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.
> I would use them because the company that makes it can’t be trusted.
I think this gets at only half of the problem. Not only can meta not be trusted, even if I trust _you_ if you were friend, I wouldn't trust any _other_ random user of such a product. As such, better to not have such a product around.
I think I agree with this sentiment most. I am having trouble articulating it. I think wearing smart glasses in some situations is on a scale between rude, offensive, and wrong. I think that's what culture teaches us about what is and what isn't acceptable behavior, right? Like some places teach us it's rude to speak over each-other. Here in New England it is rude not to.
I am 100% on board with calling smart glasses "Pervert glasses" if worn in situations that call for it
I think maybe I in-artfully wrote it - I mean: there are situations when wearing smart glasses should be labelled 'pervert glasses'. Not that there are situations that require wearing of the glasses
Wearing them in a locker room or at a pool party or at the beach or really anywhere you might be likely to catch a recording of someone in a state of undress that they wouldn't want you to have a recording of?
Correct the issue isn't Meta people just don't like the idea they could be being recorded at any time to get blasted out to the whole world. Yes, in theory you're always open to being recorded in public but the glasses make it far more subtle /and/ up close so more normal interactions become subject to the intrusion in a way that would normally be quite obvious.
It's basically the same backlash that hit Google Glass over a decade ago. Nothing has really changed about the product and the reason people reject is so viscerally when they're not the user.
After covid I forgot the names of coworkers, I'm really bad at remembering them. Having something that could just show me peoples names would be nice. Maybe I'm just a bad person for not remembering them and it could be a nice challenge to my existing social behaviors to ask again. I wouldn't trust meta enough to use these glasses, I dont even use instragram.
I feel you - I've always had a blackspot in my brain for names; I once was showing a new hire around, and about halfway through introducing my colleagues, my brain gave up and I couldn't remember anyone any more. Just awful.
It can be less intrusive than using a phone, I believe. That makes it a step closer to being present. (I don't know specifics, but I'm assuming that the display can be turned off when not in use.)
Also, if someone already wears glasses, why not have glasses that can do more?
You don't need a phone either and sorry but the idea of someone using a device to learn things about me that I did not share with them is frankly disgusting and dehumanizing.
You can simply talk to people, we don't have to enable your perversions because you refuse to interact with humans.
I think you can be present in the moment, but still find value in a tool like this. I may not be "the norm" because I'm legally blind, but in some sense, a tool like this could make me even more present. I currently use my phone a lot to zoom in on signs to read them. I'd love it if I wouldn't have to hold a phone in front of my face, just to know whether the place I'm standing in front of is, in fact, Jimmy's Barbershop, or whatever place I'm trying to navigate to for the first time.
I'm with you, here. People just think very differently, though. For example, I really enjoy sci-fi, but I've always viewed as a neat fantasy. Sometimes I think "It would be cool if this were real," but mostly I lean toward, "I'm so glad none of this is actually real."
> notice the real world without the idea of augmenting it.
The core problem of solitude is curiosity and sonder.
When I smell fennel on a hike, I want to know what it is - yeah, this is dog fennel.
When I see a strange symbol on a taxi car, I want to know why it is 3 arrows on bow and what that is.
Seeing a strange dog and wondering what kind of dog that is (a whippet?). A glimpse of a black bird with red shoulder patches.
Hearing someone's ringtone (not these days anymore) and wonder why it is familiar ("ah, it is spelled fa9la, who'd have guessed").
There is a twinge of "This is why we can't have nice things" about the whole article for someone who can't get enough of the world you can see through your eyes.
Curiousity is characterized by the pursuit for the answer, not the ability or speed to find the answer. You can still be curious without a google search bar, and I often find those pursuits are (1) much more rewarding and (2) stick around enough to become knowledge.
I mean, the real answer is that we have the technology to be tech wizards. You could conjure spatially anchored widgets and screens and gauges.
You could put a cooking show screen above the stove, where a physical screen wouldn't work. You could put a synced calendar on the wall. Notes app on the fridge, weather reminders by the door. ...a million mundane conveniences in the house alone.
But still, its too heavy and to do the spatial anchoring you need a device with a constant camera feed and the only folks who make that at the moment have questionable morals.
but then you are not present, you are distracted by a computer. Just because that computer does not have a clunky monitor, doesn't mean that you aren't any less distracted.
Some of the attitudes on this website, especially ones like yours, are the literal reason we are in this mess today.
Please, please, if you have the power, push back on this nonsense from the inside. We need more people talking to other people like real humans, not like notes in a digital diary.
Probably different concerns. If you had a home video and I was in the background I wouldn't care. The odds of anyone recognizing me would be low. If you upload it to anyone using mass AI (YouTube, Meta, etc.) then I care a lot.
