[HN Gopher] Meta's AI smart glasses and data privacy concerns
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Meta's AI smart glasses and data privacy concerns
Author : sandbach
Score : 1361 points
Date : 2026-03-02 22:32 UTC (1 days 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
|
| It does seem harder to tape the phone camera since the in/out
| motion into your pocket I imagine would remove the tape.
| wongarsu wrote:
| For the main camera there are cases with sliding covers for
| many phone models. Marketed for protecting the lens from
| scratches, but quite effective for privacy as well
|
| 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
| lnrd wrote:
| Cameras in phones are pretty much locked up today, assuming
| you have an updated version of the OS from a respectable
| manufacturer. Apps will not be able to access the camera feed
| (or the microphone) without explicit consent and a visual
| warning.
|
| The manufacturer might access it, Apple states they don't,
| Google and Samsung I'm not sure. A bad actor with 0days might
| too.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| For reference, Samsung screenshots everything shown on
| their televisions at regular intervals and sends these to
| their South Korean data centres for advertisers to use.
| It's called Automatic Content Recognition (ACR), which any
| sane country should be outright banning under international
| espionage laws.
| Nevermark wrote:
| I give no screen a network connection.
|
| Screens are for playing what I send to them. Not for
| running their own apps or network traffic.
|
| I would pay more for dumb screen TVs.
| drnick1 wrote:
| Absolutely. No monitor of any kind should be connected to
| the Internet.
| bigyabai wrote:
| You know what's stronger than a manufacturer's promise? 2cm
| of double-ply electrical tape.
| reorder9695 wrote:
| Funny enough it's the OS and manufacturer I don't trust
| with my phone, with my PC I trust them a lot more as
| they're much more open and I can choose the OS.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Laser engravers. Blu-ray drive laser modules are dime a dozen
| and are plenty powerful.
| rationalist wrote:
| Can I get a pair of camera glasses that uses AI to identify
| other camera glasses, and controls a moveable laser to
| blast the cameras on the other glasses?
| FarmerPotato wrote:
| I hope that was sarcasm.
|
| That's a bad idea on so many levels.
| rationalist wrote:
| Yes; I don't want to accidentally blind people.
| numpad0 wrote:
| You'll need much better high-speed cameras than on
| existing glasses, and a really good beam steering
| mechanism coupled with much better laser than Blu-ray
| diodes. It'll be heavier than most VR goggles and very
| finicky. I don't even know which ones of fixed camera
| with a dual polygonal or standard 2-axis galvos or prism
| based PTZ with the camera doing classical lock-on and
| trained laser shooting from the opposite side of the
| camera. It's a >$50k project at benchtop static PoC
| level.
|
| 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.
| tdeck wrote:
| It's harder to tape it when it's now a small island in the
| screen.
| pimlottc wrote:
| To be clear, he /puts tape over/ his webcam, that's very
| different from /taping/ (recording) the output of his webcam.
| boc wrote:
| Nominating this as the "most HN" comment of the year.
| xoxxala wrote:
| Tape?! Tape is sooo 2016.
|
| I 3d printed a flap for my 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.
| sschueller wrote:
| It can and is enforced. Again it's if the person is the focus
| of your video.
|
| If you post a video online of someone's worst day which you
| decided to film for entertainment, they can legally go after
| you.
| hrmtst93837 wrote:
| Legal frameworks often struggle to keep pace with technology,
| leading to complex issues. In regions that prioritize
| privacy, finding the right balance between innovation and
| individual rights can be particularly difficult.
| 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.
| platevoltage wrote:
| Maybe in a few generations. Right now they do in fact look
| weird.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > Is anyone at meta going to be bald accountable?
|
| They haven't yet. Don't see why now.
| autoexec wrote:
| If they are held accountable they'll get a slap on the wrist
| and pay a fine to the government or maybe throw a few more
| pennies at a class action, but none of it will come close to
| the amount they made in profit and it won't prevent meta or
| Kenyan contractors from having gotten off on your nudes.
| unselect5917 wrote:
| "People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'.
| Dumb fucks."
|
| -Mark Zuckerberg, 2004
| webdevver wrote:
| oh come on, who of us didn't go through a power-tripping edge
| lord phase? i too had a community game server once...
| xmx98 wrote:
| It seems his values aren't much better now. Too bad his
| company is so successful.
| unselect5917 wrote:
| Remember when facebook was busted playing silent audio so
| the app could stay active in the background? I honestly
| don't think there's a company I trust less than
| facebook/meta. And it's because the rot is at the top, and
| has always been there.
| rationalist wrote:
| No. I did a search and found this though:
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/22/facebook-says-it-fixed-
| a-b...
|
| Supposedly it was a bug, but with Facebook, who knows.
| rsynnott wrote:
| And if you believe that, you'll believe anything.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| >The other issue, that Facebook was running a silent
| audio stream in the background, is also called out. Grant
| says this was unintentional, and that it was not being
| used to keep the app alive -- yet it did as a byproduct
| of the bug.
|
| 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?
| rationalist wrote:
| I was just reading a comment on HN yesterday about how
| MacOS had so many bugs. I guess they don't have issue
| tracking, scrum management, engineering work, code
| review, testing, deployment, and maintenance either.
|
| I hate FB, but not everything is always a sinister plan,
| although this could have been. I will repeat: "with
| Facebook, who knows."
| wewtyflakes wrote:
| Because we should hold the most powerful people to the
| highest standard, not the lowest one.
| medi8r wrote:
| "phase"
| hrmtst93837 wrote:
| That quote illustrates the tension between tech companies and
| user trust. The evolution of privacy concerns is significant,
| especially given the data these devices can now collect.
| 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.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > In a functioning society
|
| Have you been alive for the past decade?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Obviously he thinks society is functioning for HIM just
| fine. What's your problem?
| autoexec wrote:
| It's because they never have been meaningfully punished and
| won't be that this happens and will continue to happen. Act
| accordingly.
| latentsea wrote:
| all societies are dysfunctional...
| http-teapot wrote:
| [inserts image of a smiling Mark Zuckerberg walking in the
| middle of unsuspecting attendees wearing VR headsets]
|
| That image always felt dystopian to me
| 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:
| Yes, I'm surprised at this. I would've never expected they
| would be doing _this_ , and I didn't exactly have high
| expectations of Meta. This is incredibly invasive and not at
| all what people expect.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Am I so cynical, or does this sound hopelessly naive? This is
| exactly what I would expect. Certainly of Meta. Amazon had to
| go out of their way to reassure people that Siri wasn't
| always recording. And I'm still not entirely sure I believe
| that.
| bdangubic wrote:
| I find it extremely naive too. I expect _much worse_ than
| this from Meta and I am often amazed at just what it is
| going to take for people to realize what Meta is and does.
| I mean it is not like we have 11 million examples of what
| and who they are. In this story I would have expected
| additionally that Meta would notice little bit of cellulite
| in the woman that was changing and then having the
| employees call her husband to tell them to surprise her
| with amazing cream he should buy her for their upcoming
| anniversary (and if this was actually part of the story I
| would be able to continue on top of this and would not be
| surprised if true).
| adamwk wrote:
| I am also surprised, but not because I believe Meta to care
| about the ethics of the whole thing. After all their
| privacy scandals, I'd assume they'd have policies in place
| to prevent something that can so easily be leaked. But here
| we are
| dataflow wrote:
| The thing is it's not just surprising from a privacy
| standpoint but also from an engineering standpoint -- this
| sounds very data-, power-, and storage-intensive, in a
| device that's very constrained on all sides, so it wouldn't
| have even occurred to me this was a possibility. When are
| they even uploading all the videos without blowing through
| their power budget and internet data limits? Are they
| heavily compressing it to like one frame per second or
| something?
| robocat wrote:
| > data limits
|
| 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).
| dataflow wrote:
| > The data required is small. Each embedding might be 1/2
| kB per face.
|
| "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?
| leptons wrote:
| Amazon Siri?
| duskdozer wrote:
| I would have been the first to talk about meta being
| horrible for privacy and this goes even further than what I
| expected, which was:
|
| - 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
| financetechbro wrote:
| I'm not sure what sort of signals you've gotten from Meta
| that would suggest they are above this type of behavior?
| dataflow wrote:
| > I'm not sure what sort of signals you've gotten from Meta
| that would suggest they are above this type of behavior?
|
| 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.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47225772
| autoexec wrote:
| Yeah, this is something you 100% should have expected. This
| could not be more on brand for facebook. Even if someone told
| me facebook wasn't using their glasses to invade the privacy
| of their users I wouldn't believe them. Compromising people's
| privacy for profit is what facebook does. Violating the trust
| of their users is basically all facebook has ever done.
| tombert wrote:
| I deleted my Facebook eleven years ago. I wish I could say it
| was for some cool reason about privacy concerns and whatnot,
| but honestly it's because I was spending way too much time
| arguing with people I barely knew, and I figured that that's
| not healthy.
|
| 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.
| ClikeX wrote:
| I don't actively use Facebook and I block most(?) of the
| tracking, but I do have an account simply because most of the
| information about my area is on there. This means events,
| safety updates, second hand shit.
| tombert wrote:
| Yeah, that's fair enough. My neighborhood doesn't have that
| so it's fairly easy to avoid the use of Facebook.
|
| 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.
| unselect5917 wrote:
| My policy for years with facebook has been "post, don't
| scroll". I also use the brave broswer, ublock origin, and fb-
| purity extension. It's a tiny thing, and petty but it's
| better than being facebook's product for their advertising
| customers.
| theshackleford wrote:
| > 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.
| com2kid wrote:
| When you buy them and set them up you are told this _many_
| times. The onboarding screams at you that everything you do is
| used for training AI.
|
| Maybe this changed since I set mine up, but I felt so damn
| informed I was getting tired of tapping I understand.
| drnick1 wrote:
| Yes, and this is a good start:
|
| 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.
| subarctic wrote:
| There's plenty of people that don't own these smart glasses, as
| far as i know it's still only early adopters using them but i
| guess i could be wrong. The nice thing is you actually _can_
| vote with your feet here because there 's no network effects,
| whereas there's tons of people that are stuck being on facebook
| or instagram because of everyone else that's on there.
| Gnadgnad wrote:
| Your dollars don't matter. They get so much state funding that
| this is just how the future is going to be. You'll like it.
| 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.
| hollow-moe wrote:
| "But it's the public space you can't expect any kind of privacy
| there, if you don't want private companies to do biometrics on
| your face from a rando glasses just don't go out :)" The open
| air panopticon, where every inmate is also the warden, gov
| salivates at the idea. (yes, yes, you're very smart, you, the
| reader: smartphones are already tracking and recording us
| everywhere. One more device, one more case isn't an issue
| anymore. So let's just keep adding them instead of trying to
| address them.)
| xmx98 wrote:
| I heard that in Japan phones have an audible shutter sound. Not
| mandated by law. Though I think that having this in the law is
| very reasonable. Maybe EU can step up. Taking photos is more
| fun with the sound too.
| dangus wrote:
| It's not one law but it's essentially a collaborative result
| of ordinances, manufacturers, and telecom carriers.
|
| https://japandaily.jp/why-you-cant-turn-off-the-camera-
| shutt...
| lnrd wrote:
| We need laws and social norms where filming a stranger and
| uploading it online is considered a serious unacceptable
| offense regardless of the device. I find it absurd that today
| is completely acceptable to just film an unaware stranger and
| put the video online, especially since that the majority of the
| videos are about making fun of them or humiliate them.
| leptons wrote:
| > _the majority of the videos are about making fun of them or
| humiliate them_
|
| 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.
| observationist wrote:
| You shouldn't expect privacy in public spaces. That's the
| nature of public spaces. In the US, freedom of press means
| anywhere public means you have no expectation of privacy, and
| should comport yourself as such; don't do anything or wear
| anything in public you wouldn't want to be recorded.
|
| 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.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| The difference is public vs. private spaces. The supreme
| court in the US has defended the right to record videos in
| public. But if someone walks into my home, or my 3rd space,
| etc. with one of these on actively recording that should
| absolutely be criminalized and enforced.
| observationist wrote:
| Actually useful AR needs cameras, of course, so the technology
| has legitimate use cases, but you'd have to be a real asshole
| to wear them to a bar, or a restaurant, etc. Maybe we mandate
| that the glasses have to have a base station dongle, and if
| they're more than 10 feet from the dongle, recording doesn't
| work without incredibly obvious annoying lights indicating that
| recording is on?
|
| 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.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Maybe if we weigh legitimate use cases against privacy and
| end up deciding that the privacy is more important, then we
| just don't accept those use cases? That is: we invent new
| awesome life-changing technology and we just... don't use it?
|
| 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.
| observationist wrote:
| Part of it is civics. You have the right to record in
| public. Being in a public space means you are consenting to
| being recorded; it's in public. It's not always moral,
| classy, correct, or good, but the alternative is the
| erosion of the principles of free press, freedom of
| expression, etc.
|
| 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.
| leptons wrote:
| There are very few places you can expect privacy in public.
| Restrooms, changing rooms, etc. But in most places in public
| you should have zero expectation of privacy (in the US).
|
| 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.
| greentea23 wrote:
| What you expect does not have to be what you strive for.
| alkonaut wrote:
| > in most places in public you should have zero expectation
| of privacy (in the US)
|
| 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.
| alkonaut wrote:
| And I think we need to redefine privacy as something that isn't
| black or white. In a bathroom or in my home I expect complete
| privacy. In the street I expect _less privacy_ but it doesn't
| mean I have "no expectation of privacy".
|
| 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.
| 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.
| charcircuit wrote:
| You can seamlessly take a photos without having to pull your
| phone out of your pockets and dedicate and arm to filming and
| you can listen to music without having to touch your phone. The
| audio recording of videos is 3D and when you play them back
| it's realistic where the audio is coming from.
|
| >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.
| ninininino wrote:
| POV camera footage without holding your phone out in front of
| you distracting you from having to look down at your phone
| instead of up at the thing you're filming? Imagine you want to
| capture your POV but also want to be present and in the moment,
| not looking at a 6 inch rectangle screen to check your framing
| of what you're capturing.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| Go-Pro on forehead? Thats what outdoor enthusiasts do. If you
| need to make room for a headlamp then pin it to your jacket
| maybe.
| stbtrax wrote:
| this is like telling people who use smartphones to carry a
| laptop with a cell modem card
| ninininino wrote:
| I'll be sure to strap a GoPro to my forehead on a daily
| basis so I can take impromptu footage of stuff.
