I don't understand why Meta is so insistent on making the camera and creepy video recording the primary feature of these glasses. They do have a ton of other uses. The speakers are genuinely great. It's useful to be able to hear notifications while walking. Having a decent AI for asking random questions is nice as well. It supports live translation. And unlike Airpods it doesn't tune out the rest of the world, which I like. And the new models have a display, which could be useful for stuff like maps.
Release a model without a camera and people might actually give it a chance.
Unfortunately, educating people against some technology is not going to help. It should be a state-level mandate to have any effect. Most people are discretion-less, sheep-minded money pockets. Meta and other businesses discovered this fact long ago and exploit it to maximum extent. Their products always target the "sheep-following" aspects, instead of individual usefulness.
It's hard to believe that in the late smartphone era there are people who think they're not online enough already, and want smart glasses so they can be even more online.
Well, I kinda wouldn't mind glasses that could show important notifications or maps. It could be handy for lots of things, like a heads up display. Not to watch the social feeds but to find my way or read a message from a friend saying they're late. When I use my phone or watch to navigate it's a bit more dangerous. Thinking specifically of one time when I fell badly doing just that.
I absolutely wouldn't want them to incorporate a camera though. They should not have one at all.
And I would want them with open firmware from a respectable company or organisation. So these ones are a non starter obviously.
I would take a camera with AR integration. I'm imagining some mashup of scrap book note keeping in digital space and technical work like car repairs or utility work. Imagine seeing where the studs are in the walls, or finding a now you left yourself in the engine bay of your car...
There are all kinds of products that we need to reject not because the fundamentals aren't awesome for some proportion of people, but because the implementation is as obviously corrupt as the business owners pushing it.
The dumb speaker that OpenAI is hoping you stick in your home to spy on you is not some preposterously worthless piece of crap from beginning to end without exception. It's just a creepy mess that's nowhere near worth it for anybody who cares about themselves or anyone who ever visits their domicile. That doesn't mean that it isn't pretty nice to have your hands full of grease and be able to get a small piece of information using your voice.
All about the details. You want to ethically produce something private at reasonable cost without excessive energy usage to serve useful functions, sign me up. Just no cloud, no privacy invasion, an entire impossible wishlist for companies not as cool as e.g. Framework.
No but it would be handy. I don't really need my smartwatch to read notifications either but it's super handy when I'm out and I have my hands full. This would be even better (and replace my smartwatch I'm sure).
The problem I see is you're going to want a camera built-in for vision reasons for your amazing reality-overlay, and at that point, well, you've got a camera built-in.
I'm sure you could do that without one. Gyro, accelerometer, compass, GPS, step counter, altimeter. Should be accurate enough for basic navigation. Especially with some smart dead reckoning algorithm that calibrates itself at known map points like when you turn a corner. Showing notifications shouldn't need any kind of AR awareness at all. You could just show them above the normal field of vision just like the Google glass did.
Again there the problem was not the display, it was the camera. And Google glass didn't even use it for any tracking purpose.
I don't think the issue is that it can't be done without the camera. I think the issue is that the whole product exists to get those cameras out there. Data is the new gold, those vision AIs need to be trained. So they've never even tried without one.
Where is the exact line - i.e. can you use Lidar? Infrared depth-sensing? Or do these provide too much data such that the scene could be recreated?
(I'm exploring this as a thought experiment, in general I agree that people shouldn't be carrying hidden cameras on their faces, and if those cameras are at all connected to Meta then it's much worse!)
Well lidar in that form factor would end up just being an 8x8 laser DoF sensor like some smartphones have. There's no space or power budget for a real lidar.
That would be ok I guess. That's not enough to capture much of anything even with a continuous feed.
The concept of constantly taking images and storing metadata so you can remember where your keys are seems nuts but at the same time I could see it being normal.
Smart glasses are very handy and when traveling especially solo asking about what your seeing in front of you is handy/informative.
I can see when AI becomes 100% reliable with smart glasses we all are almost know it alls. Everything and anything we need to know will be presented in front of us.
Ok all the above sounds crazy to most, but ive enjoyed using my Metas since Oct 2023 (had to buy another paid April 2025) though Meta glasses are sh!t in terms of durability. So i can recommend smart glasses but not really Metas especially if you like to buy technology that lasts!
