[blakesterz]

  Meta aims to introduce facial recognition to its smart glasses while its biggest critics are distracted, according to a report from The New York Times. In an internal document reviewed by The Times, Meta says it will launch the feature “during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns.”

https://www.theverge.com/tech/878725/meta-facial-recognition...

[rudhdb773b]

I never understand why a company would put something like this in writing.

I worked at a midsize financial company before and whenever there was something even approaching a legal or ethical grey area, we'd pick up the phone and say come to my office to talk, and then you'd close the door.

We weren't doing anything nearly as nefarious as Meta, yet everyone was always aware that email and phone conversations were recorded and archived.

[conception]

When you have no fear about repercussions of being caught. Case in point, nothing will happen about this.

[nakedpwr]

Surely though there is some type of survival instinct still awake and alive in the hearts and minds of men and women. We are a very aggressive species. Surely something would awaken and tell you "you should be quiet now" and "your next and only words should be lawyer". Surely...

[virgildotcodes]

This could very well still be the case with the people at Meta. It's just that the things that still trigger this instinct in them are far worse than what's being discussed here, so they've become desensitized, this is on the tamer end of the spectrum, and this falls below the threshold that would trigger those instincts.

[tdeck]

Exactly, people are distracted by nothing being done about the Epstein files, a genocide being committed out in the open for 2+ years, fascist private army running around abducting DoorDash drivers and shooting people in the head. It's a great time for anyone wanting to do a society-level bad thing.

[godelski]

Same reason project 2025 was put in writing. When you have large organizations you need to distribute communication. It's really just about cooperation and logistics

[gherkinnn]

Maybe, just maybe, Meta bosses aren't even aware that what they're doing is nefarious. Just business as usual.

Now, one wonders what constitutes "nefarious" or a grey zone worth hiding in their minds.

[lovich]

>I never understand why a company would put something like this in writing.

Do you believe these companies and individuals will ever see consequences for putting this in writing? I don't think they will, and I assume they believe the same based on their actions. Why waste time being "moral" when you don't lose anything for being immoral and stand to gain something if your gamble wins?

I mean, there's a whole philosophical outlook about being a good person and some people just want to do without needing enforcement, but those people also dont tend to become one of the largest corporations on the planet.

[no_wizard]

>We weren't doing anything nearly as nefarious

But still nefarious. Thats kinda messed up, to be honest.

[pluc]

They better invest in frame designs too cause as soon as they're recognizable they're gonna get slapped off faces real quick

[thewebguyd]

Maybe we'll see the revival of the term "glasshole"

[quantified]

We are seeing it. Everyone can help by using it.

[jim33442]

The Google glasses were asking to be bullied, but the Meta ones are cooler looking

[hackyhacky]

New makeup, old pig

[pesus]

Sometimes analog solutions are the most effective against digital problems.

[DonHopkins]

But the hand is composed of digits. You could start by pointing at them and laughing, then flipping them off, then holding your hand up to their face so they can talk to it.

[hdjrudni]

You mean record onto tape?

[esseph]

For android users: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.pocketpc.ne...

[nanobuilds]

The long term goal might indeed be unrecognizable designs. Perhaps augmented reality contact lens. It will take a long time but people tend to slowly get used to giving more and more of their privacy away. Mojo Vision made a prototype of this. It's more the display but you can imagine the camera being somewhere else and streaming to the lens in an unobstructed way.

[hightrix]

Are there any less obviously aggressive tactics we can use? Wear something that is blinding to the cameras, or something else to obfuscate?

[pluc]

Slapping a pair of glasses that are recording you, processing your face, sending biometrics and images back to one of the worst privacy offenders on the planet off of the face of someone who is willingly doing all that without asking your permission is a perfectly appropriate reaction. Put your shoulder into it.

I'd rather we normalize that than adversarial fashion.. but that's probably what you were looking for.

[juleiie]

Yeah sure you are going to start slapping people on the street mr badass guy. That’s all cool and fun until someone pulls a knife on you.

Look, the previous commenter has legitimate question how can we do it for real. Not just speed run to the gates of afterlife after touching the wrong person.

[quantified]

First wearers are more likely to have a concealed carry. They have the money, and are from the right demographics.

[juleiie]

Yeah in any case it will end badly for you if not the first time then eventually. Who lives by the sword dies by the sword.

It just takes one unlucky time where the other person doesn’t subscribe to the idea of proportional response or has military training with muscle memory that takes over.

