This product cannot be allowed to exist in the type of world I want to live in.
The power structure wants these to succeed in the market for so many horrific reasons and it will require some serious societal muscle to reject them.
How about if their glasses either...
1. Can not take pics or videos but its camera is just for AI vision?
or
2. All pics and videos taken through Apple's smart glasses the pics/vids of anyone not in your network (Apple already automatically list faces & sometimes names in your network under "People & Pets," and has done so for years & they are the privacy company) show as anonymous/randomized faces.
I own two pairs of Meta Glasses since 10/2023 and find them very useful to capture or record my own life experiences only. Tho I share hate for them because Meta makes trashy non-durable smart glasses that quickly become dumb glasses. A software update killed my 1st pair in March 2025 and then my next pair couldn't handle water splashes in June 2025.
A) they believe in the idea
and / or
B) how much money there is to be made having people wear them.
Smart wearables as a general category of hardware have an awful rate of success, and hardware is much more expensive to get into than software. So, there's got to be a lot of money in the data consumers will be producing.
That's the part that scares me much more so than the random perverts using them in public for unsavory candid photos.
Meta have been desperately searching for “the next big walled garden” for like a decade.
The prize is clear: whatever the next big mass-consumer hardware device is with an app store attached will leech hundreds of billions in fees and enjoy absolute control over everyone building on it.
Sadly the disabled have no choice but to accept the status quo, and facbook gets to virtue signal while holding humanity back another cycle by not selling us an open platform that would actually help people at scale not just now but forever.
Larry Page on Robert Scoble’s Google Glass stunt: ‘I really didn’t appreciate the shower photo’:
https://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4333656/larry-page-teases...
Scoble: an utterly tone deaf response to harassment allegations:
https://onemanandhisblog.com/2017/10/scoble-utterly-tone-dea...
>The Verge‘s Adi Robertson sums it us thus:
>>But his latest defense puts forward an absurd definition of sexual harassment and effectively accuses women of reporting it to fit in with the cool crowd, while claiming he’s writing in “a spirit of healing.” There’s even a tasteless plug for his latest business venture. It’s one of the most disappointing responses we’ve seen to a sexual harassment complaint, which, after the past few weeks, is a fairly remarkable achievement.
different companies 'launder' it differently: with voice, it was done by "accidental" voice assistant activations. i guess with glasses, maybe there will be less window dressing this time. after all, it is clearly pitched to see what you see, at all times of the day.
similar controversy happened with the various roomba products, although arguably that was a combination of data harvesting + lazy engineering.
The root cause is that meta didn’t want to pay the fair market value for those videos and just stole them from its users by burying it in TOS.
If they were honest about their intentions most people would say no or demand payment for providing something of value.
Really it should just be in the UI. Click Upload this and get 10c/minute or whatever for the video. Choose what you upload. That'd be closer in effect to using social media.
Is anyone at meta going to be bald accountable?
An absolute privacy nightmare especially in places like Switzerland or Germany where recording people (subject focus) even in public is not permitted without consent but you have tourists now showing up everywhere wearing these.
The LED is barely visible during the day and some have modified their glasses to disable/remove it.
They haven't yet. Don't see why now.
That's the prime example of a law that can't be enforced and thus shouldn't exist. You go in town, you can be recorded inadvertantly, as long as it's not some creep stalking you, I say it's fine.
If you post a video online of someone's worst day which you decided to film for entertainment, they can legally go after you.
We will shame hard anyone who uses this sh1t.
The sooner we collectively stop trusting them (and maybe even actively campaign to have the U.S. government meaningfully regulate them), the better.
Personally, I would like to see the company stop existing and its executive board destitute.
You can still record stuff without spyglasses. People do that on youtube too, e. g. first amendment audits. It's not that different to the spyglasses, except that you can cut off Meta from the process (admittedly youtube creates another problem which is called Google; it would be nice if we could have platforms without corporate overlord, but the financial aspect may still be an issue that requires solving. I don't have a good way to solve that, as I am also having a 100% zero ads policy aka using ublock origin mandatorily. And Google declared total war againts ublock origin, we all know that.)
And despite this, there is no strong will to detach from what they produce - in the beginning or later when it is considered like cultural fabric. That’s how good their tactics is.
And for the pay one gets working for them - screw the world! I won’t use it anywhere near my loved ones - but will build it
Because I didn't think that the data was uploaded to meta by default, when you take a video with the raybans.
More over, I didn't think that those glasses could record more than 2.5 minutes.
The point still remains, the devil in detail of the "privacy" policy.
> “The algorithms sometimes miss. Especially in difficult lighting conditions, certain faces and bodies become visible”.
Right, “difficult lighting conditions,” not sure when we’d run into those in situations where we might be concerned with privacy. A 97% success rate looks good on paper.
That's my default assumption.
Actual title is “She Came Out of the Bathroom Naked, [Meta] Employee Says” and subtitle begins with “Bank details, sex and naked people who seem unaware they are being recorded”
Suspicious moderation behaviors on this one
And you're still forced to carry a smartphone anyway with these glasses since they require internet connection.
Is this fashion, or something I'm not aware of ? They look horrendous to me.
>since they require internet connection.
Only the AI features require internet. You can technically take pictures and video without carrying around your phone, but realistically people are going to carry there phone with them.
Stop thinking like an end user and think like a Meta shareholder.
Meta don't own smartphone hardware or operating systems. Apple and Android locked that market up. But if they can create a new market and own that, then imagine all the data they can harvest!
Those videos can also be a used to track people. IMHO each Tesla owner sending video data to Tesla's data centers is violating privacy laws!
[1] (in German) https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000215526/aktueller-fal...
EDIT: Wait, is this when you use the "ask Meta" feature? I do expect that to send all the clips to a server for an LLM to process, it's not done on-device. It's not clear to me whether it's that or just all videos/photos you record with the glasses.
For many more reasons than pervert behaviour, I agree that this kind of tool cannot coexist with healthy society. "Glassholes" was a delightful portmanteau, but I suspect normalising a term like "pedo glasses" will probably put people off them way sooner and faster. At the very least it identifies the product and not the person as the problem.
In private settings, as with public, you are typically free to leave a setting where people are recording.
The law has no specifications for what type of device can do the recording, pr for how long a recording can be.
Shouldn't there be a discussion about what that means? What _is_ privacy? Is it completely black or white, all or nothing? Are some kinds of privacy breaches more acceptable than others?
I feel that the "you can have no expectation of privacy in public" discussion is some times used as if it's some sort of fundamental truth that must not be challenged. If people _want_ to have more privacy in public, whatever that means, then let's make it happen.
This is why paparazzi exist and how they operate. It's the dirty, dingy cost of having a free press, freedom of travel, freedom to hold public officials accountable, subject to the same laws you are; you can't waffle or restrict or grant exceptions, because those inevitably, invariably get abused by those in power.
That's just nonsense. Your feeds seem to be polluted by what you are seeking out, as I've never seen a video on any service that shows humiliation of anyone.
I watch a lot of 1st ammendment audit videos, and that is never about humiliation, though many people end up looking very ignorant of the laws concerning recording in public which is in the 1st ammendment.
A cultural convention that lets people make honest mistakes, but turn it off when someone says "hey, you're recording" seems like a good solution. Just need to make it easily visible and obvious to others - you can run around in public with a big news camera on your shoulder or a tripod and you usually won't get hassled. It's just the idea of being covertly recorded, even while in public, that gets creepy.
Like we could have navigational AR-glasses. The wearer sees arrows on the floor where to walk. And we could choose to not let anyone wear them in public even though what they do is useful, and there aren't any real privacy issues. But people around the wearer don't know that. That's the privacy concern.
If my biometrics or a recording of my voice is sent to a different continent and then used to change which ad shows on the phone of the person next to me on the subway, then that's less privacy than I expected and wanted.
https://japandaily.jp/why-you-cant-turn-off-the-camera-shutt...
When you use Meta's products and services you are tagged, tracked, and commodified like an animal. You are cattle.
The question isn't whether or not Meta's AI smart glasses raise data privacy concerns.
The question is why use anything from Meta in the first place?
For some reason they keep asking aggressively for permission for the whole thing. I wonder why...
It's not that complicated. Most people just go where the other users are. They "have nothing to hide". Their thoughtless decisions actively make society worse for everyone else, one user at a time. Even tech people who know the scam throw up their hands and express how impossible it would be to get their kids' soccer parents or PTA groups to abandon WhatsApp groups or FB Messenger for something privacy-respecting. The tyranny of the installed base.
Go to a place that didn't have deliberate large scale society-wide anti-smoking programs. Basically everyone starts smoking at age 15 and never stops. People regularly and typically, en masse, work against their own interests in ways that seem like "not a big deal".
Suddenly, you can't make a doctor's appointment in Europe without a WhatsApp account (and agreeing to the Meta ToS in the process). (Why Europe casually ceded the basic day to day communications of many of its b2c sectors to an American company without so much as a fight is another matter.)
Would be really interesting to create a completely new account, use the glasses with all upload settings off for a month, and then SAR request and see what they have...
I asked 2 cops in a patrol car if I could install cameras on my own and how I should go about it. They said they don't mind them. Officially it's illegal unless you have a permit, but it's so widespread and the law is so unenforced that it's practically 99.99% legal.