> Meta monitoring your social media posts to their platforms.
Monitoring everything around you, all the time.
And what you've heard about the UK police is likely to have been comically exaggerated by people with an agenda. There are problems, yes, they do not arrest thousands of people a year for being mean on twitter, no.
(I'm rate limited and can't reply below - when people look into these figures what they tend to find is the majority are people getting arrested for using services like whatsapp to stalk, harass and threaten others, often in a domestic-violence situation. It's not what is often described or assumed by american commentators, that they said something politically sensitive in public, and OH MY GOSH just look at the state of free speech in Britain.).
Help me understand this attitude, because I've mostly seen women wearing these types of products, and they stand to gain a lot in terms of security from wearing them. So why the ad hominems? What is your best argument against these devices? When I go to a coffee shop I do so with the understanding that the establishment is likely recording me, are we going to accept this same rhetoric for anyone that films others in public and/or commercial spaces?
Generally public places do not have cameras that record your interactions with others in detail (including sound) and the owners of the establishment generally do not interact with you for the sole purpose of generating footage they can monetize online.
Additionally there are laws and expectations around cameras in places like bathrooms. Those laws still exist for smartglasses-wearers, but it can be hard to police if it is not obvious that the glasses have cameras and are recording.
> Help me understand this attitude, because I've mostly seen women wearing these types of products, and they stand to gain a lot in terms of security from wearing them.
How? This is just going to give a bunch of creepy men an easier way to film me. I'm dreading these getting mainstream adoption.
(1) a single or handful of security-angled cameras controlled by a local business for security purposes
(2) any individual possibly recording you at eye level at any second without you knowing, and having the ability to use and manipulate that footage and upload it to the internet
Is there a better way to modulate others’ behavior?
Before, when it was he said, she said, it was always tenuous for the person with less power to pursue the issue. Now, they can finally access consequences for people violating their freedoms.
Social expectations, upbringing, interpersonal ties that make social behaviors potentially costly on a personal level to do wrong, all things the same people making the glasses made all of their money degrading?
Easy - covert recording of other people in public is not OK.
This ridiculous idea that "it's in public so you have no expectation of privacy" is a semantic retcon, the pervasiveness of cameras is new and fundamentally changes your level of exposure in the public sphere. Overtly recording people in public is not really OK. Face-mounted, covert recording is another step too far and offensive to most people.
If you genuinely wish to understand the attitude, may I recommend doing a deep dive into the many fine articles written about this back in 2013-15, when Google failed to launch the original glasshole-wear.
I wonder if these things will meet the same fate as bluetooth headsets. Once upon a time decried as the preserve of "Bluetooth Douches" who worse the Jabra while taking their banking phone calls, now they're everywhere. Everyone's got Airpods in.
One day perhaps Meta Glasses will be the same. I really like them. They're a spectacular (haha) addition to a sightseeing trip. At the aquarium you can ask them what you're looking at and it'll tell you about the fish, at the playground you can record your kids running around, and you've got music where you go and so on. The problem, of course, is that they have short battery life and I don't want to switch from my smart glasses to my other glasses since the entire point is availability.
That is an interesting perspective I hadn't thought about. I see relatives constantly throwing phone cameras in baby's faces "look here, look here" the kids are trained to look at the phone/camera. I think of the experience from your daughter here, just running up to her mom wearing glasses - I hear the mass surveillance concerns, I see the pervert/harassment angle, I saw a friend do the "recording a party" angle, but I am just surprised I didn't see something as wholesome as this - thanks for expanding my view.
> Once upon a time decried as the preserve of "Bluetooth Douches" who worse the Jabra while taking their banking phone calls, now they're everywhere. Everyone's got Airpods in.
Two very different use cases. The vast majority of folks wearing AirPods are listening, not talking. The former is not disruptive to others while the latter is.
It's been over 20 years since then and it's still just as awkward to take a call in public. People will instinctively prefer a quiet place away from the crowd. Otherwise others may eavesdrop, think you're talking to them, or are crazy.
You'll find that most of those people with airpods are listening to something, not talking on a call. The most popular "smart glasses" that I see everywhere don't have cameras. They're "AR" HUDs for watching movies or playing games.