[achierius]

Shooting someone for breaking your glasses would be an act of murder. Even shooting someone for slapping you in the face would be an act of murder. Clearly you don't have experience with firearms or the legislation around them, or you would be aware of this.

[pluc]

> Look, the previous commenter has legitimate question how can we do it for real.

I gave parent the term "adversarial fashion" as an answer to their query, they should look that up.

[hightrix]

While I'd like to agree with you, and do in some cases, there are many cases where this just isn't a feasible approach. For example, a peer coworker has a pair of these. I just don't interact with her while she is wearing them. If my boss were to get a pair there is no way I can justify slapping them off his face.

[DrewADesign]

It’s also at least simple assault, and quite possibly aggravated assault on someone that has a sophisticated camera pointed at your face that’s sending biometrics, images, and probably video back to one of the worst privacy offenders on the planet.

Feels great to say it. Would feel great to do it. Morally defensible to anyone that knows anything about privacy if the person isn’t low-vision or something. In reality, a terrifically stupid idea.

[dylan604]

I don't think you could justify slapping them off of anybody's face unless you really just like to assault people.

[deaux]

Streaming someone live to Meta, potentially the most evil company in the world (not "per employee" but by "damage done per day") without their permission, especially in a place where this is not at a expected - like an office rather than a football stadium - is great justification. It ticks all the boxes.

[miki123211]

They're incredibly popular in the blind community, and for good reason.

I think even the political activists will be extremely divided on this one. You have privacy on one hand, accessibility and a genuinely life-changing technology on the other.

[quantified]

Yeah, this could be the "lost dog" approach that Ring was trying. I feel for the blind. But in weighing their concern against everyone else's... they should get a different supplier.

[tartoran]

Do blind people not care about data privacy? Most likely they do and should ask for good TOS now while still possible.

[tdeck]

I don't have much of an objection to Blind people wearing these, but there are all kinds of things that are OK to do with a disability that aren't OK to do if you don't need special accomodation.

[deaux]

They shouldn't be divided, they should (wo)man up and say the thing they well know out loud: the harms to society are not worth it, the societal consequences of Meta being in control of this are severe and will, as always, hurt the weak and poor the most. Unfortunately the blind community will have to wait a few more years to get a local version, which is guaranteed to appear with how things are going.

[lynx97]

Accessibility never really prevented anyone to do shit which breaks it. Remember CAPTCHAs?

(and I am blind, I know what I am talking about)

[numpad0]

High end phones these days run smaller LLMs sorta fine.

[lacunary]

does your workplace allow recording coworkers without their permission?

[hightrix]

In the office? No. But at lunch or outside of the office is not controlled by work place policy.

[listeria]

Have you tried bringing it up with HR? If you explain why you try to avoid her while she's wearing them, they might ask her to stop wearing them to work.

Meta's own guidelines[1] say that you should "Power off in private spaces."

You can't always tell if you're being recorded since they can be tampered with to disable the LED. And from what I gather, the LED only serves to indicate of video recording, and not necessarily audio.

[1]: https://www.meta.com/ai-glasses/privacy/

[tartoran]

You could always say you're not comfortable being processed and uploaded to Meta. If they wear the glasses at their desks replacing their screen , that's fair game.

[nakedpwr]

Lololol that's really good.

[__MatrixMan__]

I would acquit

[Aeglaecia]

while noble, basically any western system will punish such behaviour as assault ... perhaps this point could be expressed as a prefererence for the law to change such that deprivation of privacy becomes a valid self defense argument ... in the meantime there do exist passive defenses such as face masks designed to interfere with facial recognition

[scotty79]

It's also an assault, with intrinsic video evidence of the crime committed.

[juleiie]

Exactly, not only you agree to any sort of harm (potentially fatal) in return by any sort of weapons that person has you can’t see, they can just do nothing and record you and you have problems with police and serve short sentence even.

This is all children talk here. Seriously people stop being so edgy on the internet and what you wouldn’t do. Use your god damn brain

[jmye]

Yes, cops will jump right on someone getting slapped. That definitely sounds like reality. Good call.

Do you guys ever like, go outside?

[phil21]

Plenty of places in the US are not large dense urban cities, and the cops will absolutely respond to a battery call. Like every time.

Plenty of places this would be the most interesting call of the day for a police force and you'd have 5 squad cars show up.

Other places won't even bother responding to the call. Your mileage will greatly vary.

