'Pervert glasses': Backlash against Meta's smart glasses grows

miladyincontrol

I do think its a bit odd to automatically and "obviously" default to the idea that people will be using these to be perverts. Its a bit strange of a default assumption to me. Although its even more disheartening that most people's reactions to just about anything these days is dread about how it'll make their lives worse without fail.

wombat-man

I hope one of these companies pulls off a compelling set of glasses with a display and no camera.

yoyohello13

Tech is so frustrating in real life. I feel like we have all the cool sci fi stuff I always wanted, but everything comes with a monkey's paw style gotcha. The idea of meta glasses is so awesome, I want a heads up display to show me whatever I want. But there is no way in hell I would use them because the company that makes it can’t be trusted.

peter_d_sherman

>"Some people are using the glasses — which look like a pair of regular spectacles — to record people without their knowledge and publish the videos on social media. The users secretly videotape and share what happens when they try to pick up women. Now, a growing number of people are worried they could be covertly recorded at the gym..." Observation: The same technology could be used to record business deals, job interviews and other negotiations with consent of the counterparty... In fact, both parties in such transactions could record this way (legally and ethically!) if each has consent of the other ...

ChrisArchitect

Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49240828

hallway_monitor

I agree with the verbiage if not with the sentiment. These are a perversion of technology. People hold their phones up for entire songs at a concert instead of being absorbed in the experience. Removing friction from recording will multiply digital hoarding behavior no matter what other risks are at play. There is a balance there; it's nice to be reminded of experiences. But where is the line?

aqme28

I was trying to brainstorm ways to make these palatable to general society. Because I think this kind of thing is going to happen, but a lot of people (myself included) have a legitimate problem with surreptitious recordings. It needs a "recording" light when it is recording. But creeps will just disable the recording light with e.g. a sticker. Idea: What if the recording light embeds a little IR signal, and if the camera recording doesn't pick up that signal, it stops working Edit: I see they tried that already.

rdmuser

Our idea of a public/private privacy division where private recording is discouraged and public is a free for all really feels dated. I know personally I'd love to see a private/local/wide distribution division or something like that where simply going outside to get groceries or whatever doesn't count as consent to be plastered across the net. There are real harms to being a public figure and the net rarely understands context. I do have one note on all this though. I think there are some real benefits to being able to record people in public re corruption, criminality etc so I don't think any changes should be about public recording but about distribution instead. (Repost from the thread earlier today on the same subject)

blahblaher

Good. Sink these fucking things into the bottom of the ocean. If you want this tech to help people (blind people, etc) make them fugly and very visibly as an aid, not some stupid fashion accessory where these retards can just completely hide them

bigblind

Thinking completely selfishly, as a visually impaired person, I want these to succeed, because they can be a great assistive tool. And assistive tools being general consumer products makes them cheaper.

jonfromsf

The backlash on these is entirely about the fact that they are unfashionable looking. The previous RayBan Metas were very popular and no one had a problem with them. Then Zuck wanted to put in an LCD display so he made them chunkier and they don't look as cool. So people are retroactively coming up with objections to the technology. Nobody cared when the glasses looked good!

hn_submit

Why is Meta insisting on forcing these "pervert" glasses on us? I can tell you why: advertising. I bet some "pervert" within Meta (may Zuck himself) has already thought up that whatever you look at will result in you getting an ad for that item. "I see you're looking at a car. How about this new Toyota RAV4?" "I see you're looking at a mobile phone. How about this new Samsung Galaxy Fold which is on sale." "I see you're looking at a cup of coffee. How about this new Latte from Starbucks down the road just a mile from here." Just thinking about it drives me nuts with rage!

bryanlarsen

Meta should use their Kylie Jenner et al connection to design a camera that is both stylish and obvious. AFAICT the main use case for camera glasses is very similar to the "gopro on your helmet" use case for cyclists: - to record cool first-person video to upload to TikTok et al - to warn cars / creeps "I'm recording this and will send footage to the cops" AFAICT, influencers generally want people to know they're influencers. They're using meta glasses not because the glasses let them go incognito, they're wearing them because a gopro on a helmet is dorky. And obviously an incognito camera is going to be much less useful staving off harassment than an obvious one.

baxtr

> Gaby Luisa was standing outside a dance club in Arizona earlier this summer when a man wearing glasses threw out a pickup line. “Did I just run into my future wife?” he asked. She politely let him know she wasn’t interested and moved on with her evening. She was shocked to find out later that their interaction was recorded and posted on YouTube without her knowledge or permission, using smart glasses which, she said, looked like Meta’s glasses. Goddamn this wild. Maybe tell people you’re recording and later plan to upload to YouTube?

kburman

This isn't a GoPro. The whole point is that it doesn't look like you're recording. With a GoPro, everyone knows there's a camera. With these, most people won't.

j45

The thing about smart glasses is when they try to do it surrepticiously, it puts that feeling on the wearer. Google Glass looked quite different. Everyone knew how you were wearing it. Wear it long enough and people might have questions, try it out, and learn. Hiding a camera in glasses doesn't allow for those kinds of interactions, its media going into an unknown bucket. It's also very one sided and to the benefit or decision of one person. If the person being recorded had full access to what was being recorded, maybe that might mean something to some folks. It's too bad because there's probably cases where the form factor of meta's smart glasses are genuinely helpful for today. Instead of finding and rolling them out there first, by trying to push to the general public, the results can vary. There's no shortage of folks and devices surreptitiously recording people with devices, or during meetings in person. Once that gets figured out socially these kinds of devices may have better reception.

cush

It's classic Meta. They made a consious decision to completely hide the cameras so the person wearing it wouldn't feel mildly uncomfortable while they completely violate everyone around them. The little light offers zero transparency - it's plausible deniability wrapped in a least-effort attempt at caring about your privacy. The only thing that made this strategy fail the regular Meta playbook was the glasses became too popular too quickly, and rather that people slowly sinking into acceptance and complacency, they decided to speak up and shit on the glasses and call out the wearers for being creeps

rimbo789

These should have never even been prototyped. An obviously terrible ideal with obvious many negative social consquences. They should be banned from the market immediately.

fridder

This whole thing has felt very odd. Did we collectively forget about the Google Glass and glass-holes? This was entirely predictable. I guess the only difference this time around is how inconspicuous they are.

lbrito

>“We’re at a very sensitive time for the tech industry in terms of trying to really preserve that positive consumer sentiment that’s taking a bit of a hit due to AI Understatement of the year. That would be true maybe 10 years ago, during the Cambridge Analytics era. We are way, way past that point, and a so called tech analyst talking about "preserving the positive sentiment" is truly bizarre