| hapticmonkey wrote:
| > I fail to see what value these glasses bring that a
| smartphone with a camera can't do already ?
|
| 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!
| autoexec wrote:
| Glasses can superimpose ads over everything in your field of
| vision.
| 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.
| yonatan8070 wrote:
| Unfortunately, the Meta glasses look much more normal, and a
| person who isn't actively looking for them (and especially one
| who is unaware of them) isn't likely to notice them.
| NicuCalcea wrote:
| There is a way to sus them out: https://www.404media.co/this-
| app-warns-you-if-someone-is-wea...
|
| 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.
| paulpauper wrote:
| they look like big bulky ray-bans that no one would wear
| unless they were starring in a 50s remake or something .
| easy to spot
| giobox wrote:
| The Wayfarer style was always bulky, they have been a
| fashion staple for decades at this point. The Meta gen2
| ones aren't really that noticeably larger than "normal"
| Wayfarers - probably why they latched on this style as it
| gives the most room to stuff electronics while remaining
| similar sized to the original Wayfarer design.
|
| 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.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| As an aside, it's crazy that Ray Ban would hitch their
| most valuable brand cachet to such a controversial wagon
| giobox wrote:
| Meta have a minority stake in Ray Ban and Oakley's parent
| company, EssilorLuxottica. The investment was largely to
| support development of future AI glasses. It does make me
| a little sad to see Wayfarers end up this way too.
|
| > https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/meta-takes-
| around-3-sta...
| paulpauper wrote:
| they are still very easy to spot. they are very bulky around
| the rims
| yonatan8070 wrote:
| If you know what to look for, yes. But the average person
| doesn't browse Hacker News and watch tech YT videos in
| their free time and has likely not even heard of them.
| yonatan8070 wrote:
| Case in point: @http-teapot's reply to my comment
| http-teapot wrote:
| A family member has one and I didn't notice until they had to
| charge their pair. The little circles are subtle giveaways
| otherwise they look like regular pair of glasses. When
| everything is always on, I'd like to keep my house "off" and
| those things are a direct violation of that.
| groos wrote:
| I have a strict policy of no Meta glasses for guests in my
| house. Socially, they're poison.
| nothrowaways wrote:
| We have "NO meta glasses" rule at my workplace.
| jjkaczor wrote:
| There is almost always an appropriate XKCD...
|
| https://xkcd.com/1807/
| zer0zzz wrote:
| 2026 is not 2012
| esafak wrote:
| They're okay in your circle today? Not mine.
| zer0zzz wrote:
| Anecdotal screeching aside, they're objectively selling far
| better than any headgear ever made. The sales figures show
| they're pretty popular as far as wearables go. That leads
| me to believe we're not in the same world as Google glass
| especially when back then folks were far more trusting of
| tech (let alone the fact that it's meta).
|
| The times I do I see folks wearing them the normie reaction
| is typically "oh cool" and not some libertarian allergic
| reaction to technology.
| zer0zzz wrote:
| I don't know what the downvote is about. I've not said
| anything for or against this tech or the company that
| makes it. I just don't think it's valuable to inform your
| world view on tech takes that are old enough to be taking
| the practice SAT.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > I don't know what the downvote is about.
|
| > screeching
|
| > libertarian allergic reaction to technology
| array_key_first wrote:
| You're right, it's much worse and we should be doing
| everything we can to turn it around.
|
| 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.
| wewtyflakes wrote:
| Agreed, it is creepy and I tell people to take them off if
| they come to my home.
| flir wrote:
| It's strange to me that that's the line society seems to have
| drawn in the sand. Body cam, no problem. Doorbell cam,
| practically universal. Body cam worn on the face? No way. I
| wonder why.
| mmh0000 wrote:
| "Surveillance Camera Man"[1] makes a good practical example
| of it.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9sVqKFkjiY
| Retric wrote:
| Cop body cam footage is more likely to help you vs a cop than
| get you into trouble because a cop is already there watching
| what you're doing. IE: _Thank god the cop's camera was off
| when I was buying crack, I might have gotten in trouble
| otherwise..._ fails because a cop was already watching you.
|
| 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.
| sillystuff wrote:
| > body cameras had no statistically significant impact on
| officer use of force, civilian complaints, or arrests for
| disorderly conduct by officers. In other words, body
| cameras did not reduce police misconduct . . . 92.6 percent
| of prosecutors' offices in jurisdictions with body cameras
| have used that footage as evidence to prosecute civilians,
| while just 8.3 percent have used it to prosecute police
| officers[1]
|
| 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...
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Evidence against them improving behavior isn't evidence
| they're a significant surveillance tool.
|
| And the biggest fix there is you need to not let them
| control it.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > 92.6 percent of prosecutors' offices in jurisdictions
| with body cameras have used that footage as evidence to
| prosecute civilians
|
| 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.
| Retric wrote:
| That means far less than you might think. As long as
| officer testimony is given a privileged status the
| courtroom there's minimal risk to civilians that body
| cameras are making things worse for them.
|
| _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.
| cortesoft wrote:
| It might be the line in the sand now, but it probably won't
| be for long.
| sqircles wrote:
| People want to be deceived.
| jbxntuehineoh wrote:
| I also don't like having doorbell cams everywhere, at least
| not the ones that upload all their footage to the ~great mass
| surveillance network in the sky~ Cloud(TM). I don't think
| that's an uncommon point of view. And body cams are only worn
| by cops and at least provide some concrete benefits in terms
| of increasing police accountability.
| fbelzile wrote:
| Police body cams are typically only used while on-duty and in
| public, where there is no expectation of privacy. They also
| don't automatically send video into the cloud to be analyzed
| by a human for AI training, as mentioned in this article.
| Video is usually only retrieved if needed on a case-by-case
| basis.
|
| 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.
| malfist wrote:
| > They also don't automatically send video into the cloud
| to be analyzed by a human for AI training,
|
| Yet.
| deanputney wrote:
| They almost certainly already do. If you just look into
| Axon you'll see they have tons of cloud-based and AI
| products. Axon is the major player in police body cameras
| in the US.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| No experience w/ Axon, but I work adjacent their major
| competitor. I don't know about the whole "training AI"
| angle, but Motorola Watchguard body and in-car cameras
| absolutely upload to a hosted service.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Uploading to a hosted service is not even remotely the
| same thing. In one of the jurisdictions I'm familiar with
| the Axon cams don't record until manually activated and
| the footage is treated as secured evidence. Other than
| being subject to FOIA or analyzed for a case it isn't
| generally accessible.
|
| That said I'm not sure how much of that is merely
| department policy versus local law.
| contubernio wrote:
| In Spain the typical doorbell camera is illegal. In an
| apartment building it is illegal to have a camera on the
| door that points into "common" areas even though these are
| still private areas vis-a-vis the general public.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| A body cam is worn by a trained police officer and lights up
| with a big red flashing light and audible warnings. It is
| used to record serious crimes.
|
| A face camera has no light or warnings (you just put tape
| over the small light), and is operated by a pervert.
| ClikeX wrote:
| Body cams are directly visible, and are there to add
| accountability to the actions of law enforcement. These
| glasses are covert cameras. Someone that doesn't know what
| they look like isn't going to know someone might be filming.
| That's a big difference.
|
| 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.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| What do you mean bodycam isn't a problem? Do people wear body
| cams to normal social occasions?
|
| 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.
| gorjusborg wrote:
| I'm amazed you can't see the difference.
|
| 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.
| likpok wrote:
| Eh, doorbell cams aren't that controversial (ad aside). A
| lot of people have them already, both from ring (with the
| concomitant privacy issues) or from other providers (with
| different but similar issues).
|
| 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.
| gorjusborg wrote:
| I would say that people outside of tech aren't aware of
| the implications and potential use of the data.
|
| 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.
| true_religion wrote:
| Door bells also had a popular movie made that revolved
| around their use: Weapons.
|
| 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.
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| Body cameras aren't hidden and are worn by public officials
| while on duty, doorbell cameras are no more invasive than an
| CCTV camera a home owner might have installed on their
| premise.
|
| 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.
| megous wrote:
| Lines were and are always weird, all the time. Americans
| killing 150 girls yesterday in a school, just a footnote in
| the news, already gone today. Some rando killing 10 people in
| a university in my country, endless discussion, politicians,
| punduits all up in arms spewing their opinions for months,
| discussing it to no end. Only difference? I don't know. I
| don't know almost anyone in my country, they're all as
| foreign to me as some girls in Iran. There's no difference to
| me.
|
| 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.
| nephihaha wrote:
| Some doorbell cams film other people's homes.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>I just don't see a world where that doesn't happen with Meta
| glasses.
|
| Apparently they sold 7 million of these. So I think a whole lot
| of people don't care about this aspect.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Judging from the examples reported on in the article, Meta's
| smart glasses are either very easy to accidentally trigger or
| quite popular with actual creeps
| _trampeltier wrote:
| There are a lot of creeps out there. In summertime I'm pretty
| often tanning in nude beaches. Almost every time, somewhere
| there is a guy around with a cellphone or such a spy glass.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| It's just going to be accepted. Or there is going to be some
| sort of Japanesque requirement that there be some light on when
| the camera is filming.
| derwiki wrote:
| They do have a light that's on when recording
| Geonode wrote:
| There is a world, because when the displays are high quality
| and they're thinner and lighter, they're going to replace
| phones, and almost everyone will be wearing them.
| hnuser847 wrote:
| Nah, I don't see it. They've been trying to make smart
| glasses a thing for over a decade and it's not working.
| Nobody wants them. I don't think it's necessarily a privacy
| thing, it's just that smart glasses don't solve a real
| problem. Same with VR.
| rbtprograms wrote:
| i actually agree with this take; i dont see the problem
| that smart glasses solve. what, my phone screen isnt
| literally in front of my eyeballs 24/7? i have a need to be
| absolutely plugged into scrolling social media and
| consuming content so much that i just have to have the
| screen in my glasses? this feels much more like what tech
| companies want people to want rather than what people want.
| array_key_first wrote:
| Not to mention the input methods just suck major ass.
| They're extremely slow, error prone, and annoying. Hands
| are better.
|
| And that's why I don't talk to Siri to drive my car.
| jayd16 wrote:
| You don't want your hands free?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| to do what? We've already had this experiment in the form
| of phone calling and texting. And that's not
| technological because both are mature. People vastly
| prefer the latter. It's discrete, faster and
| asynchronous. In the same vein, does anyone actually use
| their Alexa?
| phil21 wrote:
| To do work with your hands.
|
| 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.
| boogieknite wrote:
| first let me say i agree its a solution looking for a
| problem
|
| 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
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if secured smart glasses were a
| useful tool in a corporate environment. By secured I mean
| the software stack fully controlled by corporate IT and
| only for use on premise. Most places will already have
| pervasive surveillance cameras and in a work context they
| might actually prove useful if used in conjunction with
| other computing devices.
|
| Or maybe not. Tablets are impressively portable and the
| screen is probably good enough.
| jim33442 wrote:
| Wasn't the point of smart watches to have something even
| more readily accessible than a phone? I'd never want one
| of those dorky things, but they sell
| rsynnott wrote:
| While that may have been the original motivator, they
| have largely settled into a niche as a sort of fitness
| sensor. People do not typically use apps on them.
| MarcelOlsz wrote:
| VR most definitely solves a real problem, but the issue
| with VR is the absolute setup complexity to get it
| performing 'correctly'. I spent 3 years tweaking mine and
| writing OpenXR layers to get it functioning how I wanted it
| to in iRacing. It's nearly a full-time job. VR right now is
| like if you went to buy eggs but instead of eggs they're
| grenades and opening the box pulled all the pins. Out of
| the box experience is beyond dog shit and impossible for
| casual users, leaving a very small avenue for VR enjoyment
| for regulars (PSVR and the like). I cannot think of a
| technology more diametric to 'plug n play' than VR, which
| is very unfortunate.
| tomxor wrote:
| > I cannot think of a technology more diametric to 'plug
| n play' than VR, which is very unfortunate.
|
| 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).
| Geonode wrote:
| Come on, it's obviously a hardware problem. If phones
| weighed ten pounds I wouldn't carry that around either.
|
| 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.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > Great glasses would solve a problem, I could take my
| stupid phone out of my hand.
|
| 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.
| medbar wrote:
| navigational overlay and real time translation/subtitles
| would be huge, just off the top of my head
| kibwen wrote:
| It doesn't matter how high quality, convenient, or light they
| are, as long as wearing glasses isn't inherently cool, normal
| people aren't going to choose to wear them.
| function_seven wrote:
| Remember those dorky Bluetooth earpieces? The ones only MBA
| nerds wore? They were uncool until the AirPods came along.
|
| The tail wags the dog. Wearing glasses may become
| inherently cool if all the cool people in your insta feeds
| are wearing them.
| ph4rsikal wrote:
| There is a UI difference between looking into a camera
| and talking to someone with headphones on.
| function_seven wrote:
| The parent was talking about people choosing to wear
| these. Today there might be reluctance to wear them
| because they're creepy or uncool. But that mirrors the
| reluctance for cool kids to wear bluetooth earpieces back
| when they were those chunky Borg-looking things. Then
| they got shrunk down. They got "high quality, convenient,
| [and] light".
|
| 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.
| wewtyflakes wrote:
| I think that since the input modalities are (seemingly)
| restricted to eye movement and sound, that it is impractical
| to replace a phone, where someone can engage privately.
| gmueckl wrote:
| I think you have missed the wristband input device then. It
| gives the user fairly subtle finger gestures to interact
| with the device. I wonder how far that input tech can be
| pushed, not necessarily (only) in comination with glasses.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| The point isn't to allow people to do more with the
| glasses, the point is to interpose between the user and the
| physical world so you can control what they see and hear
| and so you can see what they see. You could see the same
| thing with Apple's VR headset -- if you can hide certain
| things from your own view in the headset, then Apple can
| hide things they don't want you to see too.
|
| 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.
| mr_toad wrote:
| Are they going to be as hard to keep clean as glasses.
| Honestly it's the biggest problem I have with sunglasses,
| it's that as soon as you get a speck of dirt on them they're
| annoying. And if it starts raining you can't see anything
| (and you look like a tool).
| r0fl wrote:
| I've had meta ray bans since the week they came out
|
| 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
| rationalist wrote:
| As much as I disagree with the cameras, you should not have
| been downvoted. If anything, people who are against the
| cameras need to see your anecdotal experience so that they
| can see how easy it will be for these cameras to proliferate.