[WD-42]

Take out your phone, hold it up, and record them back. Get others to do it too for extra comical effect.

Honestly I’d love to hear from someone who actually owns one of these things how doing this is any different than using the glasses.

[noah_buddy]

This seems like the most obvious, legal, and direct way to stigmatize use of these glasses. Put a phone up to their face and say “I might be recording you.”

[WD-42]

Exactly. If you do this and the wearer says something like “I’m not even recording bro” the perfect response is “I’m not either”

[transfer92]

and turn on the flashlight while recording

[dylan604]

I've always wanted to sew very bright IR LEDs into a hat that would blind a camera. Your face would naturally be shadowed by the bill of the hat as that's its intended purpose. The IR would hopefully make the camera want to adjust shutter speed and gain/ISO while assuming a fixed aperture lens.

[jim33442]

There was a fictional version of this in the Artemis Fowl books. My old camcorder picked up a lot of IR outside of visible range, but I think newer sensors are much less susceptible to this.

[tdeck]

IIUC bright IR LEDs can harm your eyes if you stare at them too long.

[kungp]

Wasn't there something about how the LIDAR in self-driving cars destroys camera sensors?

[1659447091]

https://old.reddit.com/r/MVIS/comments/1i6zryi/reports_of_15...

Now to find a way to make 1550nm lidar glasses to burn out any cameras pointed directly at your face

[skillina]

Depends what your threat model is, but this will literally turn you into a glowing signal that says "hey, look at me!" Your face might be protected but anyone manually reviewing security footage will be paying way more attention.

[dylan604]

When did we change the subject from fucking the Meta to hiding from security cameras?

[542354234235]

Meta isn't the only camera that might be pointed at you at any given time.

[1659447091]

> Are there any less obviously aggressive tactics we can use?

If you are in the US, and hopefully in a state that is open to blocking this sort of thing, be very vocal and persistent with your state reps about the issue. Get others to join. I am curious if this will be legal within the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act or a couple other states with similar laws

[Bender]

Email corporate security and the chief privacy officer with logs of who is wearing spy glasses. Remind them Facebook controls where that data is stored and who has access to it. Ask how to respond to auditors inquiring about it leave off, "in the future audits".

- Or -

Walk around with a vlogger camera that has a large microphone. If anyone takes issue, say "I'm the 5th person here walking around recording everyone today. The others are using a spy camera in their glasses."

- Or -

Borrow a pair of them when in public at a restaurant and loudly say, "Oh my god! These AI smart glasses really do remove everyone's clothing, even on the children!" be ready to run.

_________________

Only do these things if you typically rock the boat regardless. i.e. often try and fail to get fired or arrested.

[IG_Semmelweiss]

water to the face ?

Would that work ?

Seems benign enough that its not going to earn you a visit to the judge, but should disable most electronics, no?

[DonHopkins]

Who of us hasn't accidentally performed a spit take of a mouth full of beer into someone's face?

[testbjjl]

While I don’t disagree, with the sentiment, is this not incitement of violence?

[yunnpp]

Yes. The company is inciting violent behaviour with socially disturbing products.

[testbjjl]

The company is inciting violence. This can be said of anything. Violence is a choice, self defense is a right. Your “look what you made me do” defense might not go as you planned and feel like the wrong move when your rage dissolves. I remember when this place had fewer broken windows. Seems it’s becoming a ghetto.

[sershe]

I'm not the kind of person to wear those, but if I was and someone tried to slap them off me I might feel really threatened if you catch my drift. And since I won't be able to see too well, it will take some extra effort... Was that remaining movement the next punch, or death throes? Can't see too well, better safe than sorry!

[Waterluvian]

I really cannot comprehend how someone can work for a company like that and maintain possession of a soul. I feel like the older I’m getting, the further away I am from understanding.

[WD-42]

Gen Z doesn’t seem to carry the millennial “making the world a better place” sensibility. They are all hustle culture, all the time. While I appreciate a lot of their culture this is the aspect that makes me nervous about the future.

[soared]

The person responsible for high level corporate strategy at Meta is surely not Gen Z but boomer or millennial.

[WD-42]

That person is surely a lizard person, generation or wider societal norms don't matter.

The point I was trying to make is it's becoming easier to staff companies with dubious moral standings.

[SoftTalker]

Gen X

[refulgentis]

I'm 37, single, no family or extended family b/c of an...interesting...childhood.