I can point a few cameras to the street and record everything 24/7. When I'm on a bus I'm being recorded by a few cameras. On most bus/tram/subway stops there are cameras. In stores and public buildings there are cameras. Most cars have cameras for insurance or general safety concerns. Self-driving cars would have to have cameras, as well as delivery robots.
If we accept this shitty reality, why shouldn't I wear a camera and a mic, too?
Smart glasses record in private settings and the biggest point of contention is that they "stealth" record. If someone recorded you with their phone, you'd immediately notice whereas it's hardly noticeable with smart glasses. Worse, people at Facebook are able to visualize scenes from people's home unbeknownst to them.
In fact why on earth would they choose the Ray Ban glasses which are getting highly suspicious?
Basicially it is a peeping tom.
-Mark Zuckerberg, 2004
Have you been alive for the past decade?
That image always felt dystopian to me
You might say they reframed the issue.
https://soundcloud.com/scobleizer/why-google-glass-will-be-a...
>"So you want one, huh?" -Robert Scoble
Then,it's stalking and it's different. There are much less case of stalking than people accidentally incorporating other people in their picture frame.
Another interesting nuance of the law in Germany is: it's almost always illegal to take pictures or video of people that show their suffering or struggle. You cannot take a video of a man having a mental breakdown for example. Is this universal? No, of course a journalist will take a picture of a suffering man in the cold to send a message about inequality. If he ever will be sued it will be the judge to decide if in this specific instance the right of the individual or the right of the collective right should prevail.
If they think this surveillance tech is going to push the company forward, it means leadership is even more disconnected from reality than the Amazon people who greenlit the superbowl ad. It means the company is dying. Huzzah!
Perhaps the old ideas that "you have no privacy in public" or "if you can be seen then you can be recorded" and so on just need to be revised? Should we reconsider what it means to be "in public"? Perhaps people should be granted some form of privacy protection also when "in public"?
Workers annotating data for AI might see sensitive content captured by smart glasses. But the leap from that to “we see everything” and framing it like some dystopian panopticon mirrors the early Google Glass panic, where the concerns often outran what the device actually could do.
Legitimate concerns shouldn’t be dismissed, but neither should they be inflated to create a new “Glass-forked-into-Big-Brother” narrative unless the evidence genuinely supports that level of risk ...
> Privacy
Pick one.
To be illegal, it would either have to be focused on the genitals or of sexual content. Nudity is not automatically sexual.
It would be a surveillance and privacy dystopian nightmare.
Or do you think that those cameras are less secure because the leadership is not good with their people?
I'm not sure I follow the criticism here.
> Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or saying how great an article is. It's implicit in submitting something that you think it's important.
> If the title includes the name of the site, please take it out, because the site name will be displayed after the link.
> If the title contains a gratuitous number or number + adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."
> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.
The literal URL slug is
> metas-ai-smart-glasses-and-data-privacy-concerns-workers-say-we-see-everything
The page title is
> Meta’s AI Smart Glasses and Data Privacy Concerns: Workers Say “We See Everything”
The new title goes against the guidelines by editorializing. I've never seen HN do this before, what's going on here?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/22/mark-zuck...
I 3d printed a flap for my webcam.
The manufacturer might access it, Apple states they don't, Google and Samsung I'm not sure. A bad actor with 0days might too.
It does seem harder to tape the phone camera since the in/out motion into your pocket I imagine would remove the tape.
dang, could you check what went wrong here? The new title doesn’t represent the article at all. (edit: sent an email, too)
sandbach, if you still have access to editing, maybe you could change it back?
Original HN title - The workers behind Meta’s smart glasses can see everything
Editorialized HN title v1, 7 hours after post - A hidden workforce behind Meta’s new smart glasses
Editorialized HN title v2 - Meta’s AI smart glasses and data privacy concerns
I find v2 title okay-ish: it’s derived from the page title, and you can see what it’s about (as compared to v1). It doesn’t capture the degree of what Meta can see, though.
The form factor of the camera doesn't matter. We do have different constraints, but those are pretty solidly filled out in case law. I don't believe making recording glasses illegal to wear in public would withstand constitutional scrutiny. Mandating a visible notification with a conventional color, signaling things like "on" "passive" and "recording" would be constitutional and wouldn't infringe. That said, surreptitious use would likely be legal, e.g. aftermarket modification to allow recording with no lights; first amendment issues have a high bar and all sorts of secret camera precedents being legal. This is how corrupt politicians and cops and officials get caught, all the time, and it's highly unlikely to be smart glasses that gets the people and courts to flip on 1A.
I think we all know the black/white of: you can record all you want. You can not use my face in a commercial. That idea has served us well for a century. The problem is never the recording, it's what happens to the recorded material. If you just keep it for personal use, use it for journalism? That was never a problem.
I'd argue that using the recording to send to a different continent which is then processed by humans and/or computers and this then affects me or others (E.g. changes which ad the person next to me on the train sees on their phone) is now straddling a line somewhere between the black and white of "being recorded" and "being used in a commercial". That recording wasn't just this person observing or recording in a public space. It wasn't just used for "personal use" or journalism. It's something else.
I think it's this gray area that just needs to be cleared up. What if "transmitting a recording of someone to a commercial entity that potentially does commercial things with it" was classed just as "putting my face in the TV ad"? The GDPR (and similar) also might help (where applicable).
I've changed it again to match the article's original title, removing the clickbait part.
The one containing "hidden" is the one you apparently changed it to originally - I don't think GP can, nor has any reason to - so you initially changed it to.. clickbait?
It seems a serious reach to call "see everything" clickbait.
> First-ever in-utero stem cell therapy for fetal spina bifida repair is safe, study finds
Currently 9th on the front page, is "is safe" also clickbait, since surely it's not 100.0% safe, just like with "see everything" it's surely not every single frame?
The large number of replies this renaming got in a short timeframe is because it's not in line with what we're used to when it comes to title changes on HN.
Parent and another comment reacting to this change have also been (artificially, I must assume) sunk from top to below gems like ’Too funny that the subcontractor working for meta is “sama”’.
What's going on?
Edit: no, seriously, you having some personal axe to grind is no excuse for directing it at me or my comments. This is a sign of a person having a skewed perspective.
For the front camera that's a lot more difficult. You could probably modify one of those flexible screen protectors to black out the camera, but it'd be very inconvenient to take off.
Maybe there is some niche android phone that offers physical shutters, similar to the ones on Lenovo laptop webcams
Other than that I don't see a way to remain "private" while in "public" with the current laws that we have, and I kind of like the laws that we have.
These are the same laws that let us record law enforcement, which is especially useful when they abuse their power - something that happens far to often. If the laws around recording in public were altered, then we likely also lose that right, and then law enforcement becomes even more dangerous to the citizens.
But if I record you and use it in a TV commercial, that's different. The recording isn't the problem, it's what's done to the recording.
Now I'd ask: is sending the video of you to a Meta server so they can recognize your face at a specific store and location and influence which ads your mom see on Facebook more like a) journalism and personal use or which is acceptable b) the case where I recorded you and used your face in the TV commercial, which isn't acceptable?
You're moving goalposts. Of course using video of someone in a TV commercial requires consent. I never disputed any of that.
>is sending the video of you to a Meta server so they can recognize your face at a specific store and location and influence which ads your mom see on Facebook more like a) journalism and personal use or which is acceptable b) the case where I recorded you and used your face in the TV commercial, which isn't acceptable?
It's more like A. It isn't like B at all. But I purposely refuse to let friends take photos of me, and opt-out of group photos, because I know those photos end up on Facebook, where Facebook can do whatever they want with it short of using my likeness in an ad - at least that should be how it works, but Facebook doesn't really give a fuck about anything or anyone, so YMMV. Actual advertising companies and media companies will not use a likeness without consent, and I see plenty of faces blurred out in some "reality" shows where they did not get consent from specific people.
I can take a photo of you in public, and I can do lots of things with that photo. But if I want to sell something based on your photo, then I need to ask your permission.
Do you understand now?
This has happened to me before - someone took a photo of me and used it in an ad, and someone I know saw the ad and sent it to me... so I asked the company to stop using my photo to advertise their product, and they complied. Yes, they should have asked to use the photo first, but they likely found the photo someone else took who posted on the internet and someone at the company loved it so much (it was a great, unique photo) and wanted to use it in a fun way to promote their product. No, they should not have done that, but I get why they wanted to. Maybe they thought that sometimes it's better to ask for forgiveness than consent? I don't know, I don't care, but it wasn't that big a deal.
Also, FWIW, I just installed a new app called "Nearby Glasses" that scans for known bluetooth signatures of these recording glasses, and alerts when someone with these glasses is recording nearby.
https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/22/facebook-says-it-fixed-a-b...
Supposedly it was a bug, but with Facebook, who knows.
How much issue tracking and scrum management and engineering work and code review and testing and deployment and maintenance went into accidentally streaming silent audio that you only stop doing after you got caught and have to claim all that successfully tested and deployed work was unintentional, without ever explaining the actual innocuous purpose of streaming silent audio and paying for all that extra bandwidth?
You posted a message in "Who wants to be hired" at almost the same time as you posted this. Do you think a potential recruiter would read your comment history?
Sigh
I think you might be a "free man" longer than you want...