| baby_souffle wrote:
| 10 years have elapsed, peoples expectations have changed a lot.
| Back around the time of the first iPhone, it was pretty common
| to see signs in gym changing rooms akin to 'no cameras
| permitted'... Now you'd have to physically separate people from
| their phones before entering the locker room if you are going
| to enforce that.
|
| 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.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| Unfortunately the frog is boiling and some people already think
| that "in public" means "it's okay to record people and post it
| on the Internet."
| linkjuice4all wrote:
| In the US, at least, it's pretty much legal to record the
| public as long as people have no expectation of privacy
| (IANAL, exclusions apply, non-commercial use, etc)
|
| 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
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Legal doesn't mean socially acceptable. Neither does it
| mean good.
|
| 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).
| linkjuice4all wrote:
| I agree with your first point - but Meta and other
| organizations don't really have to act in a socially
| acceptable manner at their scale. Creating laws at least
| opens the door to legal action to keep them in line.
|
| 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...
| AlienRobot wrote:
| It's not a legal problem but a cultural one. Piracy, for
| example, is already illegal, but everyone does it.
|
| 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.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| An entire new generation of people have been born and raised
| into a world that is more accepting of always recording and
| being recorded since 14 years ago.
| martin1975 wrote:
| And they will soon find out that world's make believe. No one
| I know, and I know hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of
| people would allow themselves in a room to be recorded
| surreptitiously.
| alanbernstein wrote:
| And yet we are surrounded by cameras that do this
| constantly
| nitwit005 wrote:
| A common fear for younger people has become being recorded
| and becoming famous in some embarrassing video. I don't see
| the problem as having gone away.
| boca_honey wrote:
| I'm not sure if you have experience with teenagers, but
| you'll quickly realize they are even more resistant to this
| technology than we ever were. For the vast majority of kids
| today, this is their worst nightmare. They will reject it
| even more forcefully than we have.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| The teenagers I know willing put geo-tracking software on
| their phones to see where their friends are at any time.
| boca_honey wrote:
| Yeah, and that's consensual. Being recorded by some creep
| with cringe VR glasses is nothing like that.
| duskdozer wrote:
| Really? The ones living on tiktok?
| boca_honey wrote:
| Don't be dense. They control what they upload to social
| media and they mostly do it within closed circles (close
| friends, etc). Being recorded without consent is another
| story.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Yes, they're the ones afraid of some creep
| surreptitiously recording them and posting it on TikTok.
| pibaker wrote:
| Even in an environment where filming (with phones) is common
| and acceptable, smart glasses can still come off as rude
| because others find it hard tell if you are recording or not.
|
| 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.
| alwa wrote:
| And yet, the New York Times reports that all the hottest
| clubs are banning phones on the dance floor. Perhaps in
| reaction to having lived the downsides of omnipresent social
| surveillance, the youngest adults in my life are uniformly
| sober about the perils of oversharing.
|
| Then again, there may be some selection bias at play...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/nyregion/nyc-nightlife-
| no...
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Yes here in Europe too. I really love this.
|
| 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.
| designerarvid wrote:
| In Sweden, kids have stopped showering after PE class due to
| this concern.
|
| 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.
| kwar13 wrote:
| People who get shamed with a comment like that are usually not
| the "creepers" in public. You don't need social pressure. You
| need actual safeguards.
| rockskon wrote:
| Safeguard?
|
| 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.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Unfortunately, " _The French-Italian eyewear brand_
| [EssilorLuxottica] _said it sold over 7 million AI glasses last
| year, up from the 2 million that the company sold in 2023 and
| 2024 combined._ " from https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/11/ray-ban-
| maker-essilorluxotti... . That's at least 9 million units in
| the field, probably 1000x more than Google Glass ever sold, and
| more than 3x growth in sales in one year.
|
| [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.
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| Well, then they gonna offer implants in another 5-10 years
| later.
| navaed01 wrote:
| These glasses are doing incredibly well from a sales
| perspective. Social norms have shifted, user generated content
| is huge, being a video influencer is a real job - so seeing
| people filming is more accepted than 12 yea ago. It doesn't
| mean I like it but these are not going away. I do think they
| lack a killer app, but there's a part there with conversational
| AI that can act on your behalf
| grigri907 wrote:
| I don't know. I clearly remember a time when phones first got
| cameras and there were debates on whether or not we should
| prohibit phones in public bathrooms. Perceptions changed. Fast.
| al_borland wrote:
| I think the social contract is still such that your phone's
| camera should not be used in the bathroom.
|
| I've seen stories of people banned from gyms for taking
| selfies in the locker room as people were walking by.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yeah sometimes the younger gym bros are in the dressing
| room at my gym taking pictures of themselves in the mirror.
| If they accidentally include my ~60 year old ass cheeks in
| the background, IDGAF. Probably ruins the photo for them.
| lossyalgo wrote:
| You should care, if they post it to socials then you are
| further tracked and online in at least one more sketchy
| database, and half naked as well.
| jackcviers3 wrote:
| It seems like a more polite way of handling this in private
| spaces is just to ask that people take them off - just like we
| do when a pig farmer walks into our house with their boots on.
|
| 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.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > well, everyone is _already_ filmed in public. ATM cameras,
| stoplight cameras, drone cameras, smartphone cameras,
| security cameras, doorbell cameras.
|
| 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.
| jackcviers3 wrote:
| Great, let's regulate it! And why are glasses more
| offensive than cell phone cameras, or go pros, or drones? I
| genuinely do not understand why people don't worry about
| the other form factors, but draw the line at the glasses,
| so help me here. To be clear - I understand why people find
| being recorded creepy. I don't understand why the glasses
| form factor is creepy but random cell phone recordings that
| are shared on the internet all the time without the consent
| of the recorded people aren't.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| tl;dr It's the difference between possessing a camera and
| actively pointing it at someone.
|
| 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).
| AshamedBadger56 wrote:
| "It seems like a more polite way of handling this in private
| spaces is just to ask that people take them off - just like
| we do when a pig farmer walks into our house with their boots
| on."
|
| 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.
| jackcviers3 wrote:
| I'm going to guess that someone who can afford smart
| glasses can afford to have another pair of unsmart glasses.
| What is it about the _glasses_ that people find creepier
| than a smartphone that can literally do even more invasive
| things than the current glasses technology?
| sumeno wrote:
| It's very obvious when someone is recording you with a
| smartphone
| socalgal2 wrote:
| You're already in that world. Phones have ubiqitous cameras and
| they are normalized at this point. It's a common scene in a
| movie where instead of helping someone who was hurt, people
| just pull out their phones and film.
|
| 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".
| f33d5173 wrote:
| The google glasses deliberately looked distinct from normal
| glasses. The facebook glasses don't. That has a massive impact.
| mmooss wrote:
| > I just don't see a world where that doesn't happen with Meta
| glasses.
|
| 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.
| 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.
| dangus wrote:
| There are lots of ways around it, like adding a transparent
| "training mode" that a user can enable with consent,
| legitimately purchasing training data, etc.
|
| 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.
| medi8r wrote:
| That would be good. A YC company is paying people to do just
| this. You know the data is being uploaded, so you can avoid
| e.g. your kids coming into frame.
|
| 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.
| medi8r wrote:
| Lol! The no way round it defense. I'll have to remember that.
| blakesterz wrote:
| 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."
|
| https://www.theverge.com/tech/878725/meta-facial-recognition...
| wongarsu wrote:
| That shouldn't be too difficult with the current US
| administration. Maybe another reason Bezos and Trump get along
| so well
| pluc wrote:
| They better invest in frame designs too cause as soon as
| they're recognizable they're gonna get slapped off faces real
| quick
| thewebguyd wrote:
| Maybe we'll see the revival of the term "glasshole"
| jim33442 wrote:
| The Google glasses were asking to be bullied, but the Meta
| ones are cooler looking
| hackyhacky wrote:
| New makeup, old pig
| quantified wrote:
| We are seeing it. Everyone can help by using it.
| pesus wrote:
| Sometimes analog solutions are the most effective against
| digital problems.
| hdjrudni wrote:
| You mean record onto tape?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| But the hand is composed of digits. You could start by
| pointing at them and laughing, then flipping them off, then
| holding your hand up to their face so they can talk to it.
| hightrix wrote:
| Are there any less obviously aggressive tactics we can use?
| Wear something that is blinding to the cameras, or something
| else to obfuscate?
| pluc wrote:
| Slapping a pair of glasses that are recording you,
| processing your face, sending biometrics and images back to
| one of the worst privacy offenders on the planet off of the
| face of someone who is willingly doing all that without
| asking your permission is a perfectly appropriate reaction.
| Put your shoulder into it.
|
| I'd rather we normalize that than adversarial fashion.. but
| that's probably what you were looking for.
| hightrix wrote:
| While I'd like to agree with you, and do in some cases,
| there are many cases where this just isn't a feasible
| approach. For example, a peer coworker has a pair of
| these. I just don't interact with her while she is
| wearing them. If my boss were to get a pair there is no
| way I can justify slapping them off his face.
| miki123211 wrote:
| They're incredibly popular in the blind community, and
| for good reason.
|
| 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.
| tartoran wrote:
| Do blind people not care about data privacy? Most likely
| they do and should ask for good TOS now while still
| possible.
| lynx97 wrote:
| Blind user here. Reality is, we are so disadvantaged in
| this world that we will gladly accept any tool that is
| useful. Almost nobody would ever read the TOS. Its a bit
| like with cars... Sure, there are some urban exceptions,
| but truth is, if you ask someone to give up their car,
| they will laugh you out the door.
| tartoran wrote:
| I'm sorry that you are in this predicament. Many rely on
| these tools. When something finally works, few are going
| to walk away because of a long terms of service most of
| us will never read. That doesn't mean you don't care
| about privacy though, it just means you are forced into a
| tradeoff.
|
| 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.
| lynx97 wrote:
| Sure, every interaction in society is a tradeoff...
| However, I must destroy your dreams. Being disabled
| almost always means surrendering control over your own
| life to others. Or, better phrased, constantly fighting
| to keep control from being taken away from you by
| external, mostly well meaning, forces. But I get it,
| really. No need to ELI5. I hope the "you" in your
| explanation was rethorical... because if it wasn't, I
| definitely feel talked down to. I read the article we are
| commenting. I am well aware about the problem of
| hallucination, especially when image LLMs get used to
| describe the world. I have even done my own empirical
| tests to get a feel of the extent of the problem. All my
| comment was trying to say is, that when it comes to
| assistive technologies which actually provide value,
| idiology and privacy concerns pretty much go out the
| window very very fast, much faster then the average HN
| reader might assume. That _is_ why Meta glasses are very
| popular amongst the visually impaired. Or do you
| seriously suggest they (we) are all so naiv as to not
| know what kind of deal we just struck with the devil?
|
| Full disclosure: I don't own Meta glasses (yet), but I
| know some users and observe rollout amongst assistive
| technology resellers.
| numpad0 wrote:
| High end phones these days run smaller LLMs sorta fine.
| samtheprogram wrote:
| And?
| deaux wrote:
| They shouldn't be divided, they should (wo)man up and say
| the thing they well know out loud: the harms to society
| are not worth it, the societal consequences of Meta being
| in control of this are severe and will, as always, hurt
| the weak and poor the most. Unfortunately the blind
| community will have to wait a few more years to get a
| local version, which is guaranteed to appear with how
| things are going.
| quantified wrote:
| Yeah, this could be the "lost dog" approach that Ring was
| trying. I feel for the blind. But in weighing their
| concern against everyone else's... they should get a
| different supplier.
| tdeck wrote:
| I don't have much of an objection to Blind people wearing
| these, but there are all kinds of things that are OK to
| do with a disability that aren't OK to do if you don't
| need special accomodation.
| lynx97 wrote:
| Accessibility never really prevented anyone to do shit
| which breaks it. Remember CAPTCHAs?
|
| (and I am blind, I know what I am talking about)
| tartoran wrote:
| You could always say you're not comfortable being
| processed and uploaded to Meta. If they wear the glasses
| at their desks replacing their screen , that's fair game.
| nakedpwr wrote:
| Lololol that's really good.
| lacunary wrote:
| does your workplace allow recording coworkers without
| their permission?
| hightrix wrote:
| In the office? No. But at lunch or outside of the office
| is not controlled by work place policy.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I don't think you could justify slapping them off of
| anybody's face unless you really just like to assault
| people.
| deaux wrote:
| Streaming someone live to Meta, potentially the most evil
| company in the world (not "per employee" but by "damage
| done per day") without their permission, especially in a
| place where this is not at a expected - like an office
| rather than a football stadium - is great justification.
| It ticks all the boxes.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yeah, it ticks all of the boxes that HR loves to tick
| before firing you with cause
| DrewADesign wrote:
| It's also at least simple assault, and quite possibly
| aggravated assault on someone that has a sophisticated
| camera pointed at your face that's sending biometrics,
| images, and probably video back to one of the worst
| privacy offenders on the planet.
|
| 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.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I would acquit
| listeria wrote:
| Have you tried bringing it up with HR? If you explain why
| you try to avoid her while she's wearing them, they might
| ask her to stop wearing them to work.
|
| 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.
|
| [1]: https://www.meta.com/ai-glasses/privacy/
| Aeglaecia wrote:
| while noble, basically any western system will punish
| such behaviour as assault ... perhaps this point could be
| expressed as a prefererence for the law to change such
| that deprivation of privacy becomes a valid self defense
| argument ... in the meantime there do exist passive
| defenses such as face masks designed to interfere with
| facial recognition
| scotty79 wrote:
| It's also an assault, with intrinsic video evidence of
| the crime committed.
| juleiie wrote:
| Exactly, not only you agree to any sort of harm
| (potentially fatal) in return by any sort of weapons that
| person has you can't see, they can just do nothing and
| record you and you have problems with police and serve
| short sentence even.
|
| 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
| jmye wrote:
| Yes, cops will jump right on someone getting slapped.
| That definitely sounds like reality. Good call.
|
| Do you guys ever like, go outside?
| phil21 wrote:
| Plenty of places in the US are not large dense urban
| cities, and the cops will absolutely respond to a battery
| call. Like every time.
|
| 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.
| juleiie wrote:
| Yeah sure you are going to start slapping people on the
| street mr badass guy. That's all cool and fun until
| someone pulls a knife on you.
|
| 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.
| quantified wrote:
| First wearers are more likely to have a concealed carry.
| They have the money, and are from the right demographics.
| juleiie wrote:
| Yeah in any case it will end badly for you if not the
| first time then eventually. Who lives by the sword dies
| by the sword.