Every day I understand more and more that I have something really priceless and rare, complete luxury of choice, and 99% of people don't. (as with all things, it has its downside: nothing matters!)

I refused to get "stuck" in my hometown, which motivated me from college dropout to FAANG. Once I got there, it was novel to me that even rich people get "stuck" due to inability to imagine losing status, and also responsiblities that come with obvious, healthy, lifestyle choices (i.e. marriage and kids)

[deaux]

Of course they have a choice, just like you do. You're making excuses for them that they don't need. They're actively choosing the "work at Meta and maintain lifestyle" rather than "don't work at Meta and maybe slightly change lifestyle". Every day, they make that choice.

Take all the people who get and got laid off. Their life goes on.

> responsiblities that come with obvious, healthy, lifestyle choices (i.e. marriage and kids)

99.9999% of people in the world who are married with kids, don't work at Meta.

[refulgentis]

I think you're arguing with a point I didn't make. I'm not excusing anyone. I'm describing a mechanism in response to "I cannot comprehend why." Here, why people stay in situations they might privately find distasteful. That's a different project than assigning moral grades.

"They have a choice" is of course literally true. It's also not very interesting? Everyone always has a choice in the tautological sense. The question the parent raised was how do people live with it, and the answer is: the same way people live with all kinds of things. Incrementally, surrounded by context that makes it feel normal, with stakes that feel high relative to their baseline, not yours.

Your 99.9999% stat kind of makes my point for me. Those people also didn't get a $400k offer from Meta. The trap isn't marriage+kids, it's young + don't know better + land there + marriage + kids+a lifestyle calibrated to a specific income, plus the identity that comes with it. The golden handcuffs thing is a cliché because it's real.

None of this is a defense of working on things you find unconscionable. It's just that "they could simply choose not to" has never once in history been a sufficient explanation of human behavior.

[deaux]

Your phrasing just didn't match your point.

> I have something really priceless and rare, complete luxury of choice, and 99% of people don't

People working at Meta are almost without exception, people who have more luxury of choice than nearly anyone on the planet. It's very important to keep repeating this, and not say the direct opposite as you did. You can make your point without doing so.

[refulgentis]

You keep restating that Meta employees are enormously privileged as though that contradicts me. It doesn't - it's the premise. The entire phenomenon I'm describing, in response to "I cannot comprehend why", is that privilege and felt optionality are different things, and the gap between them is where people get stuck.

[ipython]

Unfortunately, because 99.999% of people in the world are “customers” of Meta, making profit for Meta, the 0.001% of people who do work at Meta are paid like relative kings.

[devin]

The soulless kids who used to go into finance joined tech and are inspired by the current crop of tech billionaires in the way that their predecessors were inspired by Gordon Gecko.

[esseph]

> The soulless kids who used to go into finance joined tech and are inspired by the current crop of tech billionaires in the way that their predecessors were inspired by Gordon Gecko.

Yep. Once a couple of nerds got rich, it's what that segment pointed their money finders at. Advertising / marketing went with them.

It was a much nicer place for everyone when it was just the nerds who "had love for the game" :(

[dwayne_dibley]

The same can be said about those working in the weapons industry etc.

[jmye]

> how someone can work for a company like that and maintain possession of a soul

I mean, they don’t. There isn’t a single decent person who has ever worked at Meta, and that started long before this nonsense. The entire company is about the social destruction of its users. Everything anyone there works on drives towards that goal.

[ViktorRay]

The lack of self awareness is pretty fascinating.

[tty456]

The individuals making these decisions are 100% aware of what they are doing. Driving for and implementing stuff like this is for profits, bonuses, and internal recognition.

[testbjjl]

Suck has made his mind up about which side he’s on with his money. I recall a time when people on the Forbes list were quietly political.

[cyanydeez]

Right, this is socipathy, kleptocracy and pure madness that having more money than need generates.

[hsuduebc2]

Accurate description of META.

[ambicapter]

What do you mean? They're fully aware this would be received poorly by "certain groups" and are applying all that highly-praised brain power to getting around that undesirable issue to keep their RSUs growing.

[xg15]

care-less people, etc...

[thatguy0900]

This is unironically what happens when society rewards sociopaths

[godelski]

I'm curious how the engineers justify this. I'm generally interested.

Please don't respond with how you think people justify, I want to hear the actual reasons. I'm tired of speculative responses to questions like these.

Please do share if you've had to deal with similar situations too. And feel free to respond with green accounts.