Startup idea: customers give you their Meta glasses, you smash the camera and microphone (with a tiny sledge hammer), and wrap most of the glasses and particularly where mic/camera would have been in a special casing with a very unique and patented design you also make a huge fuss on social media about, so everybody knows it.
The wrapper is hard/impossible to remove, only the company can trigger the self-release mechanism, and customers have to sign that they owe you a lot of money when they remove or damage it (which is risky, so they have to be careful or it's their problem). You basically just rent it to them, for lots of money per month, so they can show off their Good Guy Glasses (hey that's actually a name! can I have 10% please if anyone does this, I'll also help out if you want, maybe with the tiny sledge hammer. thanks!).
"Oh, you can afford Meta glasses to be a perv? Well, I can't afford the equivalent of a bunch of them every year, but I still do it because I'm a good person."
The ad could be some street kid in the rain with some guy (Morgan Freeman maybe) offering to sell it these glasses, saying "you can pay in tiny rates" and whatnot, and the kid just sadly shakes its head.. so the guy goes down on one knee, eye to eye with the kid and says... "When I was your age, I thought everything is about money, too. But some things are about being a good person. If you had a mommy, surely she would want you to be a good person, right?" The kid nods, still hesitates, but by the way the music swells as the ad fades you just know it's gonna be alright.
It’s so interesting to me that there are still so many people who see the monkey’s-paw thing as somehow secondary or incidental, even those who acknowledge that it’s often there! I don’t really understand why this is, or why I feel differently. To me at least, the monkey’s-paw aspect is primary now, to the point that the gee-whiz aspect hardly bears on my thinking at all.
I’m not telling you that I think you’re wrong or foolish, to be clear! I just have this different instinct from you, although it sounds like we basically agree on the reflective level. I’m interested in what it is that directs peoples’ attention and interest in such a way that new information technology products pattern-match to “cool, shiny, new, handy, exciting; freedom” or to “dystopian social control, creepy surveillance capitalism; unfreedom.” People have different System 1 intuitions, orthogonal to their System 2 thinking!
Imagine if tomorrow we invented ubiquitous instant teleportation to arbitrary locations.
There would be a moment where we hear how great it is to eliminate commutes, or air travel, followed shortly afterwards by the collapse of civilisation as societies grapple with the elimination of property, what remains of private space, and so on.
Bro, read the article. As much as I hate corporations, this is not there fault. It's women who don't like perverts using the glasses and the perverts who use these glasses to look at women.
This is a phenomenon among the masses of consumers who use this tech, the corporation has nothing to do with it. In fact the corporation is trying to reign in your freedom to use these tools by stopping this perverted stuff from happening. Blame US, consumers, not our corporate overlords.
Here's what I think: I think it is essential to protect freedom of the press and freedom of speech. This is just an unfortunate consequence of those freedoms. If you want to protect womens discomfort then you have to restrict these freedoms. I'm against that. This is an unfortunate situation but the alternative is worse. Because ONCE those rules are in place and codified into law, censorship and freedoms can become bigger and worse.
Women just need to deal with it. Assume that whenever you're in a public place, ALL your actions are PUBLIC. A women (and men) should dress and talk in a way conducive to the public arena.
Either way, despite what I believe, it's already to late. This freedom is already restricted by Wiretapping law. If someone threatens to kill you and you wiretap it as evidence... that evidence is dismissible in court even after said subject (you) was found dead. We are rapidly moving towards a world where a persons discomfort can control your freedoms and even dictate reality (evidence).
What does that have to do with freedom of speech? How is recording people without their consent or knowledge freedom of speech? That sounds absurd to me
The law allows recording of people without consent or knowledge now. From flock cameras to door bell cameras to store cameras your pcture is taken hundreds of times daily. To just restrict glasses can be seen as a freedom of speech issue.
I think of this like the camera shutter sound laws in Japan. We could easily regulate that the cameras must have visible indicators that they're recording, and ideally they should be required to be visually distinct from a normal pair of sunglasses in some way.
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.
At some point, incognito will scale to hidden and I think that's the part that has to be reimagined. It's not about hidden camera, it's about cooperative and consent based.
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.
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."
If someone signs in and gives up their privacy, I don't care. Where I do care is when someone with their pervert glasses captures an image of me at my kid's little league game and now I'm getting ads based on that.
A little league game has hundreds of people taking pictures and video. Unless your child plays naked there is nothing you can do to stop them. If you really want to stop anyone from seeing your child in public you would need a Burka or don't allow them to be in public.
I think you are fighting a losing battle if you choose to allow your kids to enter society.
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.
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)
> where simply going outside to get groceries or whatever doesn't count as consent to be plastered across the net.
I think this is wanting a rule that doesn't draw boundaries in a way that aligns with the natural world. Your right to see what is around you and to remember what you see is pretty fundamental. You might say there is a ethical reason not to gossip about what you remember seeing, but I would push back on the idea that it ought to be illegal for Bob to mention to Carol that he saw Alice at the store, and Meta glasses (or paparazzi or even Snow Crash's gargoyles) are a difference of degree, not kind, from the neighborhood gossip.