Put aside everything unethical and unworkable about it. Probably cheaper to lobby for a think-about-kids camera ban for products weighing less than 250g or contains transparent window apparatus that may or may not be curved in diameters larger than 10mm for fire risks or something.
That's a bad idea on so many levels.
Get it out of your system now, these double-standards won't be funny when Taiwan is blockaded.
> This is like saying, “We should ban guns!” And then use a successful self-defense case as a supporting argument.
Not quite, no. It is saying "If even those people who benefit from their national security can be tracked by an actor that does not own the cameras, it means that anyone can be tracked by those cameras. Do we want foreign actors to be able to track anyone in the country, even the leadership?".
It actually makes a stronger point than "normal people who gladly share all their data can be tracked", and even stronger than "a journalist taking care not to be tracked can still be tracked". Here we have the leadership of a country that knows that they are targets, who therefore benefit from national security. And they can still be tracked.
What's the material concern to tracking that glasses add?
To that point, the difference between geolocation and video tracking and analysis (like Flock) seems pretty obvious to me.
It's invasively panopticon.
I hate FB, but not everything is always a sinister plan, although this could have been. I will repeat: "with Facebook, who knows."
Large distributed systems don’t spontaneously assemble themselves without anyone understanding what they’re doing or intending for it to happen.
>I will repeat: "with Facebook, who knows."
Apparently we all know the obvious except for you. And you're not living up to your user name, which perhaps should be "rationalizer" not "rationalist". Instead of begin rational, you're bending over backwards to implausibly carry the water for Facebook beyond all credulity. It's a bad look, and shows you're vastly underestimating the complexity of developing distributed streaming software at that scale. So I will repeat what rsynnott said:
>And if you believe that, you'll believe anything.
OK I've looked in the logs and here's what happened.
The originally submitted title was: The workers behind Meta’s smart glasses can see everything.
That title was created by the submitter; it's not the original title and it's not a verbatim line of text from anywhere in the article.
It's also, arguably, clickbait, which I gather is why another moderator changed it to: A hidden workforce behind Meta’s new smart glasses.
Their intention was to make the title less baity and be closer to a verbatim line from the article (a line in the subheading is "Behind Meta’s new smart glasses lies a hidden workforce").
That's what triggered all the complaints.
I then changed it to a title that is a verbatim string from the HTML title, with the baity part at the end removed. That is bog standard title editing of the kind I've done every day for the several years I've been doing this job.
> First-ever in-utero stem cell therapy for fetal spina bifida repair is safe, study finds
"Is safe" is not an absolutist claim, but even since your comment was submitted, another moderator has – correctly – changed "first-ever" to "first", because "first-ever" is absolutist and baity.
> The large number of replies this renaming got in a short timeframe is because it's not in line with what we're used to when it comes to title changes on HN.
What I've described above is what HN moderators do several times each day. I think the reaction to this one is because it's a topic that inherently gets people riled up (understandably), and people's riled-up-ness will spill over to any perception that we're "suppressing" the story. But we're not suppressing the story; it is still at top spot, and it will stay on the front page for several hours and everyone will have every chance to read it and discuss it.
The title we've arrived at now is the one that's most consistent with the guidelines.
It’s just a hot topic. The A hidden workforce one was way off, which is why people might have got that impression. I don’t think this was intentional, but I can understand where the backlash is coming from :)
Safe is generally a gradable adjective [1], though can be non-gradable in certain contexts (like programming).
We are getting into the weeds though, aren't we?
[1] https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/grammar/b1-b2-gramma...
Have a nice day
I understand, and I disagree. I think if you send video to Meta who uses it to make money (and likely offer you free services in return) then that's a commercial use of the recording. Whether it's similar to a tv-ad or not can be debated, but it's definitely recording and using it commercially.
So here's my opinion very simply: People should be required to ask for permission before sending recordings to endpoints where they even have a _risk_ of being used commercially (For example, training a LLM at Apple, or be used to improve self-driving cars at Tesla or whatever) then it should be the same as for using the recording in an a ad. Full explicit consent needed from everyone recognizable in the recording with their voice or likeness.
But I'm a bit confused by the article because it describes things that seem really unlikely given how the glasses work. They shine a bright light whenever recording. Are people really going into bathrooms, having sex, sharing rooms with people undressed while this light is on? Or is this deliberate tampering, malfunctioning, or Meta capturing footage without activating the light (hard to believe even Meta would do this intentionally).
I feel like this article is either a bombshell, or totally confused.
"But for the AI assistant to function, voice, text, image and sometimes video must be processed and may be shared onwards. This data processing is done automatically and cannot be turned off."
The distinction here occurs wherever the data is processed, and it sounds as if the difference between using your video for labeling versus privately processing it through an AI is deliberately confusing and obscured to the user by the way the terms of service are written. Once the video is uploaded, which is necessary for the basic function, it's unclear how or whether it can be separated from other streams that do go through labeling. This confusion also seems to be an intentional dark pattern.
Are you referring to the same company that runs Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram? Meta has, for well over a decade, been caught multiple times -as recently as 2 years ago caught for the third time I know of- burrowing into areas of phones that their apps weren't directly given access to. Android phones have been highly susceptible to this kind of snooping.
https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/meta-halts-phone-and-...
OTOH, Meta could just be desperate for training content and they're just slurping up all recordings by people who've opted into the AI function. It would be great for them to clarify how this works.
I mean, not as if I were to visit such sites, right ... but video recordings can be done in numerous ways. Also on small devices. I mean the smartphones are fairly small.
And regardless of any privacy policy or the like, you still have to worry about Room 641A scenarios [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A].
Can you imaging a Stasi that has a large portion of the population also wearing pervasive surveillance tech? Amazing!
Hard to believe they would?
This is Mark Zuckerberg we are talking about.
It's hard to believe they wouldn't.
Hahahahahahahaha
ZUCK: yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard
ZUCK: just ask
ZUCK: i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns
FRIEND: what!? how’d you manage that one?
ZUCK: people just submitted it
ZUCK: i don’t know why
ZUCK: they “trust me”
ZUCK: dumb fucks
Actual quote, BTW [1].
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/09/20/the-face-of-fa...
I’m sure you’ve never said anything callous or snarky, and were a bastion of morality as a teenager.
"The demand for this ‘Ray-Ban hack’ has been steadily increasing, with the hobbyist’s waiting list growing longer by the day. This demonstrates a clear desire among Ray-Ban owners to exercise more control over their privacy and mitigate concerns about unknowingly recording others."
https://bytetrending.com/2025/10/28/ray-ban-hack-disabling-t...
This is why WE have the GDPR. To outlaw and prevent exploitation such as this.
I wish this article (or Meta) were a bit clearer about the specific connection between the device settings and use and when humans get access to the images.
My settings are:
- [OFF] "Share additional data" - Share data about your Meta devices to help improve Meta products.
- [OFF] "Cloud media" - Allow your photos and videos to be sent to Meta's cloud for processing and temporary storage.
I'm not sure whether my settings would prevent my media from being used as described in the article.
Also, it's not clear which data is being used for training:
- random photos / videos taken
- only use of "Meta AI" (e.g., "Hey Meta, can you translate this sign")
As much as I've liked my Meta Ray Ban's I'm going to need clarity here before I continue using them.
TBH, if it were only use of Meta AI, I'd "get it" but probably turn that feature off (I barely use it as-is).
Meta aims to introduce facial recognition to its smart glasses while its biggest critics are distracted, according to a report from The New York Times. In an internal document reviewed by The Times, Meta says it will launch the feature “during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns.”
I just don't see a world where that doesn't happen with Meta glasses.
1. Debugging for troubleshooting.
2. Analytical for making product better.
3. Bugs that collects your info when it shouldn't.
4. Bugs from 3rd party vendor if company uses those.
5. Insecure process. Getting access to a private content within the company is trivial due to coarse permission model.
Source: I worked at two well known social media companies. Trust & Safety and data infra teams
The creepiness concern is real, but I think people misplace where the actual surveillance happens. The most consequential stores of personal data aren’t ad networks they’re things like banks, hospitals, insurers, and telecoms. These institutions hold information about your health, finances, movements, and relationships, indexed and searchable by employees you’ve never met, governed by policies you’ve never read.
Realistically, there’s very little an individual can do to completely opt out.
My take is: if the main outcomes are that I get shown ads for things I don’t need and my facecomputer knows the difference between a fork and a spoon… I… I can live with that.
Yes, but it's possible, at the cost of some minor inconvenience, to greatly limit data collected about you.
Communicate over private channels (Signal, own XMPP servers, NOT Whatsapp), pay in cash or crypto, runs free software on all your devices, and deny Internet access to devices across the board (this includes all TVs/monitors, all "smart" devices, cars, and other appliances).
The real issue is that (as these glasses exemplify), it is difficult to prevent others to intentionally or unintentionally provide data to surveillance companies. This happens when you walk in front of a Ring camera, when someone uploads a selfie to Facebook and you happen to be in the background, and in countless other situations.
One that bothers me a lot are all the apps that want people to share your contacts to find your friends. This is a quick way for them to get all the contact information, which may also include birthdays and other more sensitive details.
Even if I were to never make a Facebook account, I could almost guarantee they still have my name, address, phone number, DOB, and maybe more.