I legitimately want to understand why this happens. Not why from management, why from engineers.

[shigawire]

Probably a mix of naivety, ignorance, and apathy.

Most people are just trying to get through their day and not worry about ethical questions.

I'd say that's terrible, but I'm not confident I'd be a better person if my livelihood depended on doing that sort of work, though I hope I'd be better.

[Arcuru]

The actual source article: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/meta-facial-re...

[koolala]

It could auto blur faces... but people wouldn't use that feature.

[wongarsu]

That shouldn't be too difficult with the current US administration. Maybe another reason Bezos and Trump get along so well

[Forgeties79]

Why is it always this accusatory “while you were distracted”-style rhetoric?

Who has been distracted from Facebook’s shenanigans? Who are they talking about? Is it me? Because I can tell you I have certainly not been distracted on that front. Am I supposed to feel guilty? Am I supposed to hold somebody accountable who should’ve been paying attention?

I do actually understand why it’s done, but I just find it very grating and if your goal is to actually raise awareness, shaming people is generally not the way to go about it.

Also the classic “we can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time” thing

[lamontcg]

This is Meta claiming in their internal communications that they plan on doing it while people are distracted with other concerns.

It isn't really "rhetoric", they're talking like they believe this actually happens, this is strategy.

And I tend to agree with them that things like attention and political capital are ultimately finite resources.

I've found that the "we can do two things" and "we can walk and chew bubblegum" line of argument to be simplistic and just wrong (and pretty incredibly patronizing). I think the world works exactly the way Meta thinks that it does here.

It might blow up and turn into a Streisand effect, but more often than not this kind of strategy works.

Much like how people think they can multitask and talk on the phone and drive at the same time and every scientific measure of it shows that they really can't.

[mullingitover]

If I were Meta's lawyer I would advise them to definitely put into writing how they are fully conscious that this is wrong.

[Forgeties79]

Damn you’re right. I got so annoyed at the headline I didn’t even read the article so that’s on me

[dormento]

Yeah its more like "quick, its friday night and someone just got bombed, toggle that feature on"

[phil21]

> I've found that the "we can do two things" and "we can walk and chew bubblegum" line of argument to be simplistic and just wrong

It's painfully obvious to me society cannot do two things at once. You focus on one shared goal as a culture or everything falls apart very rapidly - as we are seeing today. It's why a common external "enemy" (e.g competitor, nation state, culture, whatever) has historically been so important.

The shared goal can be complex in nature, which requires many disciplines to come together to achieve it via a series of many parallel activities that might look like they are all doing something random, but it's all in the service of that singular shared goal.

This holds true from my experience at the national level all the way down to small organizations.

[michaelt]

> Who has been distracted from Facebook’s shenanigans? Who are they talking about? Is it me? Because I can tell you I have certainly not been distracted on that front.

On September 11th 2001 a UK government department's press chief told their subordinates it was a "good day to bury bad news".

The idea is pretty simple - you might be obligated to announce something that you know will be poorly received, like poor train performance figures, but you can decide the exact day you announce it, like on a day when thousands have died in a terror attack. What would otherwise be front-page news is relegated to a few paragraphs on page 14.

Facebook proposes a similar strategy: Get the feature ready to go, wait until there's some much bigger news story, and deploy it that day.

[randycupertino]

The facebook execs literally plotted to relaunch their unpopular product while people were distracted by other bad news.

> “We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,” according to the document from Meta’s Reality Labs, which works on hardware including smart glasses.

[datsci_est_2015]

American society has a finite aggregate supply of attention. Politicians and megacorporations often exploit this fact. This Verge article is a leak that verifies that Meta is actively and brazenly continuing to exploit it.

Is that a good enough explanation to reduce your feelings of being personally targeted?

[LambdaComplex]

I feel the same way every time I read that someone did something "quietly" in a headline.

[tokioyoyo]

Less attention on you, less negative press, better sales.

[raisedbyninjas]

Well to an extent, it does work. Flood the zone.

[GuinansEyebrows]

interesting (respectfully!) take that the "while you were distracted" rhetoric is coming from investigative journalists/commenters - i read this more as Meta's admission that they're betting on critics being distracted than an admonition by outside observers. it's probably easier to sneak up on a person to rob them when it's foggy; that's not victim blaming.

[ghurtado]

I usually hate this kind of click bait, but I think in this case it's warranted, since their explicit policy was to do this "while they are distracted". Verbatim.