|
| 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.
| jmye wrote:
| It's weird how y'all are so desperate to catastrophize
| responses, and then want to call _other people_ "internet
| badasses". Look in the mirror next time you tell someone
| they're going to get shot, bud. You're the problem.
| juleiie wrote:
| When stranger assaults you, every person with some
| practical military training is going to want to
| neutralise target as fast as possible because this is the
| survival strategy that is hammered into your muscle
| memory.
|
| 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.
| quantified wrote:
| Not sure why you're being downvoted, except that you
| might be overgeneralizing on former military. Some people
| can kick your ass badly without a knife or gun, like
| military/ex-military.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| It doesn't seem like catastrophizing when discussing how
| people might react to a stranger attacking them. Hitting
| someone in the face hard enough to knock off their
| glasses isn't exactly some silly little thing that people
| would be ridiculous to respond to. It is an attack and
| people would likely perceive it as such. Plenty of people
| would just be stunned and do nothing, but plenty of
| people carry and go to the range every weekend just
| waiting for someone to try something.
| achierius wrote:
| Shooting someone for breaking your glasses would be an
| act of murder. Even shooting someone for slapping you in
| the face would be an act of murder. Clearly you don't
| have experience with firearms or the legislation around
| them, or you would be aware of this.
| juleiie wrote:
| I am sure there will be plenty of time for legal musings
| after the funeral. You could watch trial from above if
| afterlife exists and has good internet connection
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Okay -- but it's effective:
|
| Now the discussion is about how Facebook glasses are
| offensive and worn by murderous psychos who take creep
| shots of their neighbors.
| pluc wrote:
| > Look, the previous commenter has legitimate question
| how can we do it for real.
|
| I gave parent the term "adversarial fashion" as an answer
| to their query, they should look that up.
| WD-42 wrote:
| Take out your phone, hold it up, and record them back. Get
| others to do it too for extra comical effect.
|
| 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.
| noah_buddy wrote:
| This seems like the most obvious, legal, and direct way
| to stigmatize use of these glasses. Put a phone up to
| their face and say "I might be recording you."
| WD-42 wrote:
| Exactly. If you do this and the wearer says something
| like "I'm not even recording bro" the perfect response is
| "I'm not either"
| transfer92 wrote:
| and turn on the flashlight while recording
| dylan604 wrote:
| I've always wanted to sew very bright IR LEDs into a hat
| that would blind a camera. Your face would naturally be
| shadowed by the bill of the hat as that's its intended
| purpose. The IR would hopefully make the camera want to
| adjust shutter speed and gain/ISO while assuming a fixed
| aperture lens.
| skillina wrote:
| Depends what your threat model is, but this will
| literally turn you into a glowing signal that says "hey,
| look at me!" Your face might be protected but anyone
| manually reviewing security footage will be paying way
| more attention.
| dylan604 wrote:
| When did we change the subject from fucking the Meta to
| hiding from security cameras?
| 542354234235 wrote:
| Meta isn't the only camera that might be pointed at you
| at any given time.
| jim33442 wrote:
| There was a fictional version of this in the Artemis Fowl
| books. My old camcorder picked up a lot of IR outside of
| visible range, but I think newer sensors are much less
| susceptible to this.
| kungp wrote:
| Wasn't there something about how the LIDAR in self-
| driving cars destroys camera sensors?
| 1659447091 wrote:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/MVIS/comments/1i6zryi/reports_of
| _15...
|
| Now to find a way to make 1550nm lidar glasses to burn
| out any cameras pointed directly at your face
| tdeck wrote:
| IIUC bright IR LEDs can harm your eyes if you stare at
| them too long.
| Bender wrote:
| Email corporate security and the chief privacy officer with
| logs of who is wearing spy glasses. Remind them Facebook
| controls where that data is stored and who has access to
| it. Ask how to respond to auditors inquiring about it
| _leave off, "in the future audits"_.
|
| - 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._
| 1659447091 wrote:
| > Are there any less obviously aggressive tactics we can
| use?
|
| 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
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| water to the face ?
|
| Would that work ?
|
| Seems benign enough that its not going to earn you a visit
| to the judge, but should disable most electronics, no?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Who of us hasn't accidentally performed a spit take of a
| mouth full of beer into someone's face?
| nanobuilds wrote:
| The long term goal might indeed be unrecognizable designs.
| Perhaps augmented reality contact lens. It will take a long
| time but people tend to slowly get used to giving more and
| more of their privacy away. Mojo Vision made a prototype of
| this. It's more the display but you can imagine the camera
| being somewhere else and streaming to the lens in an
| unobstructed way.
| testbjjl wrote:
| While I don't disagree, with the sentiment, is this not
| incitement of violence?
| yunnpp wrote:
| Yes. The company is inciting violent behaviour with
| socially disturbing products.
| sershe wrote:
| I'm not the kind of person to wear those, but if I was and
| someone tried to slap them off me I might feel really
| threatened if you catch my drift. And since I won't be able
| to see too well, it will take some extra effort... Was that
| remaining movement the next punch, or death throes? Can't see
| too well, better safe than sorry!
| esseph wrote:
| For android users: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details
| ?id=ch.pocketpc.ne...
| ViktorRay wrote:
| The lack of self awareness is pretty fascinating.
| tty456 wrote:
| The individuals making these decisions are 100% aware of what
| they are doing. Driving for and implementing stuff like this
| is for profits, bonuses, and internal recognition.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Right, this is socipathy, kleptocracy and pure madness that
| having more money than need generates.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| Accurate description of META.
| testbjjl wrote:
| Suck has made his mind up about which side he's on with his
| money. I recall a time when people on the Forbes list were
| quietly political.
| ambicapter wrote:
| What do you mean? They're fully aware this would be received
| poorly by "certain groups" and are applying all that highly-
| praised brain power to getting around that undesirable issue
| to keep their RSUs growing.
| xg15 wrote:
| care-less people, etc...
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| This is unironically what happens when society rewards
| sociopaths
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| Why is it always this accusatory "while you were
| distracted"-style rhetoric?
|
| 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
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| interesting (respectfully!) take that the "while you were
| distracted" rhetoric is coming from investigative
| journalists/commenters - i read this more as Meta's admission
| that they're betting on critics being distracted than an
| admonition by outside observers. it's probably easier to
| sneak up on a person to rob them when it's foggy; that's not
| victim blaming.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Less attention on you, less negative press, better sales.
| LambdaComplex wrote:
| I feel the same way every time I read that someone did
| something "quietly" in a headline.
| ghurtado wrote:
| I usually hate this kind of click bait, but I think in this
| case it's warranted, since their explicit policy was to do
| this "while they are distracted". Verbatim.
| lamontcg wrote:
| This is Meta claiming in their internal communications that
| they plan on doing it while people are distracted with other
| concerns.
|
| 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.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| Damn you're right. I got so annoyed at the headline I
| didn't even read the article so that's on me
| dormento wrote:
| Yeah its more like "quick, its friday night and someone
| just got bombed, toggle that feature on"
| mullingitover wrote:
| If I were Meta's lawyer I would advise them to definitely
| put into writing how they are fully conscious that this is
| wrong.
| phil21 wrote:
| > 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
|
| 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.
| datsci_est_2015 wrote:
| American society has a finite aggregate supply of attention.
| Politicians and megacorporations often exploit this fact.
| This Verge article is a leak that verifies that Meta is
| actively and brazenly continuing to exploit it.
|
| Is that a good enough explanation to reduce your feelings of
| being personally targeted?
| raisedbyninjas wrote:
| Well to an extent, it does work. Flood the zone.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> 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._
|
| 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.
| randycupertino wrote:
| The facebook execs literally plotted to relaunch their
| unpopular product while people were distracted by other bad
| news.
|
| > "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.
| koolala wrote:
| It could auto blur faces... but people wouldn't use that
| feature.
| Arcuru wrote:
| The actual source article:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/meta-facial-re...
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I really cannot comprehend how someone can work for a company
| like that and maintain possession of a soul. I feel like the
| older I'm getting, the further away I am from understanding.
| devin wrote:
| The soulless kids who used to go into finance joined tech and
| are inspired by the current crop of tech billionaires in the
| way that their predecessors were inspired by Gordon Gecko.
| esseph wrote:
| > The soulless kids who used to go into finance joined tech
| and are inspired by the current crop of tech billionaires
| in the way that their predecessors were inspired by Gordon
| Gecko.
|
| 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" :(
| refulgentis wrote:
| I'm 37, single, no family or extended family b/c of
| an...interesting...childhood.
|
| 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)
| deaux wrote:
| Of course they have a choice, just like you do. You're
| making excuses for them that they don't need. They're
| actively choosing the "work at Meta and maintain lifestyle"
| rather than "don't work at Meta and maybe slightly change
| lifestyle". Every day, they make that choice.
|
| 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.
| ipython wrote:
| Unfortunately, _because_ 99.999% of people in the world
| are "customers" of Meta, making profit for Meta, the
| 0.001% of people who do work at Meta are paid like
| relative kings.
| refulgentis wrote:
| I think you're arguing with a point I didn't make. I'm
| not excusing anyone. I'm describing a _mechanism_ in
| response to "I cannot comprehend why." Here, why people
| stay in situations they might privately find distasteful.
| That's a different project than assigning moral grades.
|
| "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 cliche 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.
| deaux wrote:
| Your phrasing just didn't match your point.
|
| > 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.
| refulgentis wrote:
| You keep restating that Meta employees are enormously
| privileged as though that contradicts me. It doesn't -
| _it 's the premise_. The entire phenomenon I'm
| describing, in response to "I cannot comprehend why", is
| that privilege and felt optionality are different things,
| and the gap between them is where people get stuck.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| So what you have over them isn't freedom of choice, it's
| _knowledge_ of your freedom of choice. That 's a very
| important difference.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Partly, but that flattens it. It's not just awareness,
| the actual cost of exit is different. Me walking away
| from a job means I'm a little more lonely, that's it. I
| never sold any stock until I left, I'm down $5K total in
| 3 years. A Meta engineer with a family walking away means
| pulling kids out of school, selling a house, a spouse's
| life getting upended. Those aren't the same choice with
| different levels of self-knowledge. They're materially
| different choices.
| WD-42 wrote:
| Gen Z doesn't seem to carry the millennial "making the world
| a better place" sensibility. They are all hustle culture, all
| the time. While I appreciate a lot of their culture this is
| the aspect that makes me nervous about the future.
| soared wrote:
| The person responsible for high level corporate strategy at
| Meta is surely not Gen Z but boomer or millennial.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Gen X
| WD-42 wrote:
| That person is surely a lizard person, generation or
| wider societal norms don't matter.
|
| The point I was trying to make is it's becoming easier to
| staff companies with dubious moral standings.
| jmye wrote:
| > how someone can work for a company like that and maintain
| possession of a soul
|
| 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.
| dwayne_dibley wrote:
| The same can be said about those working in the weapons
| industry etc.
| rudhdb773b wrote:
| I never understand why a company would put something like this
| in writing.
|
| 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.
| godelski wrote:
| Same reason project 2025 was put in writing. When you have
| large organizations you need to distribute communication.
| It's really just about cooperation and logistics
| no_wizard wrote:
| >We weren't doing anything nearly as nefarious
|
| But still nefarious. Thats kinda messed up, to be honest.
| conception wrote:
| When you have no fear about repercussions of being caught.
| Case in point, nothing will happen about this.
| nakedpwr wrote:
| Surely though there is some type of survival instinct still
| awake and alive in the hearts and minds of men and women.
| We are a very aggressive species. Surely something would
| awaken and tell you "you should be quiet now" and "your
| next and only words should be lawyer". Surely...
| virgildotcodes wrote:
| This could very well still be the case with the people at
| Meta. It's just that the things that still trigger this
| instinct in them are far worse than what's being
| discussed here, so they've become desensitized, this is
| on the tamer end of the spectrum, and this falls below
| the threshold that would trigger those instincts.
| tdeck wrote:
| Exactly, people are distracted by nothing being done about
| the Epstein files, a genocide being committed out in the
| open for 2+ years, fascist private army running around
| abducting DoorDash drivers and shooting people in the head.
| It's a great time for anyone wanting to do a society-level
| bad thing.
| lovich wrote:
| >I never understand why a company would put something like
| this in writing.
|
| 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.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Maybe, just maybe, Meta bosses aren't even aware that what
| they're doing is nefarious. Just business as usual.
|
| Now, one wonders what constitutes "nefarious" or a grey zone
| worth hiding in their minds.
| godelski wrote:
| I'm curious how the engineers justify this. I'm generally
| interested.
|
| 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.
| shigawire wrote:
| Probably a mix of naivety, ignorance, and apathy.
|
| 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.
| bogzz wrote:
| I am so far removed from the type of person who might consider
| buying something like that. You'd have to be exceptionally
| impervious to social cues to even think of wearing that in
| public.
|
| 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.
| algoth1 wrote:
| Yet, it's a life saver for blind people
| bogzz wrote:
| Thanks for the edge case! Edited.
| bogwog wrote:
| How so? I'd expect the opposite
|
| > 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)
| al_borland wrote:
| There is an app called Be My Eyes where blind people can
| use the app to be connected to someone who can see and ask
| questions. An example might be, "is this a red or brown
| sweater."
|
| 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.
| autoexec wrote:
| This kind of tech could be used for a lot of really good and
| useful things, but it's facebook so it will mainly be used to
| screw over blind people and anyone else who uses them by
| violating their privacy, the privacy of everyone in view of
| them, and all while shoving ads at the users. Facebook is
| toxic.
| abandonliberty wrote:
| They could also help with color-blindness and face-blindness.
| al_borland wrote:
| I hired some people to come do some work at my house. One of
| them was wearing Meta glasses. He said he got them so he could
| keep both his hands free while crawling around in an attic or
| wherever, and getting video of what they were inspecting to
| document the work to be done.
|
| It's possible that even if all your friends/family would stay
| far away, they could still end up in your proximity.
| nothrowaways wrote:
| The whole project is a Creepy privacy nightmare.
| smbullet wrote:
| Hopefully this causes Meta to be more transparent about what data
| is sent to their annotators. It seems like even the annotators
| didn't know whether the person explicitly hit recorded (whether
| accidentally or not) or if it's samples from a constant stream.
| This kind of makes it impossible for anyone to consent to the
| purchase agreements.
| oldfuture wrote:
| this should be known by everyone
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| "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.