No. When your record a video on your phone, it is not being reviewed annotators. Generally companies only pay to get labeling done on data that is being used to train (or evaluate) ML models.
If you're blind, it's of course understandable but that's pretty much it in terms of cases in which I would consider the glasses acceptable to wear in public.
It’s possible that even if all your friends/family would stay far away, they could still end up in your proximity.
> Hey Meta, is it safe to cross the street
> You are absolutely correct to check whether it's safe to cross before crossing! (emoji). Let me check for you(emoji)
> ...10% ...40% ...80% ...100% DONE. (made up progress bar)
> It is perfectly safe to cross right now! (emoji)
> Thanks Meta! (user dies)
I care about the innocent people whose privacy is invaded by people who buy these glasses.
So the world can label them as Hentai glasses and move on
No one will read it, but even if you do, most of the time the FOMO or sunk cost fallacy effect will make you go on anyway. And then it is a free pass for them.
This is hugely concerning. We need more details. Why are the glasses recording when not being worn? Is the light on when it's recording?
Are the Meta employees able to turn on the streaming without people knowing? Are these videos only when someone says "Hey Meta..."? Are the Meta employees looking at every "Hey Meta..." video where someone asks AI a question?
These glasses are considered a luxury item and are worn by executives in office environments. They are worn by people in family situations. Someone could be a confidential or private moment and randomly ask AI a question; one of the primary purposes of the glasses. Are all of these being seen by Meta employees?
Tbh the only thing I really use the glasses for are listening to music or talking on the phone - so basically how you'd use airpods. I don't use airpods because I had an ear injury that prevents me from using them on my left ear, so these glasses were kinda nice for that. I really wish they didn't have a camera though because I do always feel compelled to remove them if I interact with people.
I also have to add that the quality is mediocre. They're a month old and the case has problems charging sometimes, and one of the screws is always coming loose at a hinge no matter how often I retighten that side.
Vote with your dollars people.
Yesterday I saw a Instagram reel of a guy asking "what am I looking at" while between his girlfriend's legs. Congrats, some Indian guy saw her too.
The core piece of information that is missing or unclear is whether this collection happens also when not actively and knowingly sending data to the cloud.
The glasses let me record videos locally, can Facebook see any frames of them? This is the question that needs to be answered. Everything is else is nonsense like "omg Amazon hears what I tell Alexa"
> The workers in Kenya say that it feels uncomfortable to go to work. They tell us about deeply private video clips, which appear to come straight out of Western homes, from people who use the glasses in their everyday lives.
Absolutely crazy that a Meta employee saying not to buy them. Everyone should know this right now.
“I saw a video where a man puts the glasses on the bedside table and leaves the room.”
“Shortly afterwards his wife comes in and changes her clothes”, one of them says.
I don't agree that responsibility to comply with Swedish law is on the wearer. This should motivate prosecutors to immediately order raids to secure any data relating to the processing of the data.
I also think the Swedish camera surveillance law is also applicable and there's a deceptive element since the cameras are disguised as glasses.
Is it because younger people don't care about privacy anymore?
The terminology you chose is tasteless, loaded, and detracts from your point.
[OFF] "Share data about your Meta devices to help improve Meta products." doesn't preclude sharing data for other purposes.
[OFF] "Allow your photos and videos to be sent to Meta's cloud for processing and temporary storage." doesn't preclude sending them to Meta's cloud for permanent storage.
I turned the AI off and used them as headphones and taking videos while biking. After a couple rides, I couldn’t bring myself to put them on because people started to recognize them and I realized I didn’t want to be associated with them (people are right to assume Meta has access to what they see).
Meta Ray Bans, if kept simple, could have been a great product. They ruined them.
Just continues to prove that if you solve a bit of inconvenience for them, people will let you exploit them and their families.
Wearing these glasses is just as obnoxious as walking around putting your phone in people's faces while recording.
It's certainly possible that it's something much more surprising / sinister, but there is a fairly logical combination of settings that I could see a company could argue lets them use the data for training.
I'm also very certain that few users with these settings would expect the images to be shown to actual people, so I'm not defending Meta.
They are creepy as fuck.
I’m embarrassed to wear my non-Meta Raybans now. That logo is a liability.
There is (in general) no expectation of privacy in public in Europe. How you can use the material though, is a different matter ...
So if you take a video of specific people looking at flowers at the Keukenhof you would have to ask them for permission if you are recording them primarily and publish it but recording for yourself is fine as it is a clearly public space. If you take a picture of all the flower and catch some people in it in the background you are fine. If you do it in a place where people do not expect it they can ask you to remove the video and they have to (e.g. in a restaurant when you are eating as it is not expected to be recorded there).
There are some exceptions for journalism, law enforcement and public good. I doubt strongly any Meta (AI) post would classify for that.
There is also the small caveat that if you can avoid recording innocent bystanders you must. E.g. putting up a doorbell camera and pointing it to the street instead of your door is bad as it's easily avoidable by putting it top down.
Besides that there is the issue of publishing said footage, as others point out.
https://patch.com/illinois/lakezurich/il-student-punches-pro...
Different laws in different countries.
> before filming random people in the street?
That would make taking pictures impossible, so no, such a requirement cannot be reasonably() codified into law.
() By reasonably I mean in a way to be actually followed. Of course there are lots of impossible laws created by politicians to cater to their fan base.
If you could not take photos of people in public places it would imply banning a lot of things that have been acceptable for a long time.
I sometime ask this person to hide the camera and they generally understand my feeling.
However, audio recording of conversations is prohibited.
Filming is legal. In public spaces (streets, parks), there is no "reasonable expectation of privacy." You do not need permission to point a camera. The exceptions are usually for offensive or harassing type of filming.
Publishing is regulated. In EU, once you share the footage , you are "processing personal data" under GDPR. There are also exceptions where publishing without permission is legal. Legitimate Interest (security footage or incidental background), Public Interest/Journalism, and Artistic Expression.
Generally you must ask permission to publish, not to film. Although asking permission to film is good ethical principle too.
Even having a fake camera pointing at a public space can be forbidden as it creates surveilance pressure on people using the space.
I mean, otherwise countries couldn’t use security cameras
I worked at a midsize financial company before and whenever there was something even approaching a legal or ethical grey area, we'd pick up the phone and say come to my office to talk, and then you'd close the door.
We weren't doing anything nearly as nefarious as Meta, yet everyone was always aware that email and phone conversations were recorded and archived.
Now, one wonders what constitutes "nefarious" or a grey zone worth hiding in their minds.
Do you believe these companies and individuals will ever see consequences for putting this in writing? I don't think they will, and I assume they believe the same based on their actions. Why waste time being "moral" when you don't lose anything for being immoral and stand to gain something if your gamble wins?
I mean, there's a whole philosophical outlook about being a good person and some people just want to do without needing enforcement, but those people also dont tend to become one of the largest corporations on the planet.
But still nefarious. Thats kinda messed up, to be honest.
Every day I understand more and more that I have something really priceless and rare, complete luxury of choice, and 99% of people don't. (as with all things, it has its downside: nothing matters!)
I refused to get "stuck" in my hometown, which motivated me from college dropout to FAANG. Once I got there, it was novel to me that even rich people get "stuck" due to inability to imagine losing status, and also responsiblities that come with obvious, healthy, lifestyle choices (i.e. marriage and kids)
I mean, they don’t. There isn’t a single decent person who has ever worked at Meta, and that started long before this nonsense. The entire company is about the social destruction of its users. Everything anyone there works on drives towards that goal.
Please don't respond with how you think people justify, I want to hear the actual reasons. I'm tired of speculative responses to questions like these.
Please do share if you've had to deal with similar situations too. And feel free to respond with green accounts.
I legitimately want to understand why this happens. Not why from management, why from engineers.
Most people are just trying to get through their day and not worry about ethical questions.
I'd say that's terrible, but I'm not confident I'd be a better person if my livelihood depended on doing that sort of work, though I hope I'd be better.
Who has been distracted from Facebook’s shenanigans? Who are they talking about? Is it me? Because I can tell you I have certainly not been distracted on that front. Am I supposed to feel guilty? Am I supposed to hold somebody accountable who should’ve been paying attention?
I do actually understand why it’s done, but I just find it very grating and if your goal is to actually raise awareness, shaming people is generally not the way to go about it.
Also the classic “we can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time” thing
It isn't really "rhetoric", they're talking like they believe this actually happens, this is strategy.
And I tend to agree with them that things like attention and political capital are ultimately finite resources.
I've found that the "we can do two things" and "we can walk and chew bubblegum" line of argument to be simplistic and just wrong (and pretty incredibly patronizing). I think the world works exactly the way Meta thinks that it does here.
It might blow up and turn into a Streisand effect, but more often than not this kind of strategy works.
Much like how people think they can multitask and talk on the phone and drive at the same time and every scientific measure of it shows that they really can't.
On September 11th 2001 a UK government department's press chief told their subordinates it was a "good day to bury bad news".
The idea is pretty simple - you might be obligated to announce something that you know will be poorly received, like poor train performance figures, but you can decide the exact day you announce it, like on a day when thousands have died in a terror attack. What would otherwise be front-page news is relegated to a few paragraphs on page 14.
Facebook proposes a similar strategy: Get the feature ready to go, wait until there's some much bigger news story, and deploy it that day.