Germany makes a distinction between expectations of privacy and being in a public space. If you’re in a cafe and talking to someone at your table, you generally do not expect others to participate and listen to your conversation, that can be enough to be considered private and would likely be illegal to record without consent. The act of recording audio is in itself restricted, though if you share you can have additional charges. I’m pretty sure that makes always-on video recording (with audio) very much incompatible with German laws.
It’s an ok system but too restrictive and outdated IMHO, so many people recording something with their phone will unwillingly record people passing by, which is likely not allowed.
I'm speaking generally here, not specifically about German or any law. I also know there are probably situations I'm not thinking about. But it seems generally pretty cut and dry as to what the focus of a recording is. If you are filming your friend in public and there are people in the background, I don't see that as a big deal. If you film strangers, get audio of their conversation, you should not be allowed to post this online. If they are interacting or harassing you, this should also be a pretty cut and dry case where posting them is ok. I do realize this probably opens up a bunch of loop holes but ya. I dunno. Honestly, I'd rather have the German laws than what we have in North America right now.
There's a lot of copyright and other rights management that can be applied. Many buildings are copyrighted. If you take a picture of a building, which you are free to do, you cannot make money from that image just because you took it while being in the open public. The same should be applicable to people as well. Yes, you took a picture of them while in public, but they people still own the rights to the likeness. If your image is clearly focused on a single person, you need rights releases to make money from that image. That's how it works in things like stock images. As far as how things work with the TMZ ilk of the world is an entirely different thing that we've seem to come to accept. The stalking of people, celebrity or not, just so people can be entertained at home with the personal drama of those people is just gross.
Nope, can't stop right there. It is the situation we live in now. You can release a product like a poster or puzzle or whatever and try to YOLO with your protest, but you will lose in court when you are sued by the rights holder.
There's a museum with a very distinct building that is infamous for sending security staff out to tell photographers they cannot image the building. They have no idea what someone will do with the image, so they have no legal basis to prevent someone from taking the picture.
> I don't think any changes should be about public recording but about distribution instead.
I think this is pretty reasonable and something I hadn't thought of. I've been thinking about this generally a bunch as I agree that the blanket "No right to privacy in public" is really just lazy. Of course we've been filmed in public for decades now, but it wasn't being shown to people on the internet this whole (or even to anyone in many cases). Concessions could be made for filming police/public figures and people committing. It's probably harder than I think, but just being able to post anyone online is pretty terrible whether it's your "right" or not. Think of all the godawful nuisance "content" that would have just never existed.
The product you describe would have very limited use. The full HUD of realtime information absolutely has benefits for the real world, but of course it will be used for things people would subvert for a more malevolent purpose. There's no avoiding that. Does the malevolent use out weight the beneficial use to the point the product should never be allowed?
It won't matter. People will assume it has a camera. The product category is most likely (and rather predictably) dead if it depends on people wearing them ubiquitously and in public.
Which will be incredibly problematic if the manufacturers continue to aim for something unobtrusive. Eventually, just normal spectacle wearers will be the targets of mistrust and, unfortunately, worse.
I do think that people should be legally allowed to make recordings in public, provided they are not harassing anyone. I do not think they are entitled to make those recordings in secret; just have a regulated indicator, like the bluetooth led.
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?
> 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?
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!
I did not like the original RayBan ones for the same creepy reason of recording people without consent. I am at least one person, I'm sure there were others.
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
I think the only way will be the tech getting too useful for the complaints to matter. Currently it's only marginally useful. Otherwise this irrational reaction will continue. Would help for the tech to come from companies with less awful reputations.
Alternatively, maybe the solution will be some sort of device signature embedded into the video data at the hardware level so that videos are traceable to the person that recorded them.
To me the main annoyance is that XR glasses partially rely on cameras to enable things like 6DOF tracking and hand tracking. Having that use conflated with people trying to secretly record others is pretty annoying.
If you want to secretly record someone in public, aren't there already plenty of much subtler ways? Pinhole camera in your shirt pocket, normal glasses with a hidden camera, camera integrated into a hat, etc?
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
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.
> Its a bit strange of a default assumption to me.
What is _your_ default assumption re: use case? I honestly can't think of any use cases (outside of very niche a11y uses) that are not in some way offensive, though perhaps not 'perverted'.
This product is absolutely toxic, and I can't imagine myself or anyone I know being willing to associate or socialize with someone wearing them (again, excluding some very specific a11y use).
> What is _your_ default assumption re: use case? I honestly can't think of any use cases (outside of very niche a11y uses) that are not in some way offensive, though perhaps not 'perverted'.
