an Echo
Speaker 1: Dot or something like that. You would think that Amazon
Speaker 1: would have built in the microphone and the speaker into
Speaker 1: the Alexa microwave itself to get it going. I think
Speaker 1: that would have been a better value and more interesting
Speaker 1: to some people now. But the idea here is that
Speaker 1: Amazon wants you to be connecting multiple devices together, and
Speaker 1: it has something called a Connection kit to enable that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's absolutely right. So this is part of their strategy
Speaker 1: of getting as many Alexa devices all talking to each other. So, Garrett,
Speaker 1: that gives us a glimpse of where Amazon is going
Speaker 1: with its ambitions in this space. Right. It wants to
Speaker 1: have Alexa all over your home exactly. I mean, when
Speaker 1: it comes to Apple in their ecosystem. Many people, especially
Speaker 1: in North America, have iPhones and Apple Music. That's they
Speaker 1: might have Max they you know, that's their connection to
Speaker 1: the Apple ecosystem. On Google, we use Google Gmail and
Speaker 1: Google Drive, maybe Google Music. Amazon is also trying to
Speaker 1: find other reasons to you know, get you to buy
Speaker 1: more of their products and down the road digital services
Speaker 1: as well. And if a microwave is one tiny part
Speaker 1: of it, that's what they're gonna do. So this microwave
Speaker 1: is made by Amazon, but the idea is that eventually
Speaker 1: Alexa will be embedded in products that are made by
Speaker 1: lots of other manufacturers as well. Exactly. I mean, if
Speaker 1: they can say, look, we already have these devices in
Speaker 1: people's homes, they're used to speaking to Alexa. They don't
Speaker 1: necessarily want to speak to some kind of Samsung assistant
Speaker 1: or LG assistant or any of the other you know,
Speaker 1: major manufacturers of home products. They can kind of slide right,
Speaker 1: in there and sort of say, you know, you can
Speaker 1: see other companies making products that would just have Alexa
Speaker 1: Voice instead of their own home assistant. You know, we
Speaker 1: just heard Nico talking about the sort of unintended consequences
Speaker 1: of privacy slip ups with Alexa. But once you combine
Speaker 1: Alexa with a generic manufacturer that may or may not
Speaker 1: have top of the line security settings, I mean, are
Speaker 1: we looking into a future with some unintended privacy consequences.
Speaker 1: I think as Amazon expands the reach of what can
Speaker 1: be done via Alexa, now setting how much time you're
Speaker 1: going to cook your popcorn for or maybe starting your car,
Speaker 1: is they add more skills, a wider range of categories,
Speaker 1: is this thing could be used for, and of course
Speaker 1: a wider range of devices that this could be integrated with.
Speaker 1: The stakes are just going to increase. And what about
Speaker 1: data sharing, Garrett, is that something you've looked at that
Speaker 1: presumably once Alexa starts plugging in with third party manufacturers, um,
Speaker 1: you know, other companies are going to be interested in
Speaker 1: finding a way to advertise to us through these voice platforms.
Speaker 1: And that's a whole world that we haven't really you know,
Speaker 1: explored yet. Well, the data is of course extremely valuable,
Speaker 1: and I think it's something that Amazon wants to lock
Speaker 1: down for themselves. So definitely an issue about data sharing,
Speaker 1: although I do think Amazon won't really want to share.
Speaker 1: They'll want to do partnerships so that there's more devices
Speaker 1: that use its systems, but they want to keep all
Speaker 1: that data so that they can advertise to you, so
Speaker 1: that they can know, you know, when you need a
Speaker 1: toilet paper refill, or when you need a new microwave
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, Oh, when you need some more
Speaker 1: popcorn for your microwave exactly. Mark anything to add on
Speaker 1: on the point about data sharing. It's going to be
Speaker 1: incredible to see how they tie in this microwave system
Speaker 1: with their Whole Foods purchase. I could imagine a day
Speaker 1: where it will recognize, you know, you bought you know,
Speaker 1: eight of a certain you know, microwavable freezer item. Mic
Speaker 1: Wave will know, hey, we've this person purchased eight of them. Right,
Speaker 1: they microwate eight of them, it's time to automatically order
Speaker 1: through Whole Food to refill of another eight or ten
Speaker 1: or twelve. So it'll be really fascinating to see how
Speaker 1: these services through Amazon all injury together in the future. Okay,
Speaker 1: thanks Garrett, thank you. Okay, So, Mark, we've looked across
Speaker 1: the spectrum of gifts, um, you know, everything from the
Speaker 1: microwave to the Facebook portal. There seems to be a
Speaker 1: common denominator here, which is that a lot of the
Speaker 1: concerns with new gadgets that would be fun to give
Speaker 1: as gifts, they all have some lingering privacy concerns and
Speaker 1: that wasn't something that we were worried about even a
Speaker 1: year or two ago. I completely agree, and it's all
Speaker 1: about striking the right balance. If you compare the Amazon
Speaker 1: Echo to the Facebook portal, for example, they both at
Speaker 1: the foundation of the products have the same privacy concerns
Speaker 1: about the always on recording potential, the potential recording things
Speaker 1: you don't want it to hear it, misunderstanding you, and
Speaker 1: sending your recordings in information to other people. But you
Speaker 1: really have to outweigh the positives versus the potential negatives.
Speaker 1: The percentage of cases where these things happen overall are
Speaker 1: not that high. The privacy landscape is evolving, though, now
Speaker 1: that companies realize it's a major public concern, chances are
Speaker 1: that we'll see companies working really hard to make us
Speaker 1: comfortable with their approach to handling our data. I agree.
Speaker 1: So I think we're going to see two things, I
Speaker 1: think simultaneously to your point, We're going to see companies
Speaker 1: doing more and more to educate consumers and make their
Speaker 1: devices safer. But at the same time, I think we're
Speaker 1: also going to see people become more used to it,
Speaker 1: and this concept of always on devices and listening products
Speaker 1: becoming more part of people's dailyable lives. People getting used
Speaker 1: to it, people understanding it, and people wanting it. And
Speaker 1: so I guess as people get more and more used
Speaker 1: to having these devices in their homes and in the
Speaker 1: homes of people they know. Um. If there is a
Speaker 1: takeaway to today's gift guide, it's not necessarily that you
Speaker 1: shouldn't be buying and enjoying these these cutting edge and
Speaker 1: new gadgets. Um. It's more that you should learn about
Speaker 1: them and be informed when you're making a purchasing decision.
Speaker 1: And that's it for this week's Decrypted. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: What other tech gadgets of unintended consequences we want to
Speaker 1: hear from you? You can email us at decrypted at
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot net or I'm on Twitter at Mark German
Speaker 1: and I'm at pa gad Cary. If you're a fan
Speaker 1: of the show, please take a moment to rate and
Speaker 1: review us. It really helps us find new listeners. This
Speaker 1: episode was produced by piagricry enlist Smith. Our story editor
Speaker 1: was Aki Ito. Thanks also to brad Stone and Van Remain,
Speaker 1: Emily Busso and Magnus Henrickson. Francesco Levy is the head
Speaker 1: of Bloomberg Podcasts. We'll see you next week.