> “We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,” according to the document from Meta’s Reality Labs, which works on hardware including smart glasses.
Is that a good enough explanation to reduce your feelings of being personally targeted?
To record a video on your phone you need to hold your phone up pointed at the other person, usually not in the same way you would normally use a phone. If you see someone holding his phone steady at face level and pointing at something without making finger movements, you know he is filming. If someone is pointing his phone down towards the ground and scrolling around with his thumb, you know he is probably not.
To record from a pair of smart glasses you just need to look at someone, as you would normally look at any other thing. Yes there will be an LED on, but the person being recorded probably couldn't see it if it is in a bright, busy environment and you are more than a few steps away, plus there will be aftermarket modifications to disable the LED. In short, there is no way you can reliably tell if someone's smart glasses are filming you. You have to assume that worst.
Then again, there may be some selection bias at play…
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/nyregion/nyc-nightlife-no...
The world is not deterministic, and we can shape norms of how we interact with each other. We don't have to accept being constantly recorded just because the technology makes it possible.
Not perfect, but better than nothing I guess. I don't think I've noticed the glasses IRL anywhere, but if I start seeing them, I'm definitely installing the app and avoiding any interactions with those people.
And all of that is to ignore that neither gen1 or 2 of Google Glass attempted to look like regular glasses. The Meta frames are largely indistinguishable from regular glasses unless you are very up close.
[EDIT] I really shouldn't need to say this on Hacker News but don't shoot the messenger for messages you don't want to hear. Reporting a fact does not imply approval or disapproval of it.
No, we need to make this as socially radioactive as possible. We don't need to establish a permission structure to allow Facebook to continue doing this without repercussion.
Cameras on glasses will be normalized too. A few HNer types will scream. The rest of the "nothing to hide so nothing to fear" group will just wear them. (not saying I agree with "nothing to hide so nothing to fear". Rather, I'm saying that's common way of thinking. Common enough that it's likely people will wear these eventually.
How about this marketing approach: "College woman, tired of creepers trying to hit on you. Worried about getting roofied. Wear these glasses and turn the creeps in".
People widely accept mass surveilance and facial recognition, including by doorbells, phones, cameras on the street, etc. They post images and videos online to corporations that perform facial recognition. They accept government collecting data broadly by facial recognition.
People accept all sorts of horrors and nonsense, unrelated to and many times much worse than privacy violations, because (I think) they are normalized on social media, which is controlled editorially by Zuckerberg, Musk, Ellison, etc.
I'm not saying we're doomed. I'm saying nobody else will save us. We have to make it happen.
I’ve seen stories of people banned from gyms for taking selfies in the locker room as people were walking by.
It's difficult to draw a bright line between these activities:
- I told someone else something I saw the other day
- I painted a picture of the public square or wrote a book about specific activities that I witnessed
- I specifically remembered an individual based on their face, visible tattoos, location, license plate, or some other unique factor and voluntarily testified to that fact in a court of law
- I spent every day at the same corner making note of the various people/vehicles that I saw
- I stuck a camera at that same point (perhaps on my private properly directly abutting a public space) and recorded everything, posted it publicly on the internet, and used automated technology to identify people, text, vehicles, etc
- I paid a different person every day to follow someone around and record what they did
- I developed a drone system that could follow specific individuals/vehicles from airspace I'm allowed to occupy
Pretty much everything I described above is legal in most of the United States. Obviously it gets creepier and more uncomfortable going down the list (I don't really like it when I'm the subject of any of these activities) but how do you stop this?
I'll at least throw out some options
- Implement some form of right to forget
- Forbid individuals or organizations from doing any of these
- Enact actual "civil rights" level privacy protections (extend HIPAA? automatic copyright for human faces? new amendment?) that include protection of individual's DNA, unique facial features, and other "uniquely human" attributes
My friends always have a cheap shot when I wear them but are completely fine now and appreciate fun candid videos I send them
Amazing for vacations with the kids
I get why people are creeped out by them, but we get filmed or photographed hundreds of times a day in a big city when we are in public spaces. Gatekeeping a potentially useful technology for being filmed in public -- well, everyone is _already_ filmed in public. ATM cameras, stoplight cameras, drone cameras, smartphone cameras, security cameras, doorbell cameras. You are on camera every time you step out of your house. You are on camera every time you open your work computer. Singling out cameras in eyeglasses as "creepy" is kind of worrying about a drop in the ocean. Cameras on self-driving cars. Nanny cams. Closed-circuit cameras. The things are everywhere, and they are always invasions of privacy. Why is the line the "creeper" glasses?
I'd be ok with it if we were for banning all non-consensual recordings in all spaces. But we're very much not.
And if we're not, then having a personal heads-up display that is contextual to your current surroundings or has augmented reality capability is too useful to not use (eventually). I'm bad with names, and good with faces. That use-case alone would be worth it for me, if it were available.
And we probably ought to regulate how all such footage is handled.
> banning all non-consensual recordings in all spaces
It's a false dichotomy. Even if recording is permitted that doesn't mean the systemic invasion of personal privacy needs to be.
Just FYI, they do heavily market this towards RX glasses wearers. So, you wouldn't quite be able to just as simply ask someone to take off their glasses and no longer be able to see.
Apparently they sold 7 million of these. So I think a whole lot of people don't care about this aspect.
I propose we just assume people with meta glasses are recording others in public and we call them creeps. Shaming works, we should use it more.
Doorbell cameras are also typically pointed toward public streets, where again, there is no expectation of privacy. Even then, many people have been removing Ring cameras after they were shown to automatically upload video without user's knowledge.
Body cam - used to protect the police and people being policed in a potentially hot conflict. Recording is scoped to these specific interactions that rarely occur for most people.
Doorbell cam - highly controversial. See response to dog-finding superbowl ad.
Body cam wore on face - Mass surveillance in potentially every conceivable social context. Data owned by Meta, a company known for building a profile on people that don't even use their products.
Not sure how it is where you live, but doorbell cameras are commonly criticized where I live. With many people claiming they don't feel comfortable walking around anymore knowing that the entire neighborhood is filming them.
Cops also announce their presence in uniforms and are operating as government agents. People already moderate their behavior around cops so being recorded isn’t as big a deal.
I think the difference is that these cameras are relatively concealed, and can be used to record every interaction, even in pretty intimate/private settings. Yes you could do this with a cell phone but it would be pretty obvious your recording if you're trying to get more than just the audio of an interaction.
People are more okay with cameras in public areas and less okay if it's in intimate, social, private situations, inside apartments, individual offices etc.
A face camera has no light or warnings (you just put tape over the small light), and is operated by a pervert.
There's very little sense to me in searching for meaning in any of this. It just is, people are that way. There are no lines and boundaries based on anything but just whims.
I missed Facebook for about a day, and after that I barely even thought about it. In 2021 I bought an Oculus Quest 2, which at the time required a Facebook account so I made a throwaway one, but other than that I haven't been on Facebook (and I haven't even touched my Quest 2 in three years).
Point being, it's really not hard to get off Facebook and to ditch Meta products. More people should delete it.
As another poster mentioned, it can in fact be more difficult. Almost all of my social clubs/groups over the years migrated away from websites/forums to FaceBook. I could give up an account, at the cost of losing effectively my entire social calendar.
I have a generic account with no real user data, but they still get all my content from the social groups so they still win I suppose.
My point ultimately I guess is that I have chosen the ability to continue to have a strong social life over my zuck hating principles.
Maybe this changed since I set mine up, but I felt so damn informed I was getting tired of tapping I understand.
https://github.com/hagezi/dns-blocklists?tab=readme-ov-file#...
Among others, blocks Meta/Facebook/Google/Apple trackers and ads. Every router on the planet should run this.
It actually looks like it added AI functionality, so not every question goes out to a live helper, but they still do have that option.
Something like the Meta glasses could mean a lot less reliance on app that reach out to actual people, or looking for the phone all the time, for day-to-day help with things like this.
Does it really count as "actively doing it" when the glasses are constantly filming while you do other stuff. With a phone/camera people can see you are filming or taking pictures. In many countries the shutter needs to make a sound when taking pictures. For video surveilance cameras a noticeable sign or sticker is needed.
Yep. Once a couple of nerds got rich, it's what that segment pointed their money finders at. Advertising / marketing went with them.
It was a much nicer place for everyone when it was just the nerds who "had love for the game" :(
You can keep your phone here but the cameras are taped off. Of course that can easily be undone but it avoids the "oh sorry I forgot it wasn't allowed" excuse.
There isn't really a counter to that because most people will buy these things to watch movies on the airplane or the train, and they won't see the yoke until it's too late.
I still spend too much arguing on HN but not as much as I was on Facebook and the audience here is generally more educated and so the arguments aren't as mind-numbing.
It wasn't Meta's morals that gave me any signals to that effect. It was the potential legal minefield on top of the engineering challenges [1] that made it so I didn't even consider this as a possibility. In fact I'm still confused. I don't understand how they would be pulling this off despite those challenges, and I would love to.
The point I was trying to make is it's becoming easier to staff companies with dubious moral standings.
It's painfully obvious to me society cannot do two things at once. You focus on one shared goal as a culture or everything falls apart very rapidly - as we are seeing today. It's why a common external "enemy" (e.g competitor, nation state, culture, whatever) has historically been so important.