|
| based on this and other context in the article, it seems like
| there's a very realistic chance that Meta is in possession of and
| actively distributing (internally and to contractors) video
| content of minors. i wonder if any contractors have confirmed
| this or have been unwillingly (or worse) exposed to this.
| diacritical wrote:
| I'm against surveillance in general and I see many people being
| against these glasses, yet not caring at all about surveillance
| cameras. Flock in the USA is a bit of an outlier in that it got
| some people riled up, but where I live in Europe there are
| private cameras looking out of at least half of the buildings,
| maybe more. So if you're walking down the street for 15 minutes,
| you'd be caught by tens or hundreds of cameras from various
| manufacturers, installed by various business and homes. Who knows
| how many have microphones, which server they store their feed in,
| what security each cam has and so on.
|
| 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?
| http-teapot wrote:
| I think there is a wide gap between public surveillance and
| private surveillance.
|
| 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.
| lvl155 wrote:
| Only Meta and Zuck would continually introduce invasive products.
| jbxntuehineoh wrote:
| On an unrelated note, the FT reported today [1] that Israel was
| able to track Iranian leadership by hacking "nearly all" of the
| traffic cameras in Tehran. Anyways, I think we should continue to
| put as many networked cameras, microphones, and other sensors in
| as many products as possible. There are no downsides!
|
| [1] https://archive.is/QSCjf
| twodave wrote:
| I overall agree with your point, but I don't think "tracking
| leadership of a country that murders tens of thousands of its
| own citizens" is a strong supporting argument...
| palata wrote:
| Because you think that "being able to track leadership of a
| country that knows that other countries may want to target
| them" does not mean "being able to track pretty much anyone"?
|
| 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.
| flockonus wrote:
| Anyone who has a mobile phone has been tracked by their
| phone provider forever, with the accuracy of a couple
| blocks. Smartphones only bring more trackers to the
| equation in the form of apps.
|
| What's the material concern to tracking that glasses add?
| Onavo wrote:
| You can recognize a threat to national security without
| supporting the ideology behind it. It sounds like you are
| trying to to spread FUD around stronger privacy
| regulations. It would be a lot less funny when the shoe
| is on the other foot and it's not Iranian networks that's
| being compromised. Are you perhaps a vendor of mass
| surveillance systems like your username's namesake?
| metamet wrote:
| Surely the difference between location tracking (that
| still requires a warrant for the government to get access
| to, thus Stingrays) and the intimate visual processing
| and tagging that is derived from the likes of smart
| glasses is self explanatory, right?
|
| To that point, the difference between geolocation and
| video tracking and analysis (like Flock) seems pretty
| obvious to me.
|
| It's invasively panopticon.
| twodave wrote:
| I thought I stated my position pretty clearly. This is like
| saying, "We should ban guns!" And then use a successful
| self-defense case as a supporting argument. Whether you
| agree or disagree with the thesis, I think we can all agree
| that's a stupid way to make the point. But perhaps you just
| aren't willing to have a genuine discussion.
| palata wrote:
| You are the one nitpicking about the argument ("I agree
| with your point, but I will just complain about your
| example"), so don't be surprised if you get answers :-).
|
| > 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_.
| twodave wrote:
| Ok, this is a good point I hadn't thought of. Thank you.
| Computer0 wrote:
| I overall agree with your point, but I don't think defending
| a country engaged in a genocide is a strong supporting
| argument...
| twodave wrote:
| Where did I defend anyone in my comment?
|
| 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.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Why not? China is taking notes, it's merely a matter of time
| before the shoe is on the other foot:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Typhoon
| twodave wrote:
| Well, I personally don't think the answer to, "Our enemies
| might use the same tactics," is to avoid entering into what
| I believe is a justified conflict. Besides, if you think
| China could push over the US without lighting the entire
| world on fire then I don't know what to tell you. Nobody
| wants that, and they're not stupid or religiously radical
| enough to pull something like that. Obviously Iran is,
| since they woke up yesterday at war with 2 counties and
| ended up at war with 7 by the end of the day. Imagine if
| they had nukes.
| twodave wrote:
| Anyway, I can be against domestic surveillance while also
| being willing to take advantage of my enemies'
| surveillance of their own citizens.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Being "against" domestic surveillance doesn't mean shit.
| It's a done deal, America is surveilled by it's own
| government and China is actively exploiting it as an
| attack vector.
|
| Get it out of your system now, these double-standards
| won't be funny when Taiwan is blockaded.
| twodave wrote:
| I'm not sure what your point is, but this doesn't seem
| like a genuine attempt to engage anymore, so I guess
| we're done talking.
| dehrmann wrote:
| This is a little like how congress feels differently about
| things like email privacy when they're the ones under the
| microscope. These ideas seem fine in a world of honest actors,
| but when there's an adversarial element in the mix, what you
| thought brought security can be used against you.
| medi8r wrote:
| Hacking is so 2010s. Now you just ask big tech for the footage.
| pstoll wrote:
| TLDR the recorded media isn't end-to-end encrypted and they
| aren't selling it but instead using it to train their own
| systems. What is new here?
| jotux wrote:
| Meta needs to make a find-your-lost-dog commercial for their
| smart glasses ASAP.
| rationalist wrote:
| Can someone just make one using AI and share it?
| ncr100 wrote:
| Just think of the children. Changing a soiled garment,
| transmitting video of the whole ordeal, isn't that super illegal?
| bamboozled wrote:
| These things are a pedo dream.
| rationalist wrote:
| Not in the U.S.
|
| To be illegal, it would either have to be focused on the
| genitals or of sexual content. Nudity is not automatically
| sexual.
| nosequel wrote:
| I won't even walk into a house with Alexa devices around, there
| is no way I'm going to let Meta glasses be in the same room as
| me.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Don you carry a cell phone? Do you walk into rooms where other
| people have smartphones with Siri or Google Assistant? Those
| are literally no different from Alexa.
| al_borland wrote:
| My dad has an Alexa and told me about a couple situations that
| were very creepy. He somehow laughed it off instead of throwing
| it in the trash. I will never understand that.
| stbtrax wrote:
| How does that even work? Do you ask before you go in whether
| they have devices? and do you not go around mobile phones with
| ai assistants?
| guelo wrote:
| Those glasses have a tiny white led when the camera is on. It
| really needs to be more obvious. This might be something we'll
| need legislation for since Meta is an evil-ish immoral company.
| autoexec wrote:
| This is facebook. I wouldn't trust them to turn the light on
| every time the camera is recording.
| stavros wrote:
| They do, and the glasses don't record if you cover the LED.
| FireSquid2006 wrote:
| I'm not sure if there is any use case that could convince me to
| mount an internet connected device to my head at all times.
| jlarocco wrote:
| Doesn't matter when everybody around you has one.
| nomilk wrote:
| Is it paranoid to assume _every_ device with a camera /mic can
| see/hear everything?
|
| That's my default assumption.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| While it may be legal for an individual to film something, it is
| certainly not permissible to process video data of this sort at
| scale.
|
| 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.
| NalNezumi wrote:
| I sincerely hope someone in Japan or Korea get caught using those
| to peek under trousers on the train so it get the forced camera
| sound treatment of smartphones over there.
|
| So the world can label them as Hentai glasses and move on
| tjpnz wrote:
| They're not being sold in Japan and based on existing laws
| wouldn't last long on the market if they were. As a longterm
| resident of Japan this is something I'm very happy about.
| febusravenga wrote:
| Good to hear, some countries already have some privacy laws
| protecting is from this type of products. Anyone has share
| more specifics about those laws, how's that they are
| effective in this case (unlike GDPR which is annoying and
| usually toothless).
| gverrilla wrote:
| Incel glasses sounds better imo.
| mayowaxcvi wrote:
| My concern was whether the glasses might record or transmit data
| while switched off or in standby mode. From what I can tell, they
| don't do this intentionally. So the risk is broadly similar to
| other modern electronic devices.
|
| 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.
| drnick1 wrote:
| > Realistically, there's very little an individual can do to
| completely opt out.
|
| 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.
| al_borland wrote:
| > it is difficult to prevent others to intentionally or
| unintentionally provide data to surveillance companies
|
| 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.
| greentea23 wrote:
| "Hell is other people."
| advisedwang wrote:
| > So the risk is broadly similar to other modern electronic
| devices.
|
| 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.
| roughly wrote:
| Everything else in this article is horrific, but this stuck out
| to me:
|
| > "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.
| matsemann wrote:
| "certain faces", they're definitely saying it doesn't blur non-
| white/black faces properly..
| yalogin wrote:
| Of course they can, why would one expect anything else? However
| if you look through their processes I am sure they are covered by
| some legal jargon to do the bare minimum in terms of security.
| They will have every knob available to debug to the lowest level
| possible and view everything
| jcgrillo wrote:
| It's genuinely uncanny to see good tech journalism.. it's
| normally so much worse than this
| rosstex wrote:
| You can thank Sweden in this case
| showerst wrote:
| How does this not fall afoul of states with two party consent
| laws around recording conversations? Particularly since
| California is one of the strictest states.
| loeg wrote:
| How does your phone's camera? Ultimately, it's up to users to
| obey laws with their recording devices.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| I do think it's completely unacceptable if Meta makes the glasses
| unable to be used for routine functions without (a) other humans
| reviewing your private content and (b) AI training on your
| content. There needs to be total transparency to people when this
| is happening - these are absolutes.
|
| 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).
| losvedir wrote:
| Agreed. I'm confused trying to map what the article is saying
| to what's happening at a technical level. For example,
| obviously it's not doing on-device inference, so it's
| unsurprising that it won't work without a network connection,
| but this is totally distinct from your recordings ending up
| getting labeled. It talks about being able to opt into that,
| which is one thing. But I guess I don't understand if you don't
| opt in, if the data still gets sent out for labeling.
|
| I feel like this article is either a bombshell, or totally
| confused.
| noduerme wrote:
| >> but this is totally distinct from your recordings ending
| up getting labeled
|
| 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.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| My reading was that as soon as you enable the "AI"
| functionality you are opted into having your recordings
| labeled.
|
| "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."
| losvedir wrote:
| Right, that's the section I was confused by because it was
| in the context of an experiment trying to use the AI stuff
| without an Internet connection, which obviously won't work.
| The article is using the "shared onwards" terminology to
| refer to at least inference. But the inference part is
| uninteresting to me, and the data labeling is. The article
| doesn't really separate those out.
| alterom wrote:
| _> hard to believe even Meta would do this intentionally)._
|
| 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...
| drawnwren wrote:
| As much as this is a damning quote, it is perhaps also
| damning that any time someone wants to smear zuck they have
| to reach 20 years into the past.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| or more recently the times he lied to Congress, all the
| layoffs, the "metaverse", etc
| zephyreon wrote:
| Learning to choose your words more wisely as you age does
| not necessarily indicate your underlying value system has
| evolved.
| hattmall wrote:
| >they have to reach 20 years into the past.
|
| 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.
| duskdozer wrote:
| There's a big difference between "someone said something
| stupid as a kid"... "but now has changed and is a totally
| different person" and "is doing the same things but now
| knows how not to say the quiet part out loud"
| echelon wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| Show us how Meta is a moral player in society.
|
| All I can see are lots of evil behaviors.
| asadotzler wrote:
| He wasn't even a kid. He was like 20 years old at
| university.
| sillyfluke wrote:
| >it is perhaps also damning that any time someone wants to
| smear zuck they have to reach 20 years into the past.
|
| 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.
| alterom wrote:
| Thank you for saying this. I would not find a better way
| to word the response myself.
|
| _" 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!
| shakna wrote:
| Okay, how about a settlement from just last year, about how
| Meta does nothing but violate privacy? [0]
|
| [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2jmledvr3o
| datatrashfire wrote:
| or just at any point in the last 20 years to the present
| works too
| alterom wrote:
| _> As much as this is a damning quote, it is perhaps also
| damning that any time someone wants to smear zuck they have
| to reach 20 years into the past._
|
| _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.
| LogicFailsMe wrote:
| Or just quote anything out of the much more recent book
| Careless People.
| noduerme wrote:
| I'd say once someone reveals their true character, you
| should believe it.
| aaa_aaa wrote:
| Character almost never changes.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Not as self-damning as you trying to defend what he said 20
| years ago, with full knowledge of how he's acted in those
| intervening 20 years.
|
| Congratulations, you've just smeared yourself with your own
| contemporary words.
| ElProlactin wrote:
| It's not "smearing" to use Zuckerberg's own words in a
| discussion of his character, and this is far from the only
| example of things he's done or said in the past 20 years
| that would lead a reasonable person to call into question
| his moral fiber.
|
| 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.
| edgyquant wrote:
| It doesn't though, no one is the same person they were 20
| years ago and every young person is makes a ton of
| mistakes
| ethbr1 wrote:
| You're suggesting a ton of money and power made
| Zuckerberg more empathetic?
| edgyquant wrote:
| No I didn't suggest that, I'm stating a fact that kids
| say stupid stuff all the time.
| godelski wrote:
| No, you didn't suggest that. You suggested that the quote
| is not representative of who he is now.
|
| 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.
| Integrape wrote:
| You're right, he's much worse now.
| ElProlactin wrote:
| I think his actions speak for themselves. Facebook,
| effectively completely controlled by Zuckerberg, has
| consistently taken actions that erode privacy and degrade
| mental health.
|
| 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.
| Gooblebrai wrote:
| > 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.
| ElProlactin wrote:
| People can change but based on Facebook's actions vis-a-
| vis privacy, mental health, etc. there's little evidence
| that Zuckerberg has gone from treating his users like
| "dumb f...." to treating them like human beings.
|
| If we're going to talk about quotes, here's one: "money
| amplifies who you are".
| rangerelf wrote:
| I think there's more than enough evidence that Zuck has
| not grown to see others as human beings.
| godelski wrote:
| When a man changes it is on him to prove that he has
| changed. Has Zuck atoned himself in any way? Has Meta?
|
| 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.
| bdangubic wrote:
| you are who you are
| nkrisc wrote:
| You would have a good point if what Meta is doing now
| wasn't far worse than what Zuck himself is describing in
| those comments, all while Zuck has remained at the helm the
| entire time.
| jrussino wrote:
| I hear this rebuttal a lot; here's why it doesn't work for
| me:
|
| 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)
| josefresco wrote:
| https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2011/EFTA0271
| 8...
| jcgrillo wrote:
| This is a very important window into how the industry, by and
| large, views users and the concept of privacy. It's not
| merely authoritarian and predatory, to them users are
| subhuman.