Hmm, here's a few that could potentially be implemented in augmented glasses, though I have no idea if they're implemented yet:
- Giving me directions via an overlay when I'm walking around without requiring me to pull out my phone
- overlay of a recipe when I'm cooking something new
- pointing out constellations in the night sky
- reminding me of people's names and/or upcoming plans with them
- price comparisons in grocery stores; the glasses read the prices and tell you how they compare to prices in other nearby stores
- (at the gym) correcting someone's form on weightlifting, with visual overlays
My assumption about the default use case is that people want to take normal pictures. For example, I wear them to sporting events, and it's a lot faster to take a picture of the action with my Meta glasses than with my iPhone.
If photo quality is the only concern, a DSLR camera will take a better picture than a modern phone, so you shouldn't use a phone either. But the person you're replying to didn't say it was "better", they said "faster", so that's what's more important to them.
Being able to snap a pic without getting too far out of the moment, like when I am at a museum or in a beautiful place is great.
Even better is being able to snap a picture of my grandchildren without distracting them. As soon as I pull out my phone, they are grabbing for it. Some of my favorite pics were taken by my meta glasses.
I can't think of a better example of intrusiveness than "as soon as I pull out my phone [the kids] are grabbing for it", which I'm reading as "the kids want to use it even tho it isn't theirs". We've trained the kids to intrude on someone else so they can get a dopamine hit.
Fishing videos are one of the best usecases I've seen for them, but people generally go fishing alone or with close friends/family so it's a much different scenario than being a glasshole in public.
> I honestly can't think of any use cases (outside of very niche a11y uses) that are not in some way offensive, though perhaps not 'perverted'.
Obvious non-perverted use cases:
* HUD when your hands are occupied - biking, cooking, etc.
* Camera-augmented navigation directions, especially indoors
* Shopping, price comparison
* Tourism, museum visits - automatically surfacing
information about historical landmarks or artworks.
I would have loved to have smart glasses for these reasons, but unfortunately, the perverts ruined it for the rest of us and made the product category toxic.
I for one prefer taking pictures with the Meta glasses when traveling. Taking a phone out of your pocket, launching an app, holding the phone in front of you until you align the object in focus and then tapping a button starts feeling so inelegant after a while, compared to a quick press on the side of the glasses. The picture also comes out looking exactly how you saw it, videos are from your POV.
When driving, I like hearing the GPS navigation instructions discreetly without having my ears blocked by earphones and the car music being interrupted (also my wife can't stand the navigation voice and always asks me to silence it. With the glasses I can still hear the instructions).
Again, when traveling, if I'm staring at a building or something I'm curious about, I can ask the AI to tell me more things about the thing I'm looking at. It's quick and convenient.
> 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.
Maybe because most (tech) things do make most people's live worse without fail (such as these glasses being available)? I don't see how you can blame people for a very rational reaction here
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.
>"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...
>"pre-existing recording devices available already..."
Exactly!
People could be "covertly recorded at the gym" (as the article states!) by other pre-existing recording devices (any other kind of video camera, mounted in the gym or on a gym member's smartphone or other electronic device) -- not just Meta's smart glasses!
In other words, the central issue of the article seems to stem more from consent (more specifically, the lack of consent!) than it does from a specific type of video recording device...
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
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.
> I would use them because the company that makes it can’t be trusted.
I think this gets at only half of the problem. Not only can meta not be trusted, even if I trust _you_ if you were friend, I wouldn't trust any _other_ random user of such a product. As such, better to not have such a product around.
I think I agree with this sentiment most. I am having trouble articulating it. I think wearing smart glasses in some situations is on a scale between rude, offensive, and wrong. I think that's what culture teaches us about what is and what isn't acceptable behavior, right? Like some places teach us it's rude to speak over each-other. Here in New England it is rude not to.
I am 100% on board with calling smart glasses "Pervert glasses" if worn in situations that call for it
What situations call for "Pervert glasses?"
I think maybe I in-artfully wrote it - I mean: there are situations when wearing smart glasses should be labelled 'pervert glasses'. Not that there are situations that require wearing of the glasses
Wearing them in a locker room or at a pool party or at the beach or really anywhere you might be likely to catch a recording of someone in a state of undress that they wouldn't want you to have a recording of?
Correct the issue isn't Meta people just don't like the idea they could be being recorded at any time to get blasted out to the whole world. Yes, in theory you're always open to being recorded in public but the glasses make it far more subtle /and/ up close so more normal interactions become subject to the intrusion in a way that would normally be quite obvious.
It's basically the same backlash that hit Google Glass over a decade ago. Nothing has really changed about the product and the reason people reject is so viscerally when they're not the user.
After covid I forgot the names of coworkers, I'm really bad at remembering them. Having something that could just show me peoples names would be nice. Maybe I'm just a bad person for not remembering them and it could be a nice challenge to my existing social behaviors to ask again. I wouldn't trust meta enough to use these glasses, I dont even use instragram.