The shared goal can be complex in nature, which requires many disciplines to come together to achieve it via a series of many parallel activities that might look like they are all doing something random, but it's all in the service of that singular shared goal.
This holds true from my experience at the national level all the way down to small organizations.
The last two items on your list (person, drone) likely constitute stalking outside of specific limited situations.
> Implement some form of right to forget
The passive voice here is deceptive. When rephrased as the right to make others forget it suddenly seems quite nefarious (at least to me).
My last two bullets intentionally walked the line on stalking and spoke to some of the arguments law enforcement have attempted to use to nefariously surveil the public without a warrant [0].
I also have a difficult time jamming 'right to forget' through the first amendment protections in the United States but it does provide some protection/agency to individuals to protect their identity.
[0] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/warrantless-pol...
Smartphones and social media apps made it frictionless to post public videos on the Internet. The only legislation that could be effective would be to forbid social media from hosting videos of public places somehow, and I'm not sure how effective or practical would that even be.
We live in a world where people have a literal phone in their hands and they would rather make a video call than a simple phone call. Something needs to happen to fundamentally change people's habits or it will only get worse in the future.
The problem is that our courts have utterly failed to stand up for civil rights. This is especially true of the Supreme Court, who quite literally define how the law is interpreted.
Cops control when the cameras are filming, if footage is retained and what/when/if footage is released. Body cams are just yet another surveillance tool against the population.
[1]https://www.aclu-wa.org/news/will-body-cameras-help-end-poli...
I'd suggest browsing body cam footage on youtube for a bit. If you see the sort of stuff being prosecuted it might not bother you.
If it hasn't reduced police use of force or misconduct (I find this claim questionable) I think that's unfortunate but regardless it's important to implement systems that document that to the greatest extent possible. If we do that today then maybe it can be reduced tomorrow.
100% percent of prosecutors’ offices in jurisdictions with body cameras have used officer testimony as evidence to prosecute civilians. Meanwhile I suspect the use of officer testimony is even more lopsided in favor of cops.
And the biggest fix there is you need to not let them control it.
By tricking yourself into believing you sit on a higher moral pedestal you're simply easing the pain of comparison.
When high school girls spread gossip that the pretty, popular girl has loose morals, they aren't performing this service out of the goodness of their hearts. They're hoping to elevate themselves by tearing down the competition.
That's funny.
You genuinely think that doing something "publicly notable" is necessary and sufficient for being involved in multiple public scandals, as if notable people who aren't slimy asshats didn't exist.
It's a fine argument too. You can keep narrowing down what counts as "publicly notable" until it only includes "founding Meta" when counterexamples are pointed out to you.
That's how you can be so confident is saying "you've never done anything in your life that's publicly notable" without knowing who you're talking to.
>By tricking yourself into believing you sit on a higher moral pedestal you're simply easing the pain of comparison
What a beautiful example moving the goal posts with a personal attack while saying absolutely nothing that has any discernable meaning.
Easing the pain of comparison, huh?
It's not painful to compare an asshat who brags about betraying trust of people who thought he's a decent human being to anyone who finds that repulsive.
Particularly in the context of discussing how trustworthy that person is.
It's not about "morals", see.
It's that Mark Zuckerberg is the highest authority when it comes to talking about Mark Zuckerberg, —...
... — and he explicitly said that you'd be a dumb fuck to trust him with your personal data, which is what you do when you wear Meta's AI glasses.
These are the concrete, specific facts, not contrived examples about high school girls (on whose behalf you can't speak either).
I never in my life were mocking and making fun out of other people for trusting me, or equivalent.
I also never run company that knowingly ruined multitude of lives and social interactions in general.
> snarky
Snark is not a problem that people have with Mr. Zuckerberg.
Sure. Wen I was in college, I didn't have the idea of snooping on other students and exploiting them as "dumb fucks" who were stupid enough to trust me.
Most of my public online history starts at around that time too.
And one of my first comments on Slashdot was expressing concern about Facebook violating people's privacy by introducing the feed back in 2006.
https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=195861&cid=16054826
I was 19 then.
Wouldn't that make "photo cloud backups" without consent illegal as well?
People do that all the time, sending private photos to Google, Apple etc.
If it transpired Google or Apple had staff looking through people's cloud photo backups, yes this would be considered a violation because "cloud backup" is framed as a personal solution and not a hosting or processing solution.
It's not the same as doing this systematically (like Meta here), but these are shades of gray. A serious privacy law would prohibit both.
Sadly that means it is not enforced well since it is too broad to be enforced in a meaningful way. And therefore it is violated A LOT, both by companies or people since no one can be bothered!
AVG (GDPR) includes the following things as personal data: name, address, phone number, passport photo, information about someone's behavior on websites, allergies, customer or staff numbers, recognizable recordings and more.
Rule of thumb, any information that can be used to relate a specific person.
The tail wags the dog. Wearing glasses may become inherently cool if all the cool people in your insta feeds are wearing them.
When these types of glasses are virtually indistinguishable from regular sunglasses, and a critical mass of cool people wear them all the time, the reluctance from the rest of us will melt away.
I hope I'm wrong. Really.
I know some of the criticism of Meta: many people don't like the way their products are optimized for engagement. I've heard about their weird AI bots interacting on their platform as if they were people. And I know people of all political stripes have had complaints about content moderation and their algorithm.
But all of that is within the bounds of the law and their terms of service.
None of it would remotely approach something like: bypassing the well-advertised features in the glasses that show when the camera is in use and secretly recording things to train AI. It's hard to imagine any company's lawyers approving something like that. (this sounds like what many commenters believe is happening)
FWIW, I suspect this is the relevant section of the Privacy policy:
> "When you use the Meta AI service on your AI Glasses (if available for your device), we use your information, like Media and audio recordings of your voice to provide the service."
from: https://www.meta.com/legal/privacy-policy/
if so, "to provide the service" is doing a lot of work
Two examples that are top of mind…
They exploited browser vulnerabilities not unlike malware to track users’ behavior across the web: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/06/protect-yourself-metas...
They bought a “privacy” VPN app and used it to harvest data, then abused Apple’s enterprise app deployments to continue to ship the app after it was banned from the app store: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/jury-finds-meta-...
I think it's anything but logical, if users (like yourself) have no idea what those settings are, as evident from your previous post.
It’s also not controversial to paint the harmful, profit-seeking actions of companies upon minors as “abusive” (e.g. tobacco firms).
If anything, your knee-jerk response at their rhetoric raises eyebrows: why would you go to bat for a company who by nearly all public measures is fundamentally evil in aim and structure?
Evoking what the comment in question evokes over uploading pictures of your kid to the internet is not the way to convince people. It takes the thing you want people to care about and exaggerates it in a way that makes your view point trivial to dismiss.
I say this from the place of someone who deactivated their social media accounts over similar concerns. This is not the way to convince people.
Idk, agree to disagree in this case. Sometimes people do need to hear the stark words of those they disagree with to reconsider their weakly, or even deeply, held positions. Especially in this forum, where so many people of what I would figure is “higher intelligence” continue to turn a blind eye to the clearly unethical actions of their employers because $$$. Some of them even convince themselves that what they’re doing is somehow not unethical!
Look, you do your kids, literally nobody in the world cares how great or messed up individuals they will become, the result always match the process so its pretty obvious.
But your freedom to do whatever stops when you start infringing rights of me and my family. Right to privacy is, where I live and most sane places, enforceable by law. Also, its called not being an asshole or similar rougher terms.
Facebook us currently being sued for targeting children with "sexual exploitation, solicitation, sextortion and human trafficking."
However, you have chosen to directly attack the above commenter based on your own views. This is tasteless, loaded, and detracts from your point.
They simply are not of sound mind to understand the consequences of such a transaction.
If you needed consent to film people in the street, security cameras (in public places) couldn't be used. They _are_ used. So it must not be the case that you need consent to film people in the street. Assuming there is not just widespread lawbreaking, I suppose.
Take all the people who get and got laid off. Their life goes on.
> responsiblities that come with obvious, healthy, lifestyle choices (i.e. marriage and kids)
99.9999% of people in the world who are married with kids, don't work at Meta.
"They have a choice" is of course literally true. It's also not very interesting? Everyone always has a choice in the tautological sense. The question the parent raised was how do people live with it, and the answer is: the same way people live with all kinds of things. Incrementally, surrounded by context that makes it feel normal, with stakes that feel high relative to their baseline, not yours.
Your 99.9999% stat kind of makes my point for me. Those people also didn't get a $400k offer from Meta. The trap isn't marriage+kids, it's young + don't know better + land there + marriage + kids+a lifestyle calibrated to a specific income, plus the identity that comes with it. The golden handcuffs thing is a cliché because it's real.
None of this is a defense of working on things you find unconscionable. It's just that "they could simply choose not to" has never once in history been a sufficient explanation of human behavior.
> I have something really priceless and rare, complete luxury of choice, and 99% of people don't
People working at Meta are almost without exception, people who have more luxury of choice than nearly anyone on the planet. It's very important to keep repeating this, and not say the direct opposite as you did. You can make your point without doing so.
I still see folks wearing Wayfarers almost every single day, and have owned various (non-Meta) pairs of them for most of my adult life. It's literally one of the most popular sunglasses designs of all time.