| pembrook wrote:
| Now if only we could look up everything you said in chatrooms
| as a 19 year old and post the most inflammatory stuff on HN.
|
| I'm sure you've never said anything callous or snarky, and
| were a bastion of morality as a teenager.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| Yes, I posted some stupid stuff as teenager and later.
|
| 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.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| I've tried to learn and grow from the stupid comments of my
| youth. I haven't been involved in a long list of scandals
| directly related to the ideas those comments expressed, and
| if I was, it would be pretty clear that I didn't learn or
| grow at all.
| Sabinus wrote:
| If you're not paying a subscription for Meta to AI process your
| audio and video then they're going to get value out of it some
| way. It's just like any other 'free' digital service
| hananova wrote:
| But there is total transparency though? Meta is using all your
| data, always. And the harder they say they're not, the sneakier
| they're doing it.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| This is historically what we've had consumer protection
| regulations for. When they put lead, radium, asbestos,
| arsenic, or other poisons in consumer products the regulators
| step in and put a stop to it. It should be pretty clear at
| this point these consumer tech companies are no different--
| they're just producing poison. And it's not like there
| weren't signs, it's been like this for damn near a quarter
| century.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Our country is too divided to focus on things like this.
| _ink_ wrote:
| I do believe people do all of that with the light on. And then
| there are also people who tamper with the device to deactivate
| the light. You can find guides for that online.
| qnleigh wrote:
| Also some people probably tape over the light for whatever
| reason.
| Sebguer wrote:
| my understanding is that the light is resistant to simply
| taping over it, and recording can't happen in this case.
| you have to intentionally modify the glasses to be able to
| surreptitiously record.
| NekkoDroid wrote:
| > my understanding is that the light is resistant to
| simply taping over it, and recording can't happen in this
| case.
|
| 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.
| weli wrote:
| Still works like that.
|
| 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.
| mofeien wrote:
| > 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,
|
| The privacy led light could just turn off for a couple of
| milliseconds (or less) while the light sensor performs
| its check.
| nomel wrote:
| Or, just buy any of the many pages of hidden cam devices
| that exist on Amazon, which also aren't limited to only 3
| minute videos.
| weli wrote:
| > 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.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Parent's point was that you can likely do it at a high
| enough frequency that blinking would be imperceivable by
| the human eye.
| weli wrote:
| I don't think the cheap light sensor would have a fast
| enough polling rate for that. And if you increase the
| polling rate I will just put a phosphorescent sticker
| that absorbs and reflects the light coming out of the led
| with a good enough afterglow that the photoresistor will
| still pick up as some value and still allow for
| recording.
|
| 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.
| wongarsu wrote:
| We successfully shamed people out of wearing Google
| glasses. We also mostly have social norms about when
| recording with your smart phone is ok. We don't need to
| accept defeat about these glasses just yet
| NekkoDroid wrote:
| I feel like it was pretty common to have the red light
| blinking on and off every second when recording. In that
| time where it is off during that cycle it would make
| sense to preform the sensor checks.
| lazide wrote:
| Sounds like it would be pretty easy to fake out with a
| custom circuit too, for those that are willing to go
| beyond 'whoops how did that happen' levels.
| nomel wrote:
| This is somewhat handled by the max recording time of 3
| minutes.
| shevy-java wrote:
| Taping can not be done? But if there are guides on the
| www for this, is this a true statement? To me it is a
| difficult statement because ... taping can be done in
| many ways. I don't see how light can magically pass
| through it?
| ricardobeat wrote:
| The device detects that the light has been covered, and
| prevents recording.
| tw04 wrote:
| I've never seen a light in my life that can get through
| electricians tape. You would need a high powered laser to
| burn through it.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| The funny thing about the light is that it doesn't even
| matter when surreptitious recording devices are trivial to
| make these days. You can never know when you're being
| recorded, even when no one is wearing glasses.
| techpression wrote:
| If anyone were to record even when the light is not shining, it
| would be Meta. This would not surprise me at all, they have
| everything to win and nothing to lose, no country would fine
| them anything remotely relevant compared to the value of the
| data they'd be getting.
| ccppurcell wrote:
| I mean laptop webcams also shine a light when they're recording
| but obviously you don't just trust the light to come on right?
| cjrp wrote:
| I'd say the incentives are different. Laptop manufacturers
| see no upside from having the light stay off, whereas Meta
| might be the opposite.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| The more trustworthy ones have a physical door you can close
| mentalgear wrote:
| The Zuck being the Zuck, I wouldn't put it past him collecting
| data even if the cosmetic light is not on.
| ourmandave wrote:
| Think about the amount of data LHC generates, but it probably
| pales to Zuck's dic pick collection.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| I'm going to guess that people are intentionally recording
| themselves having sex, assuming that they are creating a local
| recording that is not sent to Meta. Does the light mean "camera
| is recording" or "cloud services are involved"?
| phyrex wrote:
| Camera is recording/taking a picture
| shevy-java wrote:
| I am very much confused. People recorded sex way before the
| meta-spy-glasses.
|
| 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.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| The article isn't clear on this point, I believe because Meta
| isn't clear on this themselves. Other bits of this piece
| highlight third parties reviewing the responses of the AI
| assistant; it's possible that people are recording and some
| sound they make triggers the AI assistant which, in turn,
| leads to the video being reviewed.
|
| 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.
| yard2010 wrote:
| Follow up question - can we jailbreak this device and install
| an open source alternative that makes meta irrelevant?
| beeflet wrote:
| maybe once before they patch it
| GJim wrote:
| > There needs to be total transparency to people when this is
| happening
|
| This is why WE have the GDPR. To outlaw and prevent
| exploitation such as this.
| GJim wrote:
| Presumably the 'drive-by' downvotes are coming from the ad-
| tech industry who would prefer the population to simply bend
| over and grab ankles with both hands the moment they request
| our personal data?
| Findecanor wrote:
| I find the root issue to be that what the glasses see is
| described as "content" in the first place.
| lazide wrote:
| People absolutely will (and are) modding them to hide that
| light. But even if they weren't, a lot of people won't notice.
|
| 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!
| cmiles74 wrote:
| This was one of the first hits on Kagi. 404 has a similar
| article (I think) but it's behind a paywall.
|
| "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...
| pyrale wrote:
| It is also completely unacceptable to capture the public space
| without oversight and consent from third parties. If glass
| users are fine with that, why wouldn't they accept it for
| themselves?
| krunck wrote:
| It is absolutely within possibility that all "camera is on"
| lights are software controlled just like the camera and
| independently of the camera. They are meant to tell the user
| that they are using the camera. They are not meant to tell
| anyone that the owner of the devices back-end is using the
| camera.
| ripped_britches wrote:
| Too funny that the subcontractor working for meta is "sama"
| tim-tday wrote:
| Color me shocked.
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| FTA > "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." "The workers describe videos where
| people's bank cards are visible by mistake."
|
| 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?
| some_furry wrote:
| Good reporting, but this has always been Meta's M.O. so I'm
| really not surprised.
|
| 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.
| camillomiller wrote:
| I already personally refuse to be around anyone who wears them.
| And I think establishments should just outright ban them.
| dlev_pika wrote:
| Crazy to have 1 trillion invested in data centers, underpinned by
| dollar-a-day human turk ops
| dehrmann wrote:
| All sorts of industries are capital intensive where labor is
| relatively cheap. A fancy roller coaster costs $50M, but you
| pay college students $15 per hour to run it. Airlines spend a
| few thousand per day on pilots for a $300M plane.
| diego_moita wrote:
| [flagged]
| OpenWaygate wrote:
| "But at what cost"
| binarynate wrote:
| At a friend's party recently, I met someone who told me that they
| had worked in data for Meta's glasses division and warned me
| never to get Meta glasses for this very reason--that the workers
| can see everything. They told me of a comical case where a guy
| pulled down his pants to look at his penis, asked "Meta, what is
| this?", and the AI responded that it was a thumb. XD
| fullstop wrote:
| Ah, maybe he shouldn't have shared that. Or at least aimed for
| something larger than a thumb.
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| This means actual Meta/Facebook employees are seeing or at
| least hearing about actual footage. Not just third-world
| contractor employees.
|
| Absolutely crazy that a Meta employee saying not to buy them.
| Everyone should know this right now.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Better response than "Somewhat smaller than average"
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| I love the Facebook glasses, they seem to be the swan song of a
| shitty company. Young people have abandoned Facebook when their
| parents started hanging out, now it's all boomers and bots
| posting conspiracy theories.
|
| 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!
| stavros wrote:
| What the hell? I thought the videos went to the phone directly,
| they're all getting uploaded to Meta? I don't know why I let my
| guard down against that company for one second.
|
| 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.
| chwahoo wrote:
| I'll confess that I like my Meta Ray Ban glasses: I love using
| them to listen to podcasts at the pool/beach, while riding my
| bike, and it's cool to snap a quick picture of my kids without
| pulling out my phone.
|
| 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).
| zhubert wrote:
| So you believe that you are in control?
| chwahoo wrote:
| I think the most likely case is: this company is labeling
| images from meta AI use from people who opted-in to share
| their data with Meta.
|
| 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.
| roughly wrote:
| What in Meta's history would lead you to give them the
| benefit of the doubt like this?
| chwahoo wrote:
| Perhaps I'm ignorant.
|
| 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
| awesomeusername wrote:
| Please disclose your affiliations
| chwahoo wrote:
| Hah, not meta or anything related
| macNchz wrote:
| Meta has consistently and repeatedly shown an absolute
| lack of respect for user privacy for basically as long as
| they've existed as a company. I'm honestly not certain
| there's anything fully out of the question as far as
| things they might do, regardless of what their policies
| might say.
|
| 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
| 1shooner wrote:
| I'm not an expert on all of Meta's historical criminal
| activity, but just going back a few months:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/jury-finds-
| meta-...
| rebolek wrote:
| Optimized for engagement? I guess heroin is "optimized
| for engagement" too.
| kuschku wrote:
| You missed the cases where the facebook app ran a local
| webserver on your smartphone which the facebook ad
| trackers would send data to to be able to track you
| across all websites, breaking GDPR laws and circumventing
| browser third-party cookie controls?
| rytis wrote:
| > there is a fairly logical combination of settings
|
| I think it's anything but logical, if users (like yourself)
| have no idea what those settings are, as evident from your
| previous post.
| huddert wrote:
| Do you take them off in the bathroom? Or if the wife is feeling
| spontaneous?
| chwahoo wrote:
| They're sunglasses so I mainly wear them outside.
| mylifeandtimes wrote:
| why do you think taking them off turns them off?
| WithinReason wrote:
| The wife or the glasses?
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| https://zuckmail.vercel.app/t/harvard-dumb-fucks
| awesomeusername wrote:
| wow, what a cnut
| shriek wrote:
| A simple on/off toggle isn't going to prevent them from using
| your data. If your data is in their server then it's going to
| be used one way or another. Whether in an anonymous way or
| shipped to where there are no privacy laws.
| tux1968 wrote:
| You might enjoy these conveniences now, but this is just the
| pre-enshitification stage. Soon enough, to take advantage of
| those features you will have advertisements integrated into
| your view, and your data will be scraped for whatever its worth
| to Meta.
| dbreunig wrote:
| Last year they pushed out an update stating if any "Meta AI" is
| left on, they can access image data for training,
|
| 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.
| sheiyei wrote:
| I think public shaming of that spyware should be a social
| norm.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Those settings are IMO likely not doing what you think they
| are. Or might be doing strictly, precisely what they say they
| are.
|
| [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.
| sheiyei wrote:
| And nothing is actually preventing Meta from doing what you
| refuse anyway. They might get caught, but what are you going
| to do?
| greentea23 wrote:
| I don't understand how a parent can be OK non-consenually
| uploading pictures of their children's real faces to an ad
| driven AI company famous for abusing people's data and
| manipulating children on their platforms.
| echelon wrote:
| I don't get how private businesses allow these. It's as
| creepy as Google Glass, yet we don't see the same pushback.
|
| Is it because younger people don't care about privacy
| anymore?
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Google glass was more a victim of it's time, normies
| weren't used to everyone carrying a camera everywhere back
| then.
| dmschulman wrote:
| Google Glass failed because they made the user look like
| they were wearing a high tech computer on their face ala
| Dragon Ball Z. It looked odd. Meta and Snap learned from
| this, but it had nothing to do with smartphone cameras
| not being part of daily life.
|
| The first iPhone was 2007. Google Glass came out in 2013
| monegator wrote:
| they are raybans. glassholes were ugly and quirky.
| zer0zzz wrote:
| The youths literally do not care from what I observe.
|
| How many people under 25 do you interact with on a day to
| day basis?
| bigyabai wrote:
| Don't forget the older people, many of whom gladly use
| Facebook or WhatsApp without a second thought.
|
| 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.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| I know about 20 and 2 of them are without socials and
| even smartphones. Its a counterculture
|
| HN is an echo chamber who can't imagine not using some
| tech. Normal people can...
| riffraff wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they care who takes pictures or videos of
| them. Try going on a train and taking pictures of a young
| woman or man. The only difference is these are less
| noticeable.
| pastage wrote:
| There are bubbles, you are obviously in one if you do not
| know any privacy concerned under 25. I know 15 year olds
| who are extreme privacy freaks, then I care about it so
| it might be easier to find those people. I do find that
| it is the people that I think are least likely are the
| one who are the most extreme.
| rangerelf wrote:
| On the other hand, EVERY young person in my circle (my
| kids and their friends) is insanely privacy aware. All of
| that means ... we're not part of the young people
| anymore?
| dwayne_dibley wrote:
| Yes, the window has shifted considerably since Google glass
| dataflow wrote:
| As creepy? It's _way_ creepier than Google Glass.