It's not about social acceptance. These hardware designs still suck big time.
Yeah that's still weird. Last time it happened to me was in the City of London near Liverpool St (ironic as we're talking about banking phonecalls). Out of nowhere a guy walking towards me starts speaking, for all the world like he's trying to talk to me, so I stopped and said "Hey, can I help you?"
Nope, strides on past, then I noticed the airpods.
People wearing cameras is going to increase over time, no matter what. Why would it slow down?
Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely anti a lot of things, including people wearing cameras all the time, but I see no logical way to stop it without stomping on freedoms. In this case, defense will be your ally, whatever form that may take,eg wearing a mask.
If I had to choose between flock cameras and meta glasses existing, I'd choose the glasses.
Quite simply because people don't want to be casually recorded 24/7. By "casually" I mean by other people doing so indiscriminately, if not actively fishing for "content", as opposed to entities doing so for more justifiable reasons, like a security cam.
I don't understand why Meta is so insistent on making the camera and creepy video recording the primary feature of these glasses. They do have a ton of other uses. The speakers are genuinely great. It's useful to be able to hear notifications while walking. Having a decent AI for asking random questions is nice as well. It supports live translation. And unlike Airpods it doesn't tune out the rest of the world, which I like. And the new models have a display, which could be useful for stuff like maps.
Release a model without a camera and people might actually give it a chance.
Wow really well done with the lenticular effect. I immediately recognised the reference to They Live too.
That must have cost a lot. To get posters like that made.
I agree it’s very well done. Not sure if they’re all from/by EHE but the political adverts like this I’ve seen from around the UK are so clever.
Gemini estimated it to cost around 500€ per piece
Ray-Ban Wayfarer used to be a such classic design. By associating them with cameras and Meta, Ray-Ban risks messing that up for good.
Unfortunately, educating people against some technology is not going to help. It should be a state-level mandate to have any effect. Most people are discretion-less, sheep-minded money pockets. Meta and other businesses discovered this fact long ago and exploit it to maximum extent. Their products always target the "sheep-following" aspects, instead of individual usefulness.
Education can work if there is a convincing story.
What’s the story here other than a gruesome image.
I wish their storytelling matched their visual designs in terms of imagination.
This is why the "put the sunglasses on" fight went on forever. :)
It's hard to believe that in the late smartphone era there are people who think they're not online enough already, and want smart glasses so they can be even more online.
Well, I kinda wouldn't mind glasses that could show important notifications or maps. It could be handy for lots of things, like a heads up display. Not to watch the social feeds but to find my way or read a message from a friend saying they're late. When I use my phone or watch to navigate it's a bit more dangerous. Thinking specifically of one time when I fell badly doing just that.
I absolutely wouldn't want them to incorporate a camera though. They should not have one at all.
And I would want them with open firmware from a respectable company or organisation. So these ones are a non starter obviously.
I would take a camera with AR integration. I'm imagining some mashup of scrap book note keeping in digital space and technical work like car repairs or utility work. Imagine seeing where the studs are in the walls, or finding a now you left yourself in the engine bay of your car...
> Not to watch the social feeds but to find my way or read a message from a friend saying they're late.
Do you really need this for that?
There are all kinds of products that we need to reject not because the fundamentals aren't awesome for some proportion of people, but because the implementation is as obviously corrupt as the business owners pushing it.
The dumb speaker that OpenAI is hoping you stick in your home to spy on you is not some preposterously worthless piece of crap from beginning to end without exception. It's just a creepy mess that's nowhere near worth it for anybody who cares about themselves or anyone who ever visits their domicile. That doesn't mean that it isn't pretty nice to have your hands full of grease and be able to get a small piece of information using your voice.
All about the details. You want to ethically produce something private at reasonable cost without excessive energy usage to serve useful functions, sign me up. Just no cloud, no privacy invasion, an entire impossible wishlist for companies not as cool as e.g. Framework.
No but it would be handy. I don't really need my smartwatch to read notifications either but it's super handy when I'm out and I have my hands full. This would be even better (and replace my smartwatch I'm sure).
The problem I see is you're going to want a camera built-in for vision reasons for your amazing reality-overlay, and at that point, well, you've got a camera built-in.
