Hey Meta: If You Didn’t Put Spy Cameras in Your Smart Glasses, Maybe People Wouldn’t Use Them for Spying?

I know this probably seems a tad on the obvious side, and stop me if someone has mentioned this before, but do you know what kinds of glasses you never really have to worry about being involved in the surreptitious invasion of personal privacy? That would be … every pair of glasses that ever existed, before companies started putting literal spy cameras into them, like they're gadgets from an old Dick Tracy comic panel, or an invention of James Bond's Q-Lab. There was a time in the not-so-distant past, in fact, when a woman receiving a terrible, unsolicited pickup line on the street from a man wearing glasses was free to merely laugh, sneer or express the appropriate level of disgust, without needing to conduct counter-reconnaissance of his face to determine if her response and her face was in the process of being recorded or live-broadcasted to the world. Can we go back to that? And can we stop acting as if a company like Meta is going to manage to "fix" every exploit possible through products like smart glasses, and simply demand they not have functionality that so inherently lends itself to abuse?

These abuses are, of course, not some brand new phenomenon–from the moment that the concept of smart glasses equipped with video cameras arrived, social media content of pranksters or "pickup artists" harassing women in public arrived right alongside it. The hucksters, supposedly attempting to demonstrate "rizz," but in reality mostly just finding/feeding an incel audience pining for content that involves making women uncomfortable, have been empowered by the ease and accessibility of the technology to make the simple act of venturing into public that much worse for everyone, but mostly for women. And at the same time, it has generally become easier and easier over time to film people in public without their consent because as smart glasses technology becomes more sophisticated, it looks less and less like the kitschy, futuristic visor once envisioned by the failed Google Glass, and more like any other pair of eyeglasses or sunglasses a person might wear. This trend arguably peaked last year when Meta's Ray-Ban Display collab hit the market, and it became functionally impossible to tell a person was in fact looking at a screen/display rather than looking at you. The same is true to varying degrees for Meta-powered smart glasses collaborations with other brands such as EssilorLuxottica, Oakley, and Prada, including collabs with the likes of Kylie Jenner.

The deep, unsettling reality of this simple fact–we never know when someone wearing glasses is actually lost in the web, or in digital displays–is the kind of thing that tech reporters that are busy with technical details or outright glazing (got to maintain access!) tend to skip right over without genuinely critiquing. Look at this in-depth preview, for instance, where the reporter handling the Meta Ray-Bans notes that no one can tell whether or not she's using a screen, and says only, "So uh, we'll see what that does to society." Yeah, I'm willing to bet the answer is "nothing good." The same reporter also describes its video capabilities (including being able to live zoom in a video) as "super spy shit," as if this is a good thing , something we should all be happy to hear, rather than the kind of thing that are getting these glasses banned at individual bars and nightclubs.

Video recording, by the way, is meant to be the one piece of functionality in these smart glasses that everyone else is aware that you're doing, because the glasses are equipped with LED lights that are activated when video recording begins, essentially to warn a person of your potentially skeevy behavior. Beyond the fact that there will always be a segment of society that simply doesn't know this and thus still has no idea they're being filmed, the most genuinely skeevy and tech-literate of users quickly found ways around the LED-light-as-transparency-mechanism. They found ways to cover or obscure the light, to give no indication that people were being recorded, so Meta responded by adding safety measures to deactivate the camera if the light was obscured when recording started. So in response … the pervs just started covering the light after recording started, and went on their merry way. This week, Meta announced new fixes meant to close this loophole as well, and knocked on about other ways it is supposedly targeting or shutting down this behavior among users, such as banning accounts or blocking common pickup artist hashtags, etc. At the same time, the company insists that "Only a tiny minority of people try to get around these protections, and the fact they have to go to these lengths shows our efforts are working," according to Meta's vice president of wearable, Alex Himel.

