Meta in row after workers who saw smart glasses users having sex lose jobs

gorbachev

Meta cancels the contract with the outsourcing company they contracted to classify smart glasses content after employees at the company whistleblow about serious privacy issues with the content they were paid to classify.

HarHarVeryFunny

Not sure which is worse here - that Meta are recording video from customers' smart glasses, or that they are firing people who talk about it.

letmetweakit

Unfortunately this news will have no impact, neither on customer behavior, neither on policy, neither on Meta's behavior.

talkingtab

Meta said the contracting "did not meet (meta's) standards". I am sure that is true. meta's "standard" is not to reveal the illegal, immoral, unethical things meta does. No matter what the harm. Maybe a company with those standards should not get our business. Oops, no wait, maybe they mean the Friedman Doctrine standards? In that case they are entitled to do any and every thing to make a profit. No matter what the harm. [edit: add last two sentences]

theowsmnsn

Meta is so evil

I_am_tiberius

Not a fan of regulation in general, but would love to see a ban of cameras on glasses used in public spaces.

rickdg

This is what happens when you buy a camera from the "they trust me, dumb fucks" guy and put it on your face.

f311a

Why do they even need workers to classify naked content? They could filter some content prior to passing it to workers. They already have models to moderate explicit content.

sheepcow

If you want to read more about how unsavory aspects of AI-training are off-loaded onto poor workers in third-world countries, would recommend Karen Hao's "Empire of AI". These workers are paid pennies an hour for unstable jobs that expose them to some horrific material.

redbell

> "We see everything - from living rooms to naked bodies ," one worker reportedly said. > Meta said this was for the purpose of improving the customer experience, and was a common practice among other companies. Am I reading this correctly?! This is probably the weirdest statement I've read on the internet in twenty years.

dickeeT

i don't think smart glasses itself is a good idea

jmyeet

So I've never had a smart speaker in my house (Alexa, Apple, Google). I've just never been comfortable with the idea of having an always-on cloud-connected microphone in my house. Not because I thought these companies would deliberately start listening and recording in my house but because they will likely be careless with that data and it'll open the door for law enforcement to request it. Consider the Google Wi-fi scraping case from STreetView. Or they might start scanning for "problematic" behavior, a bit like the Apple CSAM fingerprinting initiative. So not one part of me would ever buy Meta glasses (or the Snap glasses before that). You simply don't have sufficient control over the recordings and big tech companies can't be trusted, as we've witnessed from outsourced workers sharing explicit images. And I bet that's just the tip of the iceberg. I honestly don't understand why anyone would get these and trust Meta to manage the risks.

touwer

Bigtech and the race to the bottom of the ethical pitt. We can still go lowerrrr!

reliablereason

I wonder under what circumstances footage from the glasses are uploaded for classification. Probably this is people asking the glasses something about what they see and the glasses uploading video for classification to generate an answer. People think it is "just AI" so are not very concerned about privacy.

swiftcoder

One of the bigger commercial niches for smart glasses is filming POV porn, so it is hardly surprising that sort of content ended up in the moderation queue. The project should have planned to account for that use case.

mproud

https://archive.ph/ubWba

bluedino

What does "in row" mean? For us non-English English speakers.

jmull

I believe the tricky privacy and security issues around smart glasses (and other "personal" tech) can be navigated successfully enough by a thoughtful, diligent, responsive company. Which is why I'd never touch a person tech device from Meta. Their entire DNA is written to exploit their users for profit. In my judgement, they literally cannot and will never consider those issues as anything other than something to obscure to keep people unaware of the depth of the exploitation.

malshe

A question for the HN folks who work for Meta - Is the pay so good that it makes it worth working for such a morally bankrupt organization?

hirvi74

Good. Anyone who works for such a company is immoral in my opinion.