Creepy Barbie
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- Published on Thursday, 26 March 2015 11:30
- Written by editor
Mattel is releasing a new Barbie that records children's voices and wirelessly transmits the things they say for market research and who knows what else. As a dad, I'm calling on Mattel to halt production immediately.
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PAOV –
I've always loved watching my daughter play with her dolls and stuffed animals, who she calls "friends." It's amazing to watch her imagination develop as she plays pretend, invents whole worlds and adventures, and talks to her dolls about her feelings and secrets.
So I was more than a little disturbed when I heard that a new toy from Mattel, "Hello Barbie," will record children's conversations and transmit them over the internet to cloud servers where they will be analyzed to figure out the child’s likes and dislikes.
I'm seriously concerned that Mattel would use a Barbie doll to record children's thoughts and feelings, then use them for market research. I don't want my child's play monitored by a corporation, and I definitely don't want that corporation to then have the ability to overhear my conversations when she’s playing.
The idea behind "Hello Barbie" is that it's supposed to allow the Barbie doll to have an interactive conversation with a child. I believe that this will discourage the kind of creative play that's essential for a child's development. I don't want my daughter's imagination to be hampered by a pre-written list of questions that someone wrote at some corporate headquarters. And I’m concerned these “interactive conversations” will actually be marketing pitches for other Barbie merchandise, based on the information the doll gathers from my daughter.
"Hello Barbie" seems like a toy that's far more useful for gathering corporate data than for helping children develop. Mattel has absolutely no business putting a corporate surveillance device in people's homes.
The good news is that toy companies have responded to Change.org petitions before. In fact, in 2012, Hasbro agreed to make a gender neutral Easy Bake oven after parents complained. I know that with enough public pressure, we can convince Mattel to shelve "Hello Barbie" for good.
Thank you,
Nathan Dungan
r0 from these emails.
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