- they have the opportunity to save the video feed at any time - they are probably storing some kind of metadata of the feed, maybe some kind of analysis output - someone could hypothetically watch it
I thought it was dangerous because I thought they could do what they're doing, but I didn't think that right now they actually were and so overtly
The data required is small. Each embedding might be 1/2 kB per face.
> power budget
To process a video for biometric feature extraction, it might take 0.5% to 2% of the total power used to record a video. Video uses a lot of power (compression, screen, etc)
Assuming you've got a modern device (e.g. with Apple Neutral Engine). Disclosure: Googled info (Gemini).
"Embedding"? This is what the article says:
"In some videos you can see someone going to the toilet, or getting undressed. I don’t think they know, because if they knew they wouldn’t be recording."
You're saying they're watching "embedding"s here?
> https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/meta-takes-around-3-sta...
It def is much worse if your concern is privacy, but with all the CCTV around I am not sure its the top of my list.
I'm probably going smart glasses+cellular watch the moment a better company makes that pairing happen. I am growing very tired of the screen being present in everything.
And that didn’t raise an uproar of suspicion even as one character went door to door asking if he could look at his neighbors recordings.
People are comfortable with the idea of being recorded, so long as accessing many recordings is a drawn out and manual process.
They’re controversial on hacker news but I don’t think people in the “real world” care all that much.
How that connects to the meta glasses is certainly up for debate —- the doorbells provide a lot of value to the user (know who is at the door remotely!), the glasses are more of a mixed bag.
Once people realize, they begin to reject. This is why I mentioned the superbowl ad and it shouldn't be waved away as an outlier.
It remains, however, a popular point of reference because:
1. It's fast and easy to read and digest.
2. The blunt language leaves little room for speculation about his feelings and intent at the time.
3. A lot of people understand that as Zuckerberg's wealth exploded, he surrounded himself with people (coaches, stylists, PR professionals, etc.) who are paid handsomely to rehabilitate and manage his image. Therefore, his pre-wealth behavior gives insight into who he really is.
"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man."
Not defending Zuck but it reflects a rigid mindset to assume that people cannot change.
If we're going to talk about quotes, here's one: "money amplifies who you are".
I'm a big believer in second chances and letting people rehabilitate, but there's no evidence the Meta or Zuck have changed for the better. Meanwhile, *there is plenty of evidence that suggests he has only become more uncaring and deceptive, as Meta has only become more invasive over time*, the article itself being one such example.
So I do believe Zuck has changed, but not in the direction that we should applaud and/or forgive him. I've only seen him change in the way that should make us more concerned and further justify the hatred. A man may change, but he does not always change for the better.
And no, not every young person has the attitude that Zuckerberg demonstrated in his "dumb f...s" comment. If my son or daughter was behaving like that in their late teens/early twenties I would be ashamed and feel like a failure as a parent.
Show us how Meta is a moral player in society.
All I can see are lots of evil behaviors.
Well, they don't, but this is a particularly damning statement and it's age is more of a feature than a flaw because it shows a long history of anti-social disdain for humanity.
I'm the exact same age as Zuckerberg. When I first read this quote, it struck me as a really gross mindset and a point of view that I could neither relate to nor have sympathy for. I would not have said (or thought) those things when I was his age. Fundamentally, this is a demonstration of poor character.
Now, people do grow and change. We've all said or done things that we regret. Life can be really hard, at times, for most of us, and more often than not young arrogant guys eventually learn some humility and grace and empathy after they confront the real world and experience the inevitable ups and downs of life.
But Zuckerberg had no such experience. His life during and after the time when he said this was one of accelerating material success and validation. The scam he was so heartlessly bragging about in that statement actually worked, and he became one of the richest men in the world. So my expectation of the likelihood that he matured away from this mindset is much lower than it would be for someone like you or me.
(And, as others have said in this thread, there's ample evidence from his subsequent decisions to support this)
It is perhaps not, and perhaps a bit disingenuous to claim so in good faith, as if it exceeds your abilities to search for the list of facebook scandals in the decades following and see that the behavior is often consistent with this quote. Even if you choose to ignore all that, it's also not very reasonable to expect troves of juicier quotes after all the C-suites, lawyers, and HR departments showed up locked everything down with corporate speak. I'm sure if facebook were to be so kind as to leak all the messages and audio of zuck's internal comms since that time people would be able to have many other juicy quotes to work with.
It is often referenced because it's the best quote that represents the trailblazing era of preying on users' undying thirst for convenience in order to package their private data as a product.
"It is perhaps not, and perhaps a bit disingenuous to claim so in good faith, as if it exceeds your abilities to search for the list of facebook scandals in the decades following and see that the behavior is often consistent with this quote.
It is often referenced because it's the best quote that represents the trailblazing era of preying on users' undying thirst for convenience in order to package their private data as a product.
These sentences are deliciously delightful to read in this era of writing whose blandness and sloppiness is only amplified by LLM-driven "assistance".
It is difficult to be pithy without being bitter, but your writing achieves it within the span of a single comment. If you have a blog, I hope you share it!
Smear is a word that's not applicable here. It implies that the allegations in the argument labeled thusly are wrong and unjust.
This is not the case here.
Congratulations, you've just smeared yourself with your own contemporary words.
I remember when the glasses came out and this was tested: if you tape it over before starting the recording it refuses, but if you tape it after starting it will happily continue to record. I don't know if they changed it, but that is how it use to be.
The glasses have in the same hole a led light and a small light sensor (similar to the ones used in monitors to set up auto-brightness).
On start recording the glasses check if the light sensor is above a certain threshold, if it is then it starts recording and turns on the led light.
So, if you start recording and then cover the hole, it keeps recording because the check only happens on start. Even if they wanted to fix this by making the light sensor do a constant check it wouldn't work as the privacy led light indicator is triggering the same sensor, which is a terrible design choice.
And to disable the light is as easy as using a small drill bit and breaking either the light sensor module or the led light. They can detect if it's been tampered with and they put a giant notice saying the privacy light is not working but they still let you record anyways lol.
Yet.
The times I do I see folks wearing them the normie reaction is typically “oh cool” and not some libertarian allergic reaction to technology.
> screeching
> libertarian allergic reaction to technology
Think about the practical aspect of it. I have to point my phone at you to record you. It's really quite conspicuous. It's also mildly inconvenient for me so I won't be doing it the vast majority of the time.
Whereas the glasses point wherever you're looking, are expected to be recording constantly, and are expected to do things with the data involving third parties. It's the same as a VR headset except in that case the expectation is that the footage is neither sent anywhere nor even retained, merely presented live to the user as if he were looking at you (and his face is already point in your direction).
This is abuser rhetoric that’s become increasingly common in conservative circles, akin to “You’re making me do this to you!”
“Woke” individuals (i.e. people who are well-read and critically observant) have been sounding the alarm about warning signs for years, but their message was often twisted and lampooned, leaving an easy out for less critically-observant individuals to mark it as hysteria: “X is basically Y”.
You can find plenty of moderate “woke” voices dating back to the Bush administration warning about objectively concerning trends, especially with regards to the surveillance state and rights to privacy, which is why this thread exists in the first place.
> This is abuser rhetoric
Oh come on, this has nothing to do with being an abuser. You're doing the online millennial version of calling someone a dork. It's the way an entire generation of "left"ists (with no actual leftist principles) learned to bully the people they have a distaste for. Just call them an abuser, a facist, etc etc until the words mean nothing anymore and actual abusers and facists can get away with it in broad daylight.
You're talking about someone who changes privacy settings, who was told about gay people being automatically added to groups and posting on their walls so it outed them, being told about this and dismissing it. Or "graph search". He doesn't think people deserve any respect when it's not him?
That said I'm not sure how much of that is merely department policy versus local law.
We'd need a lot more context (and words) for us to understand that sentence as anything other than defending him. At best you're giving him the benefit of doubt.
Not to mention, hidden miniature cameras have existed for decades.
- filming people without their consent is wrong
- the vast majority of people are not creeps and are not discreetly filming random people
- the vast majority of people are not interesting, and nobody is filming them
- today, in a public space, everybody already has lots or cameras pointing to them (e.g. anyone with a phone), without a way to know if they're being filmed. So this is not a new 'problem'.
- banning smart glasses doesn't make sense if you're not also banning all devices that can film discreetly (so, smartphones)
- 'creeps' use hidden miniature cameras, not glasses with an obvious camera right there on their very face
Didn't it come out that the pushback against google glasses was in part made by PR companies on behalf of their competition? I remember reading something along those lines.
Larry Page on Robert Scoble’s Google Glass stunt: ‘I really didn’t appreciate the shower photo’:
https://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4333656/larry-page-teases...
Perhaps his PR company business venture he tastelessly plugged in his sexual harassment non-apology-apology?
Scoble: an utterly tone deaf response to harassment allegations:
https://onemanandhisblog.com/2017/10/scoble-utterly-tone-dea...
>The Verge‘s Adi Robertson sums it us thus:
>>But his latest defense puts forward an absurd definition of sexual harassment and effectively accuses women of reporting it to fit in with the cool crowd, while claiming he’s writing in “a spirit of healing.” There’s even a tasteless plug for his latest business venture. It’s one of the most disappointing responses we’ve seen to a sexual harassment complaint, which, after the past few weeks, is a fairly remarkable achievement.