I'm sure you could do that without one. Gyro, accelerometer, compass, GPS, step counter, altimeter. Should be accurate enough for basic navigation. Especially with some smart dead reckoning algorithm that calibrates itself at known map points like when you turn a corner. Showing notifications shouldn't need any kind of AR awareness at all. You could just show them above the normal field of vision just like the Google glass did.
Again there the problem was not the display, it was the camera. And Google glass didn't even use it for any tracking purpose.
I don't think the issue is that it can't be done without the camera. I think the issue is that the whole product exists to get those cameras out there. Data is the new gold, those vision AIs need to be trained. So they've never even tried without one.
Yeah you could definitely have a go.
Where is the exact line - i.e. can you use Lidar? Infrared depth-sensing? Or do these provide too much data such that the scene could be recreated?
(I'm exploring this as a thought experiment, in general I agree that people shouldn't be carrying hidden cameras on their faces, and if those cameras are at all connected to Meta then it's much worse!)
Well lidar in that form factor would end up just being an 8x8 laser DoF sensor like some smartphones have. There's no space or power budget for a real lidar.
That would be ok I guess. That's not enough to capture much of anything even with a continuous feed.
What if I could watch Instagram reels at all moments all day. Streamed right in to my eyeballs.
> What if I could watch Instagram reels at all moments all day. Streamed right in to my eyeballs.
You'd be Mark Zuckerberg's idea of an ideal person.
The concept of constantly taking images and storing metadata so you can remember where your keys are seems nuts but at the same time I could see it being normal.
If you do one of the following now...
- Wear sunglasses or glasses now
- Take pics or videos with your phone
Smart glasses are very handy and when traveling especially solo asking about what your seeing in front of you is handy/informative.
I can see when AI becomes 100% reliable with smart glasses we all are almost know it alls. Everything and anything we need to know will be presented in front of us.
Ok all the above sounds crazy to most, but ive enjoyed using my Metas since Oct 2023 (had to buy another paid April 2025) though Meta glasses are sh!t in terms of durability. So i can recommend smart glasses but not really Metas especially if you like to buy technology that lasts!
Has the be the product of an CEO's fever dream and a bunch of yes men.
The UK police monitoring your social media posts is more of a risk than Meta monitoring your social media posts to their platforms.
We can (and should) try to avoid many bad things at once, not just whatever might be the worst bad thing.
> Meta monitoring your social media posts to their platforms.
Monitoring everything around you, all the time.
And what you've heard about the UK police is likely to have been comically exaggerated by people with an agenda. There are problems, yes, they do not arrest thousands of people a year for being mean on twitter, no.
(I'm rate limited and can't reply below - when people look into these figures what they tend to find is the majority are people getting arrested for using services like whatsapp to stalk, harass and threaten others, often in a domestic-violence situation. It's not what is often described or assumed by american commentators, that they said something politically sensitive in public, and OH MY GOSH just look at the state of free speech in Britain.).
>they do not arrest thousands of people a year for being mean on twitter, no
They arrest thousands of people for posts they make online. The public data does not break down what site it the arrests were from.
glassholes never change
Help me understand this attitude, because I've mostly seen women wearing these types of products, and they stand to gain a lot in terms of security from wearing them. So why the ad hominems? What is your best argument against these devices? When I go to a coffee shop I do so with the understanding that the establishment is likely recording me, are we going to accept this same rhetoric for anyone that films others in public and/or commercial spaces?
Generally public places do not have cameras that record your interactions with others in detail (including sound) and the owners of the establishment generally do not interact with you for the sole purpose of generating footage they can monetize online.
Additionally there are laws and expectations around cameras in places like bathrooms. Those laws still exist for smartglasses-wearers, but it can be hard to police if it is not obvious that the glasses have cameras and are recording.
> Help me understand this attitude, because I've mostly seen women wearing these types of products, and they stand to gain a lot in terms of security from wearing them.
How? This is just going to give a bunch of creepy men an easier way to film me. I'm dreading these getting mainstream adoption.
you genuinely dont see a difference between
(1) a single or handful of security-angled cameras controlled by a local business for security purposes
(2) any individual possibly recording you at eye level at any second without you knowing, and having the ability to use and manipulate that footage and upload it to the internet
Plus: (1) the security camera footage is constantly overwritten. (2) the video from the glasses is being uploaded to Meta.