I feel you - I've always had a blackspot in my brain for names; I once was showing a new hire around, and about halfway through introducing my colleagues, my brain gave up and I couldn't remember anyone any more. Just awful.
"I'll let you guys introduce yourselves..."
Absolutely this. Even better, if you ever find yourself playing one of the "guys" in this situation, just act pre-emptively and introduce yourself!
Why do you want this? I honestly think we’ve completely forgotten how to be present and notice the real world without the idea of augmenting it.
I'm not the person that you're replying to, but:
It can be less intrusive than using a phone, I believe. That makes it a step closer to being present. (I don't know specifics, but I'm assuming that the display can be turned off when not in use.)
Also, if someone already wears glasses, why not have glasses that can do more?
You don't need a phone either and sorry but the idea of someone using a device to learn things about me that I did not share with them is frankly disgusting and dehumanizing.
You can simply talk to people, we don't have to enable your perversions because you refuse to interact with humans.
I think you can be present in the moment, but still find value in a tool like this. I may not be "the norm" because I'm legally blind, but in some sense, a tool like this could make me even more present. I currently use my phone a lot to zoom in on signs to read them. I'd love it if I wouldn't have to hold a phone in front of my face, just to know whether the place I'm standing in front of is, in fact, Jimmy's Barbershop, or whatever place I'm trying to navigate to for the first time.
I'm with you, here. People just think very differently, though. For example, I really enjoy sci-fi, but I've always viewed as a neat fantasy. Sometimes I think "It would be cool if this were real," but mostly I lean toward, "I'm so glad none of this is actually real."
Different stokes, though.
> notice the real world without the idea of augmenting it.
The core problem of solitude is curiosity and sonder.
When I smell fennel on a hike, I want to know what it is - yeah, this is dog fennel.
When I see a strange symbol on a taxi car, I want to know why it is 3 arrows on bow and what that is.
Seeing a strange dog and wondering what kind of dog that is (a whippet?). A glimpse of a black bird with red shoulder patches.
Hearing someone's ringtone (not these days anymore) and wonder why it is familiar ("ah, it is spelled fa9la, who'd have guessed").
There is a twinge of "This is why we can't have nice things" about the whole article for someone who can't get enough of the world you can see through your eyes.
Curiousity is characterized by the pursuit for the answer, not the ability or speed to find the answer. You can still be curious without a google search bar, and I often find those pursuits are (1) much more rewarding and (2) stick around enough to become knowledge.
Because its cool.
I mean, the real answer is that we have the technology to be tech wizards. You could conjure spatially anchored widgets and screens and gauges.
You could put a cooking show screen above the stove, where a physical screen wouldn't work. You could put a synced calendar on the wall. Notes app on the fridge, weather reminders by the door. ...a million mundane conveniences in the house alone.
But still, its too heavy and to do the spatial anchoring you need a device with a constant camera feed and the only folks who make that at the moment have questionable morals.
but then you are not present, you are distracted by a computer. Just because that computer does not have a clunky monitor, doesn't mean that you aren't any less distracted.
Some of the attitudes on this website, especially ones like yours, are the literal reason we are in this mess today.
Please, please, if you have the power, push back on this nonsense from the inside. We need more people talking to other people like real humans, not like notes in a digital diary.
The glasses & software could have come from the Linux Foundation & the same concerns from people would remain.
Probably different concerns. If you had a home video and I was in the background I wouldn't care. The odds of anyone recognizing me would be low. If you upload it to anyone using mass AI (YouTube, Meta, etc.) then I care a lot.
I suspect you're not a pretty girl that gets stared at. Neither am I, but if I were I'd rather the stares weren't recordable.
Startup idea: customers give you their Meta glasses, you smash the camera and microphone (with a tiny sledge hammer), and wrap most of the glasses and particularly where mic/camera would have been in a special casing with a very unique and patented design you also make a huge fuss on social media about, so everybody knows it.
The wrapper is hard/impossible to remove, only the company can trigger the self-release mechanism, and customers have to sign that they owe you a lot of money when they remove or damage it (which is risky, so they have to be careful or it's their problem). You basically just rent it to them, for lots of money per month, so they can show off their Good Guy Glasses (hey that's actually a name! can I have 10% please if anyone does this, I'll also help out if you want, maybe with the tiny sledge hammer. thanks!).
"Oh, you can afford Meta glasses to be a perv? Well, I can't afford the equivalent of a bunch of them every year, but I still do it because I'm a good person."
The ad could be some street kid in the rain with some guy (Morgan Freeman maybe) offering to sell it these glasses, saying "you can pay in tiny rates" and whatnot, and the kid just sadly shakes its head.. so the guy goes down on one knee, eye to eye with the kid and says... "When I was your age, I thought everything is about money, too. But some things are about being a good person. If you had a mommy, surely she would want you to be a good person, right?" The kid nods, still hesitates, but by the way the music swells as the ad fades you just know it's gonna be alright.
