Hacker News

Influencers face backlash over Meta 'pervert glasses' content

43 points by Markoff ago | 48 comments

ifwinterco |next [-]

Either Mark Zuckerberg is playing an elaborate practical joke on everyone, or this is further proof that the West Coast tech scene has become such a bubble people have lost all sense of how ordinary people think.

There is just no way this was going to fly in 2026 given high and increasing negative sentiment globally towards tech, and I'm not sure what made them think otherwise

cj |root |parent |next [-]

Meanwhile, Tesla drivers are driving around with a dozen cameras mounted on their vehicle pointing in every direction.

Who would have thought that would be socially acceptable in 2026.

ronnier |root |parent |next [-]

Very different. Lots of cars other than Tesla have cameras. Cars record the surroundings on streets (and if Tesla, there’s no audio). Meta glasses are in your face and in very private social settings recording people in vulnerable situations, and as seen on TikTok vids, often used to get embarrassing reactions from people who don’t realize they are being recorded. Cameras on cars have a real purpose, self driving and to record accidents/vandalism

kstrauser |root |parent |next |previous [-]

You can’t wear a Tesla into a bathroom or other private space.

dymk |root |parent |next |previous [-]

Dash cams have been a thing for decades

Markoff |root |parent [-]

and they are banned in Austria and prepare to pay hefty fine if police notice them

https://www.oeamtc.at/thema/vorschriften-strafen/zulaessigke...

qwerpy |root |parent |previous [-]

This isn’t specific to Tesla, both Rivian and Waymo have similar numbers of cameras. This seems essential for self-driving. Thankfully people find it socially acceptable outside of the tech bubble. I’d prefer to have self-driving rather than less cameras roving the roads.

zhoBEENG |root |parent |previous [-]

In the US, Meta sold 7 million glasses units last year and is projected to sell 25+ million next year. Waymos already record everything happening in most of the area of many cities, and use much more than just cameras. 6g standard has sensing built in. Perhaps it is not the West Coast that is in the bubble.

solarkraft |root |parent |next [-]

Waymos don’t precisely harass women and upload the footage to their instagram feed

ifwinterco |root |parent |next |previous [-]

As other people said, the difference is dashcams and Waymos need the cameras for practical purposes, as do Ring doorbells etc, so while the privacy implications aren't great people will continue to do that stuff.

Wearing a camera on your face during normal social interactions is a deeply weird thing to do, it's not the same thing at all

tjpnz |root |parent |previous [-]

They're not going to sell 25+ million more units when there's a very real threat of being assaulted while wearing them.

bookofjoe |root |parent [-]

FWIW, I was one of the original 8,000 individuals who got Google Glass when they were first released in 2013.

I wore them for years whenever I was outside my home; only once did someone come up to me and say "Stop looking at me with those on."

Planktonne |next |previous [-]

Good. These glasses are intended for anti-social and predatory uses, with a paper-thin pretence over the top that Meta doesn't understand their market.

A healthy society should push back against things like this.

rdmuser |next |previous [-]

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.

Symbiote |next |previous [-]

I think a small speaker should announce, in the local language, "recording in progress" when these are used.

ncr100 |root |parent |next [-]

Better,

"I am John Smith 415-123-4567 abc@123.com 456 Main Street Anytiwn USA and I am Recording everything I can see right now, including your full bodies and children, and storing it online, and training AI with it, without your permission, to be profited on by the Meta Corporation, a publicly traded company. I am John Smith 415-123-4567 ...."

otterley |root |parent |next |previous [-]

Apparently they already have a blinking white light to indicate that recording is in progress. https://about.fb.com/news/2026/07/metas-ai-glasses-your-ques...

Markoff |root |parent [-]

right, like that ever stopped anyone... all you need is a drill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaJSPeJmqis

otterley |root |parent [-]

On that same page:

> we’re updating the glasses to disable the camera if they detect the LED was physically tampered with or destroyed

Markoff |root |parent [-]

I'd be really interested to know how they wanna achieve this. I can think of another camera monitoring infrared LED light, but then you can destroy the other camera again, thinking they can avoid disabling/covering the LED is extremely naive, software way maybe, hardware way impossible to avoid.

dymk |root |parent |next |previous [-]

The shutter sound on cameras (including those built in to a phone) can't be muted in Japan

Markoff |root |parent [-]

of course they can, all you need is unlock bootloader or maybe not even that, just use alternative camera app which allows this or change region or zillion other ways

it's like thinking if we start reading people's whatsapp messages we will find out pedophiles and they won't just move to app which ignores gov requirements

tjpnz |root |parent |previous [-]

I think the location of everyone wearing the pedo glasses nearby should be available in a separate app. If wearers of the pedo glasses are concerned for their own privacy they might consider leaving the pedo glasses at home.

concinds |next |previous [-]

I wish regulators who failed to ban these things got even half of the backlash. It's not an individual issue.

marcuskane2 |next |previous [-]

And just like the panic over cell phones, this too shall pass.