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| > It's as creepy as Google Glass, yet we don't see the same
| pushback.
|
| 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.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Are you suggesting Robert Scoble's PR company was working
| on behalf of the competition?
|
| 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_late
| st/
|
| 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.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| This is the only logical explanation for Robert Scoble's
| popularity
| OrangeMusic wrote:
| Why would they disallow cameras on glasses but not cameras
| on phones, where it's just as easy to take pictures
| discreetly.
|
| Not to mention, hidden miniature cameras have existed for
| decades.
| dwighttk wrote:
| People using hidden miniature cameras should be shamed
| and punished when that is discovered just like the people
| using these glasses.
| OrangeMusic wrote:
| All right here's my position:
|
| - 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
| kakacik wrote:
| Incorrect points, there should be just first and the rest
| is just fluff.
|
| 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.
| filoleg wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| shinycode wrote:
| Discreet is not the same thing as embedded in your face
| with no hands involved and indiscernible from regular
| glasses.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I've banned them from our office, for the same reason that
| I'd tell someone deliberately aiming their phone camera at
| the screen all day to knock it off. In an office setting,
| you have to treat these as industrial espionage tools,
| either by choice of the wearer or of a remote person
| controlling them.
| Findecanor wrote:
| It is because they don't understand the scope of the problem.
| People are inclined to think that other people who have
| treated them kindly mean well also in the long term.
| chucksmash wrote:
| Non-consensual? Abuse?
|
| The terminology you chose is tasteless, loaded, and detracts
| from your point.
| datsci_est_2015 wrote:
| It's not a controversial viewpoint that a child can't
| consent to their information being uploaded permanently to
| the internet, even by a parent. This is because, as an
| adult, I can't retroactively remove my presence from the
| internet. Seems silly in trivial cases (school website),
| but is quite severe in others (bathtub photos).
|
| 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?
| teejmya wrote:
| The child did not consent.
|
| 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.
| kakacik wrote:
| Tasteless to you, factually correct to me. Both correct
| actually.
|
| 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.
| tim333 wrote:
| Probably the majority of the planet share family photos on
| facebook, messenger, whatsapp or instagram - all meta
| properties. On the whole nothing much bad happens.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| My 5 year old didn't consent to going to kindergarten today.
| But I sent him any way. I am quite the monster it seems.
| losvedir wrote:
| You don't get how parents share pictures of their children
| with their friends and family on Facebook?
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Your setting is off cloud media until the company arbitrarily
| turns it on for you. Seems crazy now, won't be ten years from
| now. They're just boiling the frog all the way.
| levanten wrote:
| After all that has been revealed to us over the past 15 years,
| it is really disheartening to see people still thinking that
| setting a few toggles will prevent these companies from abusing
| them.
|
| Just continues to prove that if you solve a bit of
| inconvenience for them, people will let you exploit them and
| their families.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| Bone conduction headphones let you listen to things while
| keeping your ears free, and don't upload your childrens photos
| to The Algorithm
| Lio wrote:
| I don't know how anyone has the balls to wear them in public.
|
| They are creepy as fuck.
|
| I'm embarrassed to wear my non-Meta Raybans now. That logo is a
| liability.
| matsemann wrote:
| I'll confess I look at Meta Glasses the same as Google Glasses:
| A big sign saying "punch me in the face". If you enter some
| premises I'm in while wearing those, I'm either leaving or they
| will have to come off your face somehow.
|
| Wearing these glasses is just as obnoxious as walking around
| putting your phone in people's faces while recording.
| nedt wrote:
| If it say "punch me in the face" then you have bigger
| problems. And after you got recorded showing what it says to
| you they might be growing. Tell them what you think but don't
| forget "Pretty, I feel pretty, ..." - just in case.
| alliao wrote:
| i don't trust the zuck at all, and am not naive about any of
| this. I'm sure the words used above are watertight in court of
| law but I bet you there are shenanigans in places where light
| don't reach
| socalgal2 wrote:
| Hilarious that a post about collecting data is on a site that
| collects data
| greatgib wrote:
| Privacy policies and usage terms are like the magic wand of the
| industry. Whatever totally bad they want to do and however they
| want to abuse of you and of your data, they just have to add a
| few unreadable lines in a 40 pages document and that's it.
|
| 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.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| I do not care about the privacy of people who buy these glasses
| nor their families.
|
| I care about the innocent people whose privacy is invaded _by_
| people who buy these glasses.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| I've always been curious if they violate GDPR, HIPPA or
| similar, given they actively record everything you see,
| including European nationals and health records.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Can someone explain the downvotes here? I genuinely do not
| understand if I've said something dumb or if they're just
| people scoffing at what I thought might be legitimate legal
| rights of people?
| 31337Logic wrote:
| Holy shit! This is absolutely despicable and probably the worst
| tech news I've read all year. Why do people still support
| Meta/Facebook?!?!
| Murfalo wrote:
| Surely this is already happening with our other devices? Not that
| it isn't a problem but that the game is already lost...?
| ccccrrriis wrote:
| I got a pair as a gift and didn't look much into them but I have
| to be honest, I assumed any data I captured - voice, video, etc.
| - would be sent to their servers (to use their models) and they'd
| be using it for training with humans in the loop.
|
| 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.
| nullwarp wrote:
| FWIW I have Bose Frames which are great and do the same thing
| minus the camera.
| rr808 wrote:
| I think they're dumb but my wife loves them. The video quality is
| surprisingly good.
| TowerTall wrote:
| There must be a special place reserved for Mark Zuckerberg in
| hell
| arian_ wrote:
| Workers can see everything" means this isn't an AI privacy
| problem. It's a surveillance-as-a-service problem with extra
| steps.
| pier25 wrote:
| I really hope these flop and don't become mainstream.
|
| It would be a surveillance and privacy dystopian nightmare.
| sharkweek wrote:
| I really want to make a fake PSA that suggests anyone wearing the
| Meta glasses is probably a pervert and should be proactively
| avoided/shunned.
|
| 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.
| transitorykris wrote:
| It's been done before. Send the glassholes to Molotov's in SF.
| https://sf.eater.com/2014/2/26/6272945/heres-the-video-of-th...
| posnet wrote:
| I am forever reminded of this stupid cartoon:
| https://youtu.be/6PY8C1KmNwM?si=_WU_lstzp_5mFrxk
| zdragnar wrote:
| I remember people with the Google glasses being called
| glassholes. The fact that companies are trying again and
| apparently succeeding tells you just how much
|
| 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.
| wraptile wrote:
| It's sad that the gap between a "glasshole" and meta glasses
| is just a branded frame. If anything Meta has significantly
| worse public reputation now than Google during Google Glass
| time.
| whycome wrote:
| > It's sad that the gap between a "glasshole" and meta
| glasses is just a branded frame.
|
| You might say they reframed the issue.
| benoau wrote:
| > B) how much money there is to be made having people wear
| them.
|
| 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.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| If this really bugs you, get involved in your local politics
| and get a city ordinance passed banning the use of
| surreptitious video recording devices including smart glasses.
| No reason we can't keep these off the streets.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Where is Robert Scoble, the King of the Glassholes, the AR PR
| Torpedo, the Patron Taint of Making Everyone Disgusted to Use
| Google Glass, the Sexually Harassing Victim Blaming Shameless
| New Venture Plugging Non Apology Apologist, posting nude photos
| of himself in the shower, when we need him?
|
| 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.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Still on X, yelling about how amazing Elon Musk is.
| operatingthetan wrote:
| The best Robert Scoble was when he was advocating for NEC
| tablets (Windows XP Tablet PC Edition) on various forums in
| 2002 or 2003.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Not when he was showing off his google glass to teenaged
| high school girls and recording them then broadcasting
| audio and photos them on soundcloud?
|
| https://soundcloud.com/scobleizer/why-google-glass-will-
| be-a...
|
| >"So you want one, huh?" -Robert Scoble
| coliveira wrote:
| At this point Meta has probably the largest collection of
| illegal videos of underage kids in private situations on the
| planet. Maybe followed closely by Google with their cams that
| record everything even if you think they're not. If there was
| any concern for kids, the FBI should be stopping them right now
| and taking the executives to jail.
| eru wrote:
| That seems a bit like accusing the post office of letting you
| send and receive banned books?
| willis936 wrote:
| Not so much the post office. More like inventory of a book
| dealer.
| expedition32 wrote:
| Yes we accuse sociopathic tech bros of knowingly making the
| world a worse place because they need to buy a Lamborghini.
| mcs5280 wrote:
| No wonder Zuckerberg is so popular with the Epstein class
| jkestner wrote:
| Look, they're only keeping those videos to train their model
| to identify CSAM and definitely not accidentally generate it.
| rps93 wrote:
| Will we be in the same up in arms once Apple releases their
| AI Glasses?
|
| 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.
| bravoetch wrote:
| Your reaction appears to be ignorant of the real use cases for
| these. A friend of mine is totally blind, and uses meta
| glasses. He finds them incredibly useful, as do others.
| amdolan wrote:
| In that case, the data collected should be subject to strict
| privacy laws.
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| That's the only way this can be fixed. Socially shaming
| everyone isn't going to beat facebook. Laws banning them
| from doing evil things with the data will.
| dom2 wrote:
| The use case for these glasses are to record everything,
| everywhere. That it's also helpful for people with vision
| impairment is a, positive, coincidence.
| greentea23 wrote:
| This makes me more sad than hopeful. Great they get use out
| of it, but there instead should be a medically approved HIPAA
| compliant device for this purpose built by scientists in the
| open for all to enjoy. Instead the disabled are coersed to
| give up all privacy of themselves and others around them both
| digitally and physically. And more importantly they have to
| give up their sovereignty over the means of their enhancement
| by it being closed off and eventually enshittified for
| customers yet opened up for exploitation by facebook and
| their corporate and government customers.
|
| 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.
| xvector wrote:
| These are amazing for vacations and recording any event where
| you want to be truly present without looking at the event
| through a phone screen.
| kulahan wrote:
| 4chan once tricked a number of people into microwaving their
| iPhones by claiming it was a new feature for fast charging.
| This probably isn't too hard if you've got enough friends or
| fans in on the joke.
| hkt wrote:
| As a regular glasses wearer, I really do dread the years ahead
| when I get mistaken for a glasshole. I suspect it won't be
| pretty.
| thunderfork wrote:
| Fun fact: all advertiser chat support agents at Meta used to
| (still might) have full super-read on FB. When you read "workers"
| in this headline, don't think "devs", think "legions of
| contracted-out T1 support staff"
| medi8r wrote:
| It is worse:
|
| > 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.
| medi8r wrote:
| This simply needs to be criminalized.
|
| Basicially it is a peeping tom.
| cl0ckt0wer wrote:
| Oh look a flock competitor
| sidcool wrote:
| Despite the historical misadventures of Meta, if people still use
| their products with an expectation of privacy, it's on the
| people.
| DavidPiper wrote:
| Ah yes, while everyone was focused on Flock cameras...
|
| 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.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Trump-Epstein Glasses
| notpushkin wrote:
| Has the submission title just been editorialized? I swear I've
| seen it mentioning data collection before, now it's just bland.
| skeptic_ai wrote:
| The workers behind Meta's smart glasses can see everything
| (svd.se) 700 points by sandbach 5 hours ago | flag | hide | 402
| comments
| notpushkin wrote:
| Yes! https://web.archive.org/web/20260303011913/https://news.
| ycom...
|
| 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?
| deaux wrote:
| Yes it has, in a way that goes directly against HN guidelines.
| The page title is "Meta's AI Smart Glasses and Data Privacy
| Concerns: Workers Say "We See Everything"".
| tomhow wrote:
| We just updated the title to "Meta's AI smart glasses and
| data privacy concerns".
| deaux wrote:
| Why was the title changed from "The workers behind Meta's smart
| glasses can see everything" to "A hidden workforce behind Meta's
| new smart glasses"? It doesn't go against any guidelines:
|
| > 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?
| disqard wrote:
| I'm with you. I thought the title captured and represented the
| OG article accurately.
|
| What's going on?
| camillomiller wrote:
| @dang do you care explaining? This looks really terrible.
| Gnadgnad wrote:
| This tells us Meta's strategic focus for the next several
| quarters. This must hit a very expensive nerve.
| Gnadgnad wrote:
| It's very telling that this post has been sent straight to the
| bottom.
| incompatible wrote:
| Now it's "Meta's AI smart glasses and data privacy concerns",
| which is a little vague.
| tomhow wrote:
| Terms like "hidden" and "see everything" are in a title are
| clickbait. That's why the title would have been changed.
|
| I've changed it again to match the article's original title,
| removing the clickbait part.
| deaux wrote:
| > Terms like "hidden" and "see everything" are in a title are
| clickbait.
|
| 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.
| tomhow wrote:
| Can we discuss the issue without being accusatory and
| interrogatory. The point of the guidelines (about titles
| and everything else) is so we can discuss things curiously,
| without getting riled up.
|
| 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.
| notpushkin wrote:
| > and people's riled-up-ness will spill over to any
| perception that we're "suppressing" the story
|
| 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 :)
| umpalumpaaa wrote:
| Isn't "nothing is truly safe" a common saying on HN? Safe
| is an absolute term and since nothing can be safe people
| usually avoid using safe as a standalone attribution to
| something. It is usually qualified in some way.
| tomhow wrote:
| > Safe is an absolute term
|
| 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...
| umpalumpaaa wrote:
| I was just curious. This "nothing is safe" is just burnt
| into my brain and simply wanted to know the reason
| because it sounded so far fetched that safe is not
| absolute. But I totally agree.
| tobr wrote:
| For the record, now it has changed again, to 'Meta's AI smart
| glasses and data privacy concerns', which is even more
| milquetoast.
|
| 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"'.
| stevefan1999 wrote:
| I would really love to use smart glasses for DevOps, especially
| Grafana dashboards
| halapro wrote:
| To a technical person, this is obvious. AI doesn't happen on the
| glasses, it doesn't happen on your crappy phone, it happens
| online. Live streaming, which is also a feature, by definition
| sends everything it captures to someone else's computer (ahem,
| the cloud).
|
| 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"
| yieldcrv wrote:
| "my spying glasses are spying on me"
| _ZeD_ wrote:
| Sooo... I really should start keepin running this[1] all the
| time...
|
| https://github.com/yjeanrenaud/yj_nearbyglasses/
| deaux wrote:
| Page title - Meta's AI Smart Glasses and Data Privacy Concerns:
| Workers Say "We See Everything"
|
| 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
| nubg wrote:
| lmao what's going on? hn cucking to meta pressure?
| notpushkin wrote:
| tomhow has just responded to my email. If I understand
| correctly, the HN mods feel that the "see everything" bit would
| cause less civil discussion in the comments.
|
| 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.
| gverrilla wrote:
| What did you expect from Y Combinator? Stop being naive and
| delulu.
| tomkarho wrote:
| There are no privacy concerns because there IS no privacy. /s
| umpalumpaaa wrote:
| The title is now "She Came Out of the Bathroom Naked, Employee
| Says"
| kgarten wrote:
| I think this coverage feels very similar to the way Google Glass
| was treated back in the early 2010s ... there's a grain of
| legitimate concern, but the article oversells what these glasses
| actually do and stokes alarm in a way that goes beyond the
| available facts.
|
| 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 ...