This is an attitude I cannot stand: A company born of the internet and social media, that encounters the very worst elements of human nature on a daily basis, acting as if there was no way they could know when they released video-recording glasses that the product would ever be used to take videos of people without their consent. They act as if this would have been an utterly unthinkable prospect that only the most deranged mind could have formulated, rather than Meta designers, lawyers, or their safety team that would be in charge of anticipating the actions of bad actors. And then they do it over and over again, acting ignorant or oblivious to the obvious abuses a tool can be used for, or the ethical issues it creates, and then acting freshly surprised and astounded each time that the same cadre of bad actors (who also happen to be the tech's most ardent fans) figures out another simple workaround to continue filming people incognito. Does anyone out there believe that the issue is now solved, with the latest fix? Or is it more reasonable to assume that the "tiny minority" producing a veritable ocean of harassing videos will just stay one step ahead, and hack the glasses in some new way to keep their grift going?

Recently, a collection of researchers at the University of Sydney published a research paper specifically on the phenomenon of people being filmed without their consent via smart glasses, and the style of exploitative social media content this has given rise to, citing hundreds of videos they had viewed and catalogued between 2023-2026. In the paper, titled "Harm Through the '#RizzCam': Smart Glasses, Ambient Capture and Invisible Harassment," they concluded not only that the more clandestine the filming of any given video, the more intense the harassment tended to be; but also that Meta had been woefully insufficient and underprepared in its response. Even if the problem was suddenly solved as of this week, it's still resulted in years of harassment of women leading up to this point, with the burden of recognizing it and doing something about it placed squarely on the victim.

"The company's answer to covert recording was a light on the device and an expectation that users would somehow just behave responsibly," the researchers wrote. "That has plainly not worked, and it leaves the burden on the people being filmed rather than on the company that built the device and owns the platforms the footage ends up on."

Which all begs the question: Is it so utterly impossible for such a product category to exist without the capability for filming video in the first place? I am not a tech reporter, or particularly tech-obsessed, and I assume that a camera is probably a necessary feature for using many of the display features in a pair of smart glasses. But that doesn't mean you have to give the commercial consumer the power to record videos, does it? Or is the problem that they would no longer want to pay you $800 for the device, if you took that function away? Regardless, rather than simply trying to address each way that bad actors break your product in order to invade the privacy of others, a company that genuinely cared about the issue would remove the tool allowing this entirely, while publicly recognizing that such a tool is not one that human beings can be trusted to responsibly wield. You want to take a video of something? Use the HD camera that every single one of us carries in their pockets at all times, in the form of your smartphone. At least then, people will know you're attempting some kind of stupid engagement content, and can tell you to get lost the old-fashioned way.

I can freely admit that there are some impressive capabilities that exist in this type of smart glasses technology, even if it's hard to imagine myself ever wanting to personally use them. The glasses can do things that a decade ago would have seemed like pure science fiction, such as live-captioning a person who is speaking in front of you. Such a feature has obvious applications for specific audiences such as the hard of hearing, or someone speaking English as a second language. The work of these designers can sometimes boggle the mind. But the likes of Meta–and everyone else making smart glasses as well–should recognize that the entire segment still runs the risk of being primarily associated with skeevy men recording people against their will, because that archetype is one of the most visible types of smart glasses user on social media. Maybe the single most visible.

Even the demographics of existing smart glasses users makes this readily apparent, because they heavily skew young and male. According to YouGov data collection, around 30% of smart glasses users are between 25-35, and a whopping 65% of all users are male. Less than 10% of all smart glasses users are in the 55 and older bracket. We'd be lying to ourselves if we said the capacity for clandestine recording wasn't part of what makes the technology more appealing for young men than women.

It's just impossible to have any real faith that a big tech behemoth like Meta, which was just ordered to pay $17 billion in fines to settle a lawsuit on the addictive properties of its social media networks, and redesign many of those networks core features, is about to solve the inherent privacy issues represented by smart glasses and video recording with the latest of countless patches and security updates. Mark Zuckerbeg's priorities are maintenance of the status quo, fighting regulation of any industry that is entangled with Meta's sprawling business interests, and sneaking in the occasional jet-ski session on the side. Countless women being harassed by dudes rocking $800 Meta smart glasses? That's just a cost of doing business.

It feels like a Pandora's Box scenario to even attempt to address at this point. You've already handed people a new way to record each other in public. How do you now go back? Maybe if someone uses a pair of these to record Zuckerberg or a prominent politician against their will, feelings on the matter would suddenly change? Until then, all men in glasses–myself sadly included–should expect to be suspect.