How to watch Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote at Facebook’s F8 developer conference

Facebook will have to reckon with the Cambridge Analytica scandal at its annual developer meet up

Photo by Nick Statt / The Verge

Facebook’s annual F8 developer conference kicks off this morning, just roughly a month and a half since the Cambridge Analytica scandal completely redefined the conversation around data privacy and social networking platforms.

That means F8’s keynote address, which in years past has focused on the frontiers of new technology like virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence, will also have to reckon with the hard conversations on responsibility and accountability that have made up Facebook’s biggest existential crisis to date. The whole controversy may have even postponed the company’s plans to reveal its rumored smart speaker, known internally as Portal, at F8 amid fears of Facebook’s overreach and concerns over having the company listening inside consumers’ homes.

Of course, there will be news completely unrelated to Cambridge Analytica. Facebook is expected to talk more about its plans for VR hardware over at Oculus. We’ll hear more about the company’s push into AR to take on Google and Snapchat since first debuting its intelligent camera platform at last year’s F8. We’ll also hear more about the company’s secretive Building 8 division, which this time a year ago announced it was working on brain-computer interfaces. Former DARPA director Regina Dugan has since left her post as head of Building 8, so we’re eager to hear how those more outlandish projects are coming along in her absence. There’s a keynote on day two that takes place at 1PM ET / 10 AM PT on Wednesday, May 2nd, and that will likely be when we’ll hear more about Building 8 developments.