Maybe half of HN is too young to remember (or old enough to have forgotten?) but when cell phones with cameras were becoming mainstream, there was media panic over them too - people could be discretely filming in bathrooms, locker rooms, etc. There were even a few high-profile salacious stories where people did use their phones to film inappropriately.

And then we collectively decided that having cameras with us was generally beneficial and rarely harmful, and people realized that creeps who wanted to hide hidden cameras could already do so, and we all kinda moved on with our lives.

I can't leave my house without being on a dozen Ring cameras, Flock cameras and probably a handful of satellites, along with devices tracking Bluetooth and WiFi IDs every time I enter a store or a cop car drives by or having my license plate scanned by passing tow trucks. Drawing the line at glasses seems pretty arbitrary.

otterley |root |parent |next [-]

This has been tried before, and Google Glass did not pass.

As others have said across multiple threads here, there is a difference between passive recordings from fixed vantage points made by a property owner (or which are required, as with autonomous vehicles, to make the thing work at all), and having people you're talking to do it. The difference is the social aspect; people who wear them still seem antisocial to the rest of the population. People with normal vision who feel the need to constantly record the world around them from their own vantage point certainly seem creepy to me.

bookofjoe |root |parent |previous [-]

see also: "Reefer Madness" (1936). What's old is new again.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=reefer+madness

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reefer_Madness

baaron |next |previous [-]

I wonder if something like the EURion constellation could be worn to disable recording by unwanted parties.

netsharc |root |parent [-]

I wonder if Zuck and the C-levels have some sort of beacon that will disable these perv glasses around them (except perhaps a whitelist of users).

If I were a billionaire zunt, I'd do that...

scotty79 |next |previous [-]

I'd love to have glasses that are interface for AI. Mics pointed down towards mouth from the bottom of the front glasses rim. Speakers near the ears. Cameras optional. Display optional, possibly as a simple projector that reflect the image from the concave glass surface of prescription glasses. Long term power and communication through thin cable to battery pack in a holster somewhere on the body to make the frames light and wearable all day.

aj_hackman |root |parent [-]

I'd hate to talk to you or be looked at by you.

scotty79 |root |parent [-]

I'm not talking to people and barely looking at them so I don't really care.

tjpnz |next |previous [-]

Epstein Glasses is also a good name for them. Glasses for people who don't do consent.

root-parent |root |parent [-]

Look...all Meta developers here down voting your comment.

RobMurray |previous [-]

Can we maybe blame the people who use them irresponsibly instead of blaming the technology? These glasses have been a life changer for so many visually impaired people.

graceful6800 |root |parent |next [-]

Sure, we can all agree that crushing puppies is a bad thing, but you should blame the people using the puppy crusher 9000 to crush puppies and not the technology itself. After all, it's made an amazing profit for shareholders!

Sometimes a thing is bad in and of itself. A thing designed specifically and explicitly to do bad things is still bad even if it helps a small number of people.

syrrim |root |parent [-]

I don't think that product exists, and I think an ordinary trash compactor would be far more likely to be used instead. Should we blame the people compressing their garbage for all the people crushing puppies?

solarkraft |root |parent [-]

If there is a repeated, ongoing problem with a lot of people using the devices to crush puppies, the manufacturers would be expected to come up with ways to make this less likely to happen (safety measures etc).

And if that didn’t help, there might be a push to limit access to these machines because clearly a too significant part of the population is unable to use them responsibly.

syrrim |root |parent [-]

There isn't such a problem, it is at best an incidental use case that has been blown out of proportion. Such glasses would only be useful for illicit purposes in instances where a person is permitted to look at something, but not to photograph it. In such a case, they can be politely requested to remove the glasses, just the same as you would ask someone pointing a smartphone at you to put it down, even if they were just scrolling instagram. It's a non problem that spiraled into a moral panic.

voakbasda |root |parent [-]

It is not always immediately obvious when someone is wearing a pair versus normal glasses. Certainly not from any real distance.

syrrim |root |parent [-]

Who's taking creep shots from any real distance?

Planktonne |root |parent |next |previous [-]

> These glasses have been a life changer for so many visually impaired people.

That's not why they're making them though; that's just insincere cover. If they were intended to be assistive devices, the marketing would be totally different.

otterley |root |parent |next |previous [-]

The problem is that 99% of people who have them make the rest look bad.

gmerc |root |parent [-]

Metas job is to maximize those 1% because that’s where the business value is. Like every other product they’ve done. 17 strikes policy for grooming for the win.

otterley |root |parent [-]

The 1% in this case would be those with vision impairment.

gmerc |root |parent [-]

Lol

mock-possum |root |parent |previous [-]

Agreed, they’re cool tech that some people are using poorly. It doesn’t deserve the flippant ‘pervert glasses’ nickname.