Tech Brief: Facebook Delays Home Speaker Unveil Amid Data Scandal

Facebook won't be unveiling a smart home speaker at its annual F8 developer conference in May, Bloomberg reports, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter, "in part because the public is currently so outraged about the social network's questionable data-privacy practices." The connected devices, similar to Google Home and Amazon Echo, are still on track for launch later this year after "undergoing a deeper review to ensure that they make the right trade-offs regarding user data," the report further added.

The development comes at a time when the social network has come under intense scrutiny about its collection and use of personal data, erasing close to US$ 100 billion in market value just in the last two weeks and forcing CEO Mark Zuckerberg to apologise for the "breach of trust" in full page ads. Facebook, in a welcome move, has since then rolled out a completely redesigned version of the settings menu on mobile devices in a way that puts privacy settings front and centre.