> I've mostly seen women wearing these types of products, and they stand to gain a lot in terms of security from wearing them
How?
It's okay to record everyone around you all the time because:
1. Women do it. 2. The government does it. 3. Private businesses do it.
What?!
> … are we going to accept this same rhetoric for anyone that films others in public and/or commercial spaces?
yes, please.
i think that is exactly the direction we should be pushing. this creepy compulsion to record random people is weird af.
Is there a better way to modulate others’ behavior?
Before, when it was he said, she said, it was always tenuous for the person with less power to pursue the issue. Now, they can finally access consequences for people violating their freedoms.
Social expectations, upbringing, interpersonal ties that make social behaviors potentially costly on a personal level to do wrong, all things the same people making the glasses made all of their money degrading?
Easy - covert recording of other people in public is not OK.
This ridiculous idea that "it's in public so you have no expectation of privacy" is a semantic retcon, the pervasiveness of cameras is new and fundamentally changes your level of exposure in the public sphere. Overtly recording people in public is not really OK. Face-mounted, covert recording is another step too far and offensive to most people.
If you genuinely wish to understand the attitude, may I recommend doing a deep dive into the many fine articles written about this back in 2013-15, when Google failed to launch the original glasshole-wear.
I wonder if these things will meet the same fate as bluetooth headsets. Once upon a time decried as the preserve of "Bluetooth Douches" who worse the Jabra while taking their banking phone calls, now they're everywhere. Everyone's got Airpods in.
One day perhaps Meta Glasses will be the same. I really like them. They're a spectacular (haha) addition to a sightseeing trip. At the aquarium you can ask them what you're looking at and it'll tell you about the fish, at the playground you can record your kids running around, and you've got music where you go and so on. The problem, of course, is that they have short battery life and I don't want to switch from my smart glasses to my other glasses since the entire point is availability.
Here's a video of my daughter running around the playground from the perspective of my wife: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcLAByw6ZYc
That is an interesting perspective I hadn't thought about. I see relatives constantly throwing phone cameras in baby's faces "look here, look here" the kids are trained to look at the phone/camera. I think of the experience from your daughter here, just running up to her mom wearing glasses - I hear the mass surveillance concerns, I see the pervert/harassment angle, I saw a friend do the "recording a party" angle, but I am just surprised I didn't see something as wholesome as this - thanks for expanding my view.
> Once upon a time decried as the preserve of "Bluetooth Douches" who worse the Jabra while taking their banking phone calls, now they're everywhere. Everyone's got Airpods in.
Two very different use cases. The vast majority of folks wearing AirPods are listening, not talking. The former is not disruptive to others while the latter is.
I'm very confused by this take.
It's been over 20 years since then and it's still just as awkward to take a call in public. People will instinctively prefer a quiet place away from the crowd. Otherwise others may eavesdrop, think you're talking to them, or are crazy.
You'll find that most of those people with airpods are listening to something, not talking on a call. The most popular "smart glasses" that I see everywhere don't have cameras. They're "AR" HUDs for watching movies or playing games.
It's not about social acceptance. These hardware designs still suck big time.
> think you're talking to them
Yeah that's still weird. Last time it happened to me was in the City of London near Liverpool St (ironic as we're talking about banking phonecalls). Out of nowhere a guy walking towards me starts speaking, for all the world like he's trying to talk to me, so I stopped and said "Hey, can I help you?"
Nope, strides on past, then I noticed the airpods.
People wearing cameras is going to increase over time, no matter what. Why would it slow down?
Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely anti a lot of things, including people wearing cameras all the time, but I see no logical way to stop it without stomping on freedoms. In this case, defense will be your ally, whatever form that may take,eg wearing a mask.
If I had to choose between flock cameras and meta glasses existing, I'd choose the glasses.
Quite simply because people don't want to be casually recorded 24/7. By "casually" I mean by other people doing so indiscriminately, if not actively fishing for "content", as opposed to entities doing so for more justifiable reasons, like a security cam.
> People wearing cameras is going to increase over time, no matter what.
Why?