It’s so interesting to me that there are still so many people who see the monkey’s-paw thing as somehow secondary or incidental, even those who acknowledge that it’s often there! I don’t really understand why this is, or why I feel differently. To me at least, the monkey’s-paw aspect is primary now, to the point that the gee-whiz aspect hardly bears on my thinking at all.
I’m not telling you that I think you’re wrong or foolish, to be clear! I just have this different instinct from you, although it sounds like we basically agree on the reflective level. I’m interested in what it is that directs peoples’ attention and interest in such a way that new information technology products pattern-match to “cool, shiny, new, handy, exciting; freedom” or to “dystopian social control, creepy surveillance capitalism; unfreedom.” People have different System 1 intuitions, orthogonal to their System 2 thinking!
It’s so weird because I used to be the other way.
Check out the even reality g2. No camera
I suspect he wants the AR features (which require a camera).
The no camera HUD is exactly what I want, except I also want SSH (Mosh) and sending text to speech to it before I'd buy these.
I think, sadly, this is the expected result.
Imagine if tomorrow we invented ubiquitous instant teleportation to arbitrary locations.
There would be a moment where we hear how great it is to eliminate commutes, or air travel, followed shortly afterwards by the collapse of civilisation as societies grapple with the elimination of property, what remains of private space, and so on.
Bro, read the article. As much as I hate corporations, this is not there fault. It's women who don't like perverts using the glasses and the perverts who use these glasses to look at women.
This is a phenomenon among the masses of consumers who use this tech, the corporation has nothing to do with it. In fact the corporation is trying to reign in your freedom to use these tools by stopping this perverted stuff from happening. Blame US, consumers, not our corporate overlords.
Here's what I think: I think it is essential to protect freedom of the press and freedom of speech. This is just an unfortunate consequence of those freedoms. If you want to protect womens discomfort then you have to restrict these freedoms. I'm against that. This is an unfortunate situation but the alternative is worse. Because ONCE those rules are in place and codified into law, censorship and freedoms can become bigger and worse.
Women just need to deal with it. Assume that whenever you're in a public place, ALL your actions are PUBLIC. A women (and men) should dress and talk in a way conducive to the public arena.
Either way, despite what I believe, it's already to late. This freedom is already restricted by Wiretapping law. If someone threatens to kill you and you wiretap it as evidence... that evidence is dismissible in court even after said subject (you) was found dead. We are rapidly moving towards a world where a persons discomfort can control your freedoms and even dictate reality (evidence).
What does that have to do with freedom of speech? How is recording people without their consent or knowledge freedom of speech? That sounds absurd to me
The law allows recording of people without consent or knowledge now. From flock cameras to door bell cameras to store cameras your pcture is taken hundreds of times daily. To just restrict glasses can be seen as a freedom of speech issue.
I'm guessing you're in the US; in the UK, door bell cameras are only legally allowed to film your own property.
I think of this like the camera shutter sound laws in Japan. We could easily regulate that the cameras must have visible indicators that they're recording, and ideally they should be required to be visually distinct from a normal pair of sunglasses in some way.
Same for phones too while we're at it.
You can disable the LED at the hardware level
freedom of speech != freedom to surreptitiously record
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.
[delayed]
At some point, incognito will scale to hidden and I think that's the part that has to be reimagined. It's not about hidden camera, it's about cooperative and consent based.
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.
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!
If someone signs in and gives up their privacy, I don't care. Where I do care is when someone with their pervert glasses captures an image of me at my kid's little league game and now I'm getting ads based on that.
A little league game has hundreds of people taking pictures and video. Unless your child plays naked there is nothing you can do to stop them. If you really want to stop anyone from seeing your child in public you would need a Burka or don't allow them to be in public.
I think you are fighting a losing battle if you choose to allow your kids to enter society.
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.
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)
> where simply going outside to get groceries or whatever doesn't count as consent to be plastered across the net.
I think this is wanting a rule that doesn't draw boundaries in a way that aligns with the natural world. Your right to see what is around you and to remember what you see is pretty fundamental. You might say there is a ethical reason not to gossip about what you remember seeing, but I would push back on the idea that it ought to be illegal for Bob to mention to Carol that he saw Alice at the store, and Meta glasses (or paparazzi or even Snow Crash's gargoyles) are a difference of degree, not kind, from the neighborhood gossip.
Germany makes a distinction between expectations of privacy and being in a public space. If you’re in a cafe and talking to someone at your table, you generally do not expect others to participate and listen to your conversation, that can be enough to be considered private and would likely be illegal to record without consent. The act of recording audio is in itself restricted, though if you share you can have additional charges. I’m pretty sure that makes always-on video recording (with audio) very much incompatible with German laws.
It’s an ok system but too restrictive and outdated IMHO, so many people recording something with their phone will unwillingly record people passing by, which is likely not allowed.
