Whenever I write about Meta’s Ray-Ban Smart Glasses, I already know the comments I’ll get. Great hardware, but hard to pass on anything the Meta does; will wait for someone else to come. It’s hard to imagine that feeling changing soon after The New York Times stated that Meta considered launching the facial recognition software “during a dynamic political environment” precisely because privacy advocates would be distracted.
Smartglasses evangelists often tell me that this fear is somewhat exaggerated. The phone also has a camera in the pocket. The government already uses facial recognition technology and CCTV channels are everywhere. Anyone who has ever seen a true crime documentary or episode Law and order he knows that it is difficult to appear in public these days and No be recorded. The recent Guthrie case, in which law enforcement obtained “lost” footage from a Nest Doorbell camera, further underscores this. That’s one of the scariest things about smart glasses: The cameras are small, their privacy LEDs are weak, and the design is incredibly discreet. The invisibility of these recording tools looking like normal glasses is the point.
It’s a bit of a catch-22. Glasses from Meta are great because they are discreet. This discretion is also troubling because it means they are perfect monitoring tools. I’ve written this many times before, but wearing modern smart glasses often makes me feel like a spy. It doesn’t matter if Ray-Ban Meta has a privacy light. I have worn them in public, outdoors, indoors and in crowds. As far as I know, no one ever noticed me in them. Still, it’s not a good feeling. However, I started seeing them in the wild and sometimes it doesn’t put me in the mood either. It doesn’t matter that Meta says her glasses can’t record if the light is manipulated. 404 Media reported that a $60 mod could disable the light. Anecdotally, one day the privacy light on my husband’s pair stopped working. They can record video just fine.
That’s pretty scary without Meta in the mix. What happens when you take a moment to consider Meta’s history with the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal, CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s willingness to kiss Donald Trump’s ring, and recent smartglass privacy policy changes to boost AI training? Remember that Zuckerberg once said early Facebook users were “dumb shits” for trusting him with their data, and more recently that people who opt out of smart glasses will be at a “severe cognitive disadvantage”? How should you feel knowing that the current political climate is what Meta apparently wants to use to implement facial recognition?
Viewed from this lens, Of course his just as Meta explore the feature that would according to RIVETallow smartglasses users to identify people they don’t know but who “have a public account on a Meta site like Instagram.”
Honestly, this is a feature that people have been asking for. It could be useful for visually impaired and blind people to find their way around the world. Forgetful and socially awkward people will appreciate glasses that help them remember names during business meetings, conferences or parties. But it’s one thing to use a feature in a culturally appropriate environment. It’s Pandora’s box that unleashes it everywhere.
This is exactly why I spent a large part of my Meta Ray-Ban Display review discussing privacy. Makers of smart glasses have yet to solve the conundrum of glass holes that ultimately doomed the original Google Glass.
When you put powerful tools in the hands of jerks, you can’t just say, “Well, we told them to be responsible.” (For the record, that’s what Meta’s privacy policy for smart glasses covers.) There have already been reports of “manfluencers” recording women without their consent. The meta may not have been directly responsible for this, but it didn’t come out against the behavior either. For example, in response to CNN’s report about manfluencers abusing the technology, Meta merely pointed to its terms of service and LED lights, saying people should use its products safely. When two college students came up with a way to dox strangers with glasses, a Metacomms worker on Threads again pointed to the LED light as a deterrent.
In a recent column, I noted that no one seems to agree on what to call this technology. The internet tells me it goes by a lot of names: spy glasses, e-waste, fascism, and hammer bait. Some people use much more violent imagery. Think: A GIF of someone smashing a bespectacled head over a watermelon with a hammer. I’ve lost count of how many people have told me that if they happened to spot a glass hole wearing this, they would punch that person in the face. Of course, most of this is hyperbole. Most people No note the glasses. A New York woman was also hailed as a hero when she ripped a pair of Ray-Ban Meta glasses off an influencer’s face and snapped them in half.
Smart glasses are not inherently evil. I have spoken to blind and partially sighted users who say Meta glasses have changed their lives for the better. I’ve spoken to other accessibility advocates who are excited about the doors that smart glasses can open for the deaf, hard of hearing, and differently abled.
But even in this sphere, not everyone believes in Meta. Some put it in RIVET Meta seems to have introduced facial recognition technology as a convenience feature. Meanwhile, fans Supernatural — a VR game that Meta recently discontinued — would argue that Meta callously abandoned the many veterans and people with limited mobility who relied on its product for fitness.
The current renaissance of smart glasses is fragile. Meta’s poor privacy reputation is perhaps the biggest obstacle to achieving its smartglass ambitions. While plenty of people trade privacy for convenience, perception matters. Oura’s deal with Palantir forced CEO Tom Hale to defend and clarify the company’s privacy policy after intense backlash. Ring and Amazon back down after consumers backlash against their Search Party feature for video doorbells. If Meta were smart, they would overhaul their entire policy to be much more proactive in protecting consumer privacy.
Google Glass killed many things. Eccentric design, cost, glass-hole user behavior — all of these factors contributed. But there have been several cases of consumers rejecting the idea of being watched and ripping glasses off people’s faces. Meta may have ushered in a new era of smart glasses, and it got a lot of things right. But he can’t tarnish his reputation, especially when other major players want to get in on the action. The glass holes have not disappeared. All it takes is destroying the public’s trust to send smart glasses back into the realm of science fiction.