| jspdown wrote:
| Don't you need to obtain consent before filming random people in
| the street? I already feel uncomfortable when someone takes a
| photo in public and I happen to be in it, but this type of device
| takes things to an entirely different level. With smart glasses,
| there's no visible cue that you're being recorded. No phone held
| up, no camera in sight. I'm questioning the legality of this in
| Europe, where privacy laws tend to be stricter. In the meantime,
| should I just assume that anyone wearing these glasses is always
| filming? And would I be within my rights to ask them to stop the
| moment I notice them?
| itake wrote:
| No, for most countries
|
| I mean, otherwise countries couldn't use security cameras
| Y-bar wrote:
| Given that the article is from a Swedish publication, you
| often need prior permission to use a security camera which
| could take images of the genera public. Much of this is
| regulated with GDPR.
|
| https://www.imy.se/en/individuals/camera-surveillance/
| mrkickling wrote:
| Only for stationary cameras. Filming/photographing with a
| non-stationary camera is allowed as long as it is not in a
| sensitive situation (in their home, in the toilet/changing
| room/etc).
| Y-bar wrote:
| So I can mount my security camera on a WallE-like chassis
| to randomly drive around my property and I am no longer
| under the same strict regulation? What exactly made you
| come to that conclusion when IMY considers things like
| dashcams to be under the regulations of privacy and GDPR?
| fabbbbb wrote:
| What's the chain of reasoning that brought you to this
| conclusion?
| tene80i wrote:
| That's quite an antagonistic way to request an explanation,
| particularly as it seems straightforward:
|
| 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.
| kalaksi wrote:
| That depends on who has set up the security camera and
| what area it covers.
| tene80i wrote:
| How so? You mean businesses vs private individuals
| filming the street? Or police, for example?
| kalaksi wrote:
| Depends on a country, but yes, police generally has more
| privileges in that regard. The laws here are also
| different for casual public filming vs. permanent camera
| or otherwise targeted filming (without consent) in public
| space. It also matters what you do with the material. I
| actually don't know if businesses are anything special
| compared to individuals in that regard. They can, of
| course, have security cameras filming their private
| properties (like individuals can) as long as they are
| open about it. And again, they can't use or spread the
| material however they want.
| rubzah wrote:
| The difference is if you are actively filming, or the
| camera is set up to film by itself. Security cameras are
| in the latter category and therefore can only be used on
| your own property (you can allow someone else to do it on
| your own property, such as a security firm).
| contubernio wrote:
| In Spain a private entity can't put a security camera that
| points into public spaces ...
| stbtrax wrote:
| These glasses have a light when recording. You can buy many
| hidden recording glasses that are much more discrete with no
| light. Are you also paranoid when someone has their smartphone
| in their shirt pocket with the camera exposed?
| lewo wrote:
| On the french trains, you can sit opposite someone else. I'm
| feeling really uncomfortable when this person scrolls on its
| phone, with the phone back camera pointing to me for hours.
|
| I sometime ask this person to hide the camera and they
| generally understand my feeling.
| amszmidt wrote:
| In Sweden, you're allowed to film/photograph in public without
| the need for any consent.
|
| There is (in general) no expectation of privacy in public in
| Europe. How you can use the material though, is a different
| matter ...
| pfortuny wrote:
| Privacy of your image, not of your voice, at least as regards
| recordings.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Pretty much the same in Finland. You are allowed to
| film/photograph as much as you want in a public place, but
| publishing the material might be against the law depending on
| the contents. Particularly the law regarding "dissemination
| of information that violates privacy". It's fine to publish a
| photo of people walking on the street, but you'll probably
| get into trouble for uploading an arrest to YouTube where the
| suspect is recognizable.
| consp wrote:
| In a general rule you can record. But sending it to Meta AI
| would be a AVG (GDPR) violation in the Netherlands if no
| consent is given as you share it with a third party. There is
| also the difference of recording a public place with people
| in the background and clearly recording someone: The first is
| fine, the second is not (without consent). You also cannot
| disable the recording light, doing so would put you up for
| libel en decency lawsuits (and libel and public decency can
| be criminal, not just misdemeanors).
|
| 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.
| whyoh wrote:
| >sending it to Meta AI would be a AVG (GDPR) violation in
| the Netherlands if no consent is given as you share it with
| a third party.
|
| 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.
| adamauckland wrote:
| People send their private photos to their private cloud
| backups with the reasonable expectation that those photos
| remain private and therefore not a privacy violation.
|
| 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.
| whyoh wrote:
| Google and Apple's staff do look at people's photos, at
| least occasionally. The typical excuse is detecting rule
| violations.
|
| 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.
| trashb wrote:
| Yes, actually the AVG (GDPR) is very broad in what it
| considers personal data.
|
| 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.
| matsemann wrote:
| Note that there is a difference between being allowed to take
| a photograph, and being allowed to share it. Unless you're
| threatening or harassing, you're mostly free to photograph as
| you want. But you might not be allowed to publish it.
| rubzah wrote:
| An important distinction is that you are allowed to
| film/photograph when you are actively doing it (so the
| glasses do belong in that category). You're not allowed to
| set up a camera to autonomously film/photograph outside of
| your own private property.
|
| Besides that there is the issue of publishing said footage,
| as others point out.
| flakeoil wrote:
| > you are allowed to film/photograph when you are actively
| doing it
|
| 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.
| mystraline wrote:
| Why not? FLOCK does. And for worse reasons.
| Coeur wrote:
| Many countries in Europe do indeed require consent. More
| details:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights#France
| anhner wrote:
| this page is about you do with the photos, not if you are
| allowed to take them.
| perlgeek wrote:
| In Germany, you don't need permission for recording image
| material (including moving images) in public places, though
| usage of the material might be restricted.
|
| However, audio recording of conversations is prohibited.
| fergie wrote:
| I'm pretty confident that these would be illegal in public
| spaces in Norway.
| iugtmkbdfil834 wrote:
| US here. Definitely more permissive than any EU nation. Public
| space typically means free for all in terms of recording[1].
| The incident I link is relevant as we are bound to see a whole
| new bunch of 'content creators' going for various new ways to
| engage the public.
|
| https://patch.com/illinois/lakezurich/il-student-punches-pro...
| graemep wrote:
| In the UK the general rule is that you can take pictures and
| video in public places (there are exceptions and restrictions).
|
| 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.
| u1hcw9nx wrote:
| Filming vs. Publishing
|
| 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.
| chokma wrote:
| Note that there is a difference between Panoramafreiheit
| (freedom to record a public building / space with people
| walking around) versus recording the street before your house
| with an always-on security camera (almost always forbidden).
|
| Even having a fake camera pointing at a public space can be
| forbidden as it creates surveilance pressure on people using
| the space.
| egorfine wrote:
| > Don't you need to obtain consent
|
| 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.
| arcadianalpaca wrote:
| The recording light argument keeps coming up but I don't buy it.
| I can't tell if someone's glasses have a tiny LED on from across
| a room, and neither can anyone else.Under GDPR it's a on Meta to
| handle consent, not on me to squint at someone's face to figure
| out if I'm being filmed.
| randycupertino wrote:
| Also creeps can just easily search to see how to disable the
| light anyways.
| arcadianalpaca wrote:
| True, can't even be taken for a real safeguard to begin with.
| It's there so Meta can say they tried :)
| OrangeMusic wrote:
| This argument is invalid. Creeps exist, and if they want to
| discreetly film stuff, they have many great options (hidden
| miniature cameras).
|
| In fact why on earth would they choose the Ray Ban glasses
| which are getting highly suspicious?
| Juliate wrote:
| Likewise, are there any startup for wearable devices that
| visually jam or impair digital cameras?
| instahotstar wrote:
| These glasses are godd one
| de6u99er wrote:
| It's the same issue with Tesla collecting camera feeds through
| their cars to use it for macbine learning.
|
| 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!
| StrauXX wrote:
| They are! This Tesla feature is illegal to use in Germany and
| Austria.
|
| [1] (in German)
| https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000215526/aktueller-fal...
| notyetmachine wrote:
| Ghanaian authorities are seeking the arrest of a Russsian
| national who was using glasses to record himself picking up, and
| sleeping with, women in Ghana and Kenya. He uploaded them to
| social media and telegram. Was quite the story on African tech
| twitter last month.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9wn5p299eko
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Post titled has been repeatedly edited to make it vague and to
| remove all content of the concern
|
| 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
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| smart glasses are a potential great boon for mankind, really,
| only both of the iterations we have had have been from two
| companies that are arguably detrimental to humanity.
| cubefox wrote:
| The article is somewhat disingenuous because it "forgets" to
| mention the bright LED on the glasses while filming. This makes
| statements in the article that people don't know about video
| recording much less believable.
| rodwyersoftware wrote:
| If you're in public you have no privacy by default.
| alkonaut wrote:
| That's something created/accepted as a reasonable state of
| affairs simply because no one could imagine the resources
| needed to record and track every person everywhere (Or, we
| could - but it was fiction). Being in public was considered
| seen by others. Perhaps an occasional photo being taken.
|
| 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"?
| rodwyersoftware wrote:
| Better to worry about the Africans running around raping our
| European women rather than if someone is recording you for 5
| seconds while walking your dog.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Did you make a wrong turn? /r/asshat is over there ->
|
| 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
| rodwyersoftware wrote:
| I really don't care. I am a free man
| nkrisc wrote:
| Not all technology is good.
| bys_exe wrote:
| Meta glasses will scare people in public because they think they
| are being recorded even though they are not..
| KaiserPro wrote:
| What I don't understand is where this data is coming from. Is it
| actually Meta's raybans or is it project aria
| (https://www.projectaria.com/)
|
| 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.
| breve wrote:
| Meta's business model is premised on intensive and pervasive user
| surveillance.
|
| 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?
| sneak wrote:
| The answer: because Meta has deliberately and intentionally
| inserted themselves into the social fabric so they can use
| network effects to surveil you sell your personal relationships
| back to you. They bought up Instagram and WhatsApp to the same
| end, then Oculus. Even Carmack fell for the lie. Meta never
| wants you talking to _anyone_ in any medium without them
| knowing about it, because it allows them to sell more and more
| ads, because _nobody_ is going to give up communications with
| their friends and family.
|
| 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.)
| alpineman wrote:
| Yep, that's why I refuse to give Whatsapp (and when I still
| used them, Instagram and Messenger), full access to my Camera
| reel.
|
| For some reason they keep asking aggressively for permission
| for the whole thing. I wonder why...
| pbmonster wrote:
| Interesting article, but I wonder why the journalists didn't go
| all the way. Sure, Meta isn't going to comment when you ask them
| what data they have. But this is in the EU, just hit them with a
| Subject Access Request under GDPR.
|
| 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...
| gverrilla wrote:
| Usage of creep-ware won't be tolerated in the social groups I
| take part on.
|
| We will shame hard anyone who uses this sh1t.
| shevy-java wrote:
| Understandable, and not disagreeing per se, though hard-shaming
| is a strange strategy. But, ignoring this, people record videos
| and upload on youtube. While this is not quite the same as
| Meta-spy-glasses where people work for Suckerburg suddenly,
| people still upload videos on youtube, instagram etc... - is
| that very different to the spyglass? I think it is not that
| different, viewed more objectively. It's not the same, granted,
| but also not that different.
| gverrilla wrote:
| Strange strategy? Are you new to humanity?
| shevy-java wrote:
| Well - don't wear their spyglasses. It's really not that hard.
|
| 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.)
| Schlagbohrer wrote:
| I look forward to the day when I can have a fully FOSS,
| trustworthy pair of smart glasses, made by people who genuinely
| want to and do put user privacy first. But until then, no fucking
| way. I don't even like keeping my cellphone in the same room as
| me when I'm at home.
| 3efr4444444 wrote:
| Retest
| kgwxd wrote:
| Why in the world did they even try this again? What market is
| there for it beyond creeps? Or is that the hot thing right now?
| krapp wrote:
| >What market is there for it beyond creeps? Or is that the hot
| thing right now?
|
| I mean... have you been reading the news?
| rsynnott wrote:
| See also: Twitter's csam/revenge porn generator. Pervert market
| is apparently big right now.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| We need safe spaces where you aren't constantly living inside the
| panopticon...
| zombot wrote:
| Who would even expect any privacy from the Facebook mafia? The
| rename to "Meta" doesn't obscure the fact that they are
| bottomfeeders.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Can we just get Robert Scoble to come back and destroy these,
| please?
| dhab wrote:
| Conditioning the crowd gradually towards being monetised in some
| of the most egregious ways - first pay for the glasses, then pay
| with revelations of private life sold to government (ICE?),
| business (private insurance) and so on. Super evil.
|
| 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
| mjbonanno wrote:
| The privacy angle here is fascinating. Curious if anyone has
| tried running the on-device model locally yet?
| giwook wrote:
| What kinds of defensive measures can you even take against such a
| blatant and yet inevitable invasion of privacy that don't involve
| you just completely covering your face whenever you go out in
| public?
| bhekanik wrote:
| As a dev, I think the core issue isn't whether one indicator LED
| can be bypassed -- motivated people can bypass almost any client-
| side control. The trust boundary is policy + defaults. If
| enabling "AI features" implicitly authorizes broad
| retention/review, users won't understand the tradeoff until after
| the fact.
|
| A better pattern would be tiered modes with explicit UX: local-
| only capture, cloud processing without retention, and opt-in
| retention/training with visible status. If the product can't
| technically support that separation today, that limitation should
| be stated plainly in setup, not buried in policy docs.
| zouhair wrote:
| I am confused that people act so offended. What do people expect?
| Meta and all tech companies do not believe in privacy for anyone
| but themselves. Isn't our info how they make their money?
| guywithahat wrote:
| To their credit, all interesting consumer tech introduces privacy
| concerns because to do interesting things you usually have to
| integrate tightly with someone's life. I'm just not that
| concerned about filming sunglasses, in fact I'm kind of excited
| jameson wrote:
| Everyone should assume that _anything_ connected to internet will
| get uploaded to internet and someone within the company will have
| permission to review the contents regardless of what the policy
| says.
|
| 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
| robotburrito wrote:
| Often I hear. "these are so cool! It's a shame meta makes them."
| All of their pivots will fail because of their track record IMo.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| > Meta
|
| > Privacy
|
| Pick one.
| Mulhimfy wrote:
| The privacy implications here go beyond just the recording light.
| The real concern is how Meta trains AI models on captured data
| without explicit consent -- and most users have no idea this is
| happening.
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