He's scrubbed it from his blog and even Internet Archive, but it was well covered and widely quoted all over:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/25/16547332/robert-scoble-s...
https://www.theregister.com/2017/10/25/robert_scoble_latest/
https://www.resetera.com/threads/uploadvr-has-a-big-sexual-h...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/robert-scoble-i-...
https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2017/10/178458/sexual-haras...
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/10/25/robert-sc...
https://slate.com/technology/2017/10/robert-scobles-blog-pos...
https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/robert-scoble-define...
I think you're on to something! Maybe Meta paid Scoble to embarrass Google Glass, and now Google is paying him to embarrass Meta AI Smart Glasses too! Great work if you can get somebody to finance your serial sexual harassment scandals.
How many people under 25 do you interact with on a day to day basis?
Us HN weirdos are some of the last who care, and even we disagree on which tech is creepy. Hard to blame the average Joe for giving up.
I think this is a huge point of constant bickering here. Makes it impossible to take most privacy centric discussion seriously.
HN is an echo chamber who can't imagine not using some tech. Normal people can...
The first iPhone was 2007. Google Glass came out in 2013
You’re actually doing it again in your very comment, ironically, painting it as my fault that things are the way they are, despite the fact that all I’ve done is try to bring attention to things that I find troubling. Just like an abusive partner: “It’s your fault. You’re the reason I have to be violent with you.”
So yes, I will continue to call out actions and rhetoric that can be analogized to an abusive relationship because I believe it’s one of the core moral failings of the current reactionary movement in the US.
Edit: Also, isn’t “the boy who cried fascist” a relatively weak argument when the fascists actually do show up, during the exact political movement the boy was warning sounded fascist?
And that's why I don't talk to Siri to drive my car.
Or maybe not. Tablets are impressively portable and the screen is probably good enough.
you can still take the glasses off. i dont own glasses but do use vr and the shift between putting on/taking off a headset feels more intentional than the glance at a phone. feels less addictive to me. maybe lightweight glasses and dark patterns will "fix" that eventually
Ironically that's exactly what the Quest solved with SLAM, it really is plug and play, otherwise I would not have bought one... and it sucks that Meta now owns it, but it really is still the best "just works" VR.
I also don't think VR has much potential to solve real world problems for enough people, but it doesn't have to because it's pretty good entertainment as a gaming device (albeit still fairly niche).
Great glasses would solve a problem, I could take my stupid phone out of my hand.
And glasses will get replaced by contacts, which get replaced with brainwave tech.
And do what? For calls you've long been able to use a wireless headset. Otherwise most tasks involve frequent user input. Do you really want to be constantly waving your hands around in the air in front of your face? That sounds tiring at best.
I was just in a datacenter deploying a bunch of infrastructure while coordinating with remote network operations and sysadmin teams. It was damn annoying having to constantly check my phone for new slack messages, or deal with Siri reading back messages in it's incompetent manner. I missed quite a few time sensitive messages like "move that fiber from port A to port B" due to noise or getting busy with another task and kept folks waiting for longer than needed.
In limited circumstances having a wearable "HUD" interface would be quite nice. Especially if it had great screen quality and I could do things like see a port mapping/network diagram/blueprints/whatever while doing the actual work. Would save considerable time vs. having to look down at a laptop or phone screen and lose my place in the physical wire loom or whatnot. Having an integrated crash cart (e.g. via wireless dongles) would be even more exciting.
That's just one recent task that comes to mind.
There are plenty of real world hands-on jobs where this would be quite helpful. So long as it's not connected to meta or the cloud or anything other than a local device or work network.
For a more general use-case I have what amounts to minor facial blindness/forgetfulness of names. I need to study your face for a long time over many interactions to actually remember you. Something as simple as wearing glasses vs. not can mean I will not recognize someone I've spent months interacting with multiple times a week.
I've long wished I had some way to implant something in my brain that would give the equivalent of video game name avatars superimposed over someone's head. For totally non-nefarious reasons, just names of folks I previously have met pulled from my contacts list. Obviously this is unlikely to ever be a socially acceptable thing due to recording and other potential abuses - but I have thought this for at least 25 years now - before the privacy concerns became obvious. Wishful thinking, but I can imagine myriad of uses for such technology if it didn't enable such a wide-spread number of potential abuses.
The privacy led light could just turn off for a couple of milliseconds (or less) while the light sensor performs its check.
True but then that would mean a blinking led light instead of a constant turned on led light, which is a different product requirement from what it currently does.
Also what is the implication here? If you cover the hole accidentally for one microsecond do you invalidate the whole recording? Does it need to be covered for more than one second, two seconds, ten?
All of that for what? So that in 2 years we can have chinese off-brand clones for 50 dollars that offer no security mechanisms anyways?
We all need to understand this is the new normal, being able to be recorded anywhere anytime. Just like you can get punched in the street anywhere anytime. We only act on things that can be proven to have caused you prejudice in court.
I'd rather we normalize that than adversarial fashion.. but that's probably what you were looking for.
Look, the previous commenter has legitimate question how can we do it for real. Not just speed run to the gates of afterlife after touching the wrong person.
I gave parent the term "adversarial fashion" as an answer to their query, they should look that up.
Feels great to say it. Would feel great to do it. Morally defensible to anyone that knows anything about privacy if the person isn’t low-vision or something. In reality, a terrifically stupid idea.
I think even the political activists will be extremely divided on this one. You have privacy on one hand, accessibility and a genuinely life-changing technology on the other.
Meta's own guidelines[1] say that you should "Power off in private spaces."
You can't always tell if you're being recorded since they can be tampered with to disable the LED. And from what I gather, the LED only serves to indicate of video recording, and not necessarily audio.
This is all children talk here. Seriously people stop being so edgy on the internet and what you wouldn’t do. Use your god damn brain
Do you guys ever like, go outside?
Honestly I’d love to hear from someone who actually owns one of these things how doing this is any different than using the glasses.
Now to find a way to make 1550nm lidar glasses to burn out any cameras pointed directly at your face
If you are in the US, and hopefully in a state that is open to blocking this sort of thing, be very vocal and persistent with your state reps about the issue. Get others to join. I am curious if this will be legal within the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act or a couple other states with similar laws
- Or -
Walk around with a vlogger camera that has a large microphone. If anyone takes issue, say "I'm the 5th person here walking around recording everyone today. The others are using a spy camera in their glasses."
- Or -
Borrow a pair of them when in public at a restaurant and loudly say, "Oh my god! These AI smart glasses really do remove everyone's clothing, even on the children!" be ready to run.
_________________
Only do these things if you typically rock the boat regardless. i.e. often try and fail to get fired or arrested.
Would that work ?
Seems benign enough that its not going to earn you a visit to the judge, but should disable most electronics, no?
Try taking a photo of somebody with your phone. Usage will definitely look like you are snapping a picture, nobody walks around with phones straight up. The result is, when you take pics with phone, most often its obvious. When you insult people by not asking, they see it and react negatively.
When you point to people with smart glasses, nobody knows do they and that seems to be the point. Or is it beeping and blinking some led to make everybody aware? I don't think so.
Also, we live in society where smart doorbell for which it shouldn't be technically possible to upload any pics to cloud due to not having subscription still did that, and from major manufacturer. Security is a moot point, quadruple that for facebook / meta who are consistent assholes regarding breaking security and privacy to scoop any possible data points for further advertising. The slaps on wrist they receive is just cost of doing business.
I urge you to visit any big city and see for yourself how wrong you are. I see it at least every time every day just during my barely 20-25min subway commute to work.
And that's the most unremarkable the most uninteresting place and scenario here. Any big park, any even remotely touristy location, any public square, any concert/sports venue, and even an overwhelmingly large proportion of restaurants are like that.
Guess its not that subtle then
Plenty of places this would be the most interesting call of the day for a police force and you'd have 5 squad cars show up.
Other places won't even bother responding to the call. Your mileage will greatly vary.
People holding their phone up get pretty much the exact same treatment. I.e., being something that you would notice, but pay no mind to it as being something entirely unremarkable.
With AI glasses like the ones Meta is pushing, the device is not just helping you. It is recording. Photos and videos can be sent back to company servers. Reports show that human reviewers can see very private footage users never meant to share. That includes sensitive personal moments. The device is basically an always-on camera tied to a giant data company.
If you depend on that device to understand the world, that makes you more vulnerable, not less. If ads, errors, or AI hallucinations start shaping what you hear about your surroundings, that affects your only channel of perception. If your daily life is constantly captured and stored, that affects your autonomy.
So yes, many of us will still use the tech. But that is exactly why pushing for strong, clear privacy terms now matters. Accessibility should not mean giving up control over your own life.
(and I am blind, I know what I am talking about)
It just takes one unlucky time where the other person doesn’t subscribe to the idea of proportional response or has military training with muscle memory that takes over.
There is no thinking or musing whether they just want to slap you or I don’t know what. You don’t know your attacker and their intentions.
This is the real world. I don’t know why you would think this is some kind of stupid game to go around and slap people. It will cause problems.
Now the discussion is about how Facebook glasses are offensive and worn by murderous psychos who take creep shots of their neighbors.
Full disclosure: I don't own Meta glasses (yet), but I know some users and observe rollout amongst assistive technology resellers.