I'm speaking generally here, not specifically about German or any law. I also know there are probably situations I'm not thinking about. But it seems generally pretty cut and dry as to what the focus of a recording is. If you are filming your friend in public and there are people in the background, I don't see that as a big deal. If you film strangers, get audio of their conversation, you should not be allowed to post this online. If they are interacting or harassing you, this should also be a pretty cut and dry case where posting them is ok. I do realize this probably opens up a bunch of loop holes but ya. I dunno. Honestly, I'd rather have the German laws than what we have in North America right now.
There's a lot of copyright and other rights management that can be applied. Many buildings are copyrighted. If you take a picture of a building, which you are free to do, you cannot make money from that image just because you took it while being in the open public. The same should be applicable to people as well. Yes, you took a picture of them while in public, but they people still own the rights to the likeness. If your image is clearly focused on a single person, you need rights releases to make money from that image. That's how it works in things like stock images. As far as how things work with the TMZ ilk of the world is an entirely different thing that we've seem to come to accept. The stalking of people, celebrity or not, just so people can be entertained at home with the personal drama of those people is just gross.
> Many buildings are copyrighted
Well, let me stop you right there. That's the bit that needs fixing.
Nope, can't stop right there. It is the situation we live in now. You can release a product like a poster or puzzle or whatever and try to YOLO with your protest, but you will lose in court when you are sued by the rights holder.
There's a museum with a very distinct building that is infamous for sending security staff out to tell photographers they cannot image the building. They have no idea what someone will do with the image, so they have no legal basis to prevent someone from taking the picture.
> It is the situation we live in now.
That's what
> That's the bit that needs fixing.
means.
> I don't think any changes should be about public recording but about distribution instead.
I think this is pretty reasonable and something I hadn't thought of. I've been thinking about this generally a bunch as I agree that the blanket "No right to privacy in public" is really just lazy. Of course we've been filmed in public for decades now, but it wasn't being shown to people on the internet this whole (or even to anyone in many cases). Concessions could be made for filming police/public figures and people committing. It's probably harder than I think, but just being able to post anyone online is pretty terrible whether it's your "right" or not. Think of all the godawful nuisance "content" that would have just never existed.
I hope one of these companies pulls off a compelling set of glasses with a display and no camera.
The product you describe would have very limited use. The full HUD of realtime information absolutely has benefits for the real world, but of course it will be used for things people would subvert for a more malevolent purpose. There's no avoiding that. Does the malevolent use out weight the beneficial use to the point the product should never be allowed?
It won't matter. People will assume it has a camera. The product category is most likely (and rather predictably) dead if it depends on people wearing them ubiquitously and in public.
Which will be incredibly problematic if the manufacturers continue to aim for something unobtrusive. Eventually, just normal spectacle wearers will be the targets of mistrust and, unfortunately, worse.
I do think that people should be legally allowed to make recordings in public, provided they are not harassing anyone. I do not think they are entitled to make those recordings in secret; just have a regulated indicator, like the bluetooth led.
Nah. If there's no obvious lenses, people won't assume that.
How would it analyze your surroundings without a camera
There's a kickstarter for "MemoMind One". Glasses with display and no camera.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1963472698/memomind-one...
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?
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.
> 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?
Both wild but also very obviously was going to happen with a product like this.
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!
I did not like the original RayBan ones for the same creepy reason of recording people without consent. I am at least one person, I'm sure there were others.
> very popular and no one had a problem with them
People certainly did have a problem with them.
No, it’s not that. It’s that people know you are wearing the pervert glasses.
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.
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.
I think the only way will be the tech getting too useful for the complaints to matter. Currently it's only marginally useful. Otherwise this irrational reaction will continue. Would help for the tech to come from companies with less awful reputations.
Alternatively, maybe the solution will be some sort of device signature embedded into the video data at the hardware level so that videos are traceable to the person that recorded them.
To me the main annoyance is that XR glasses partially rely on cameras to enable things like 6DOF tracking and hand tracking. Having that use conflated with people trying to secretly record others is pretty annoying.
To be clear, I don’t think this reaction is irrational at all. I’m curious though why you do.
I think they tried that, and people hacked around it:
https://www.engadget.com/2227710/a-dollar2-sticker-let-me-by...
If you want to secretly record someone in public, aren't there already plenty of much subtler ways? Pinhole camera in your shirt pocket, normal glasses with a hidden camera, camera integrated into a hat, etc?
Create your own set of glasses with powerful IR LEDs. Then just stare at the glasshole.
People already disable the recording light and the problem is so pervasive Amazon has "banned" the blocking stickers.
It already stops working if you block the light.
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
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.
> Its a bit strange of a default assumption to me.
What is _your_ default assumption re: use case? I honestly can't think of any use cases (outside of very niche a11y uses) that are not in some way offensive, though perhaps not 'perverted'.
