[HN Gopher] The workers behind Meta's smart glasses can see ever...
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The workers behind Meta's smart glasses can see everything
Author : sandbach
Score : 90 points
Date : 2026-03-02 22:32 UTC (27 minutes ago)
(HTM) web link (www.svd.se)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.svd.se)
| Havoc wrote:
| Brought to you by the CEO that tapes the webcam on his laptop
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/22/mark-zuck...
| bigyabai wrote:
| I will be genuinely shocked if people aren't taping their
| smartphone cameras by 2030.
| ge96 wrote:
| It is funny since I wonder when you're looking through say
| the Google Feed (swipe left on Android devices on home
| screen) does the camera track your eyes, what you're looking
| at
| pimlottc wrote:
| To be clear, he /puts tape over/ his webcam, that's very
| different from /taping/ (recording) the output of his webcam.
| sschueller wrote:
| Of course, why wouldn't they? They do not work without a meta
| account. /s
|
| 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.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| > An absolute privacy nightmare especially in places like
| Switzerland or Germany where recording people (subject focus)
| even in public is not permitted
|
| 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.
| msy wrote:
| I suspect what'll kill these is the same thing that kill google
| glass - social ostracisation. It's so, so wildly adversarial to
| effectively shove a recording device in the face of everyone
| you're interacting with you might as well wear a emergency
| orange t-shirt with 'verified asshole' written on it.
| aardvarkr wrote:
| They look like any other pair of sunglasses. No piece of
| glass over one eye reminding everyone you meet that you're
| wearing a camera. They're incredibly stealthy
| msy wrote:
| Have you seen them in the wild? They're notably chunky and
| have an obvious hole where the lens is. You might not
| notice it in passing but if someone's talking to you it's
| hard _not_ to notice. I wonder how many of their owners
| realise how much they 're affecting every interaction they
| have with another human.
| darrylb42 wrote:
| Unlike google glass they don't look weird. Unless you know
| what to look for you will probably just think they are ray
| bans.
| unselect5917 wrote:
| "People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'.
| Dumb fucks."
|
| -Mark Zuckerberg, 2004
| msy wrote:
| You would have to have been hiding under an extremely large rock
| not to assume this given the technology involved and Meta's
| overtly and consistently anti-privacy stances and history.
| argomo wrote:
| While true, that doesn't make it acceptable. In a functioning
| society, companies would be punished harshly for this
| behaviour.
| xmx98 wrote:
| Of course! Glasses with cameras are a classic secret spy gadget
| :)
| majestik wrote:
| Is anyone here actually surprised Meta is recording and reviewing
| their content?
|
| Vote with your dollars people.
| dataflow wrote:
| [delayed]
| yogorenapan wrote:
| The annoying thing is that even if you yourself don't use these
| glasses, as long as people around you do, you are still affected
| by it. We really need laws to limit always-on recording devices
| in places where we have an expectation of privacy.
| labrador wrote:
| I can't wait for the PR disaster this creates. No one deserves it
| more than Zuckerberg.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| Beside the privacy part, I fail to see what value these glasses
| bring that a smartphone with a camera can't do already ?
|
| 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.
| MerrimanInd wrote:
| I was in engineering school back in ~2012 when Google Glass came
| out. One of my classmates got hold of a pair when they were still
| quite uncommon and wore them to an extracurricular club meeting.
| Within minutes someone made a comment about him wearing the
| "creeper" glasses and asked if he was filming. He never wore them
| to the club again.
|
| I just don't see a world where that doesn't happen with Meta
| glasses.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| It can happen if it's not easy to tell immediately what they
| are.
| webdevver wrote:
| i mean theres kind of no way around it. how else are you gonna
| get the training data you need? the only way to bootstrap ai is
| to tag the data with bio-ai first (humans).
|
| 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.
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