This product is absolutely toxic, and I can't imagine myself or anyone I know being willing to associate or socialize with someone wearing them (again, excluding some very specific a11y use).
> What is _your_ default assumption re: use case? I honestly can't think of any use cases (outside of very niche a11y uses) that are not in some way offensive, though perhaps not 'perverted'.
Hmm, here's a few that could potentially be implemented in augmented glasses, though I have no idea if they're implemented yet:
- Giving me directions via an overlay when I'm walking around without requiring me to pull out my phone
- overlay of a recipe when I'm cooking something new - pointing out constellations in the night sky
- reminding me of people's names and/or upcoming plans with them
- price comparisons in grocery stores; the glasses read the prices and tell you how they compare to prices in other nearby stores
- (at the gym) correcting someone's form on weightlifting, with visual overlays
- taking pictures in general
- easy recording of ICE or police
My assumption about the default use case is that people want to take normal pictures. For example, I wear them to sporting events, and it's a lot faster to take a picture of the action with my Meta glasses than with my iPhone.
It's very hard to imagine this being a better photo than one taken on a modern phone.
Also, I really, really hope you take them off when using the shared bathrooms at such an event. And you know, keep them off. Permanently.
If photo quality is the only concern, a DSLR camera will take a better picture than a modern phone, so you shouldn't use a phone either. But the person you're replying to didn't say it was "better", they said "faster", so that's what's more important to them.
I love mine.
Being able to snap a pic without getting too far out of the moment, like when I am at a museum or in a beautiful place is great.
Even better is being able to snap a picture of my grandchildren without distracting them. As soon as I pull out my phone, they are grabbing for it. Some of my favorite pics were taken by my meta glasses.
I can't think of a better example of intrusiveness than "as soon as I pull out my phone [the kids] are grabbing for it", which I'm reading as "the kids want to use it even tho it isn't theirs". We've trained the kids to intrude on someone else so they can get a dopamine hit.
What was your assumption about social media ca. 2010?
Fishing videos are one of the best usecases I've seen for them, but people generally go fishing alone or with close friends/family so it's a much different scenario than being a glasshole in public.
They are nice for skydiving and probably some other sports where action cams are dangerous / awkward. It's definitely niche tho.
i love watching all the youtube shorts and instagrams of ppl helping or doing good deeds
most of them use meta glasses it seems to record the pov
> I honestly can't think of any use cases (outside of very niche a11y uses) that are not in some way offensive, though perhaps not 'perverted'.
Obvious non-perverted use cases:
* HUD when your hands are occupied - biking, cooking, etc.
* Camera-augmented navigation directions, especially indoors
* Shopping, price comparison
* Tourism, museum visits - automatically surfacing information about historical landmarks or artworks.
I would have loved to have smart glasses for these reasons, but unfortunately, the perverts ruined it for the rest of us and made the product category toxic.
Have you used the glasses at all?
I for one prefer taking pictures with the Meta glasses when traveling. Taking a phone out of your pocket, launching an app, holding the phone in front of you until you align the object in focus and then tapping a button starts feeling so inelegant after a while, compared to a quick press on the side of the glasses. The picture also comes out looking exactly how you saw it, videos are from your POV.
When driving, I like hearing the GPS navigation instructions discreetly without having my ears blocked by earphones and the car music being interrupted (also my wife can't stand the navigation voice and always asks me to silence it. With the glasses I can still hear the instructions).
Again, when traveling, if I'm staring at a building or something I'm curious about, I can ask the AI to tell me more things about the thing I'm looking at. It's quick and convenient.
> Its a bit strange of a default assumption to me.
It's not an assumption. People started using it for being creepy almost immediately.
https://nypost.com/2026/04/14/business/metas-pervert-glasses...
https://fortune.com/2026/07/28/ray-ban-meta-pervert-glasses-...
https://thenextweb.com/news/instagram-meta-glasses-harassmen...
https://www.wired.com/story/the-rise-of-the-ray-ban-meta-cre...
> Its a bit strange of a default assumption to me
You come off as naive.
> 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.
Maybe because most (tech) things do make most people's live worse without fail (such as these glasses being available)? I don't see how you can blame people for a very rational reaction here
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.
Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49240828
>"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...
If you want to do that, there is a wide variety of pre-existing recording devices available already...
>"pre-existing recording devices available already..."
Exactly!
People could be "covertly recorded at the gym" (as the article states!) by other pre-existing recording devices (any other kind of video camera, mounted in the gym or on a gym member's smartphone or other electronic device) -- not just Meta's smart glasses!
In other words, the central issue of the article seems to stem more from consent (more specifically, the lack of consent!) than it does from a specific type of video recording device...
I wonder if there should be a provision in the ISO 27001 about not allowing these smart glasses into the workplace
If there isn't currently there will be very soon.
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
> retards
Stop it.