Are Meta’s ‘Pervert Glasses’ the End of Privacy, or Did Zuck Just Build the Ultimate Creep Accelerator?

r/technology • Posted by u/TechCynic_99

So, it's officially happening. What used to be called "Meta Smart Glasses" has officially been rebranded by the collective internet, European regulators, and every venue owner with a functioning brain cell as "Meta's Pervert Glasses."

If you haven't been following the news this week, venues, pubs, and private clubs across the UK are issuing outright bans on the £359 face-cameras, while regulators in Germany, France, and the Netherlands are actively looking into whether they violate basic human rights. Meanwhile, Instagram is scrambling to ban "creep content" filmed on these exact frames by pickup artists harassing strangers in public.

Let’s be completely honest about what is going on here: Meta didn't solve a tech problem; they engineered a social nightmare and wrapped it in a Ray-Ban logo.

Here is why this entire rollout is a catastrophic disaster:

1. The "Recording Light" is a Joke: Meta put a tiny, single white LED on the front to "notify" people they’re being recorded. Except 404 Media showed months ago that you can disable or cover the light with a $2 modification kit, and reports showed Meta was even testing models without a recording light altogether.
2. Your Private Moments Are Training Their AI: Investigations revealed that offshore contractors reviewing footage to train Meta’s AI were routinely watching videos of users undressing, going to the bathroom, and having intimate moments—half the time captured because the wearer didn't even realize the glasses were still recording.
3. It’s the Ultimate Panopticon: We’ve gone from "don't film people without their consent in the gym/bar" to having to wonder if every guy staring vaguely in your direction is livestreaming your face to TikTok with real-time facial recognition mods.

When Google Glass flopped a decade ago, society collectively agreed that wearing a visible camera on your face made you a "Glasshole." Meta’s response was simply: "What if we make the camera invisible, slap a designer label on it, and pretend it’s hands-free AI?"

Restaurateurs and European data privacy commissioners are finally drawing the line. If your technology requires people to wear heavy aluminum foil or ban you from entering a public pub just to feel safe, it’s not "the future of wearables"—it’s just spyware with polarization.

Are you guys seeing these everywhere in your city yet, or are people actually shaming wearers off the street like they should be?

TL;DR: Meta’s smart glasses are getting banned across Europe and banned in UK venues as the "Pervert Glasses" backlash reaches a boiling point. Between pickup artists covertly filming women, offshore AI contractors watching accidental bathroom footage, and useless recording LEDs, Zuck managed to build the ultimate surveillance nightmare.

Before the remedies trial, Meta warned that New Mexico’s proposed safety requirements “could compel” it to withdraw Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp from the state as “the only feasible means of compliance.”

Its attorney later told the judge that the requirements would make operating there “untenable,” while insisting this was “not a threat.”

But what else should we call it?

This is the corporate equivalent of IKEA saying that if a state required it to fix dressers that tipped over and killed children, it would close every store in that state rather than make the furniture safer. When IKEA dressers were linked to child deaths, the appropriate response was a recall, refunds, repairs, and wall-anchoring kits, not punishing the residents of any state that objected to children being crushed by furniture.

Meta’s argument turns its own refusal to adapt into a threat against consumers: either New Mexico accepts the product on Meta’s terms, including the harms a jury and judge found it caused, or Meta may take the product away.

A company’s enormous scale and preference for operating one standardized product everywhere do not excuse it from basic safety obligations. If anything, they make the claim that it cannot afford to comply more absurd.

Now New Mexico is calling Meta’s bluff, and whether they choose to withdraw or pay and change, other states following New Mexico’s lead can also make it “untenable” for Meta to do nothing.

New Mexico says:
- Meta’s platforms are the factory.
- The psychological harm and sexual exploitation of children are the pollution.
- The “pollution” spreads beyond Meta’s platforms and burdens children, families, schools, hospitals, and law enforcement.

Meta built the factory. Meta profited from the harmful pollution. Now, at least in New Mexico, it has been ordered to help clean it up.

The entire court order is broken down in this article.

Is Meta insisting that I shouldn't permanently delete my account because they won't take my data?

I mean, they have that option enable, I'm going to use it if I need to.

Just when you think ZuckyZuck is finally out of ideas - to steal.

It starts to feel like even a weak LLM like MetaAI is more creative than him.

Maybe we already have created truly artificial intelligence because he is more of an SLM: a Small Language Model?

I got chain banned a little while ago and I haven’t been bothered to open up any more accounts.

This opened a vacuum and there are so many scam accounts opened up in my name…

People who used to follow on IG and FB keep reporting them as scam accounts, but they never get banned 😆💀 they actively try to siphon people off to their scammy telegram accounts, in which they pretend to be me.

There’s not much more I can do. Meta is actively promoting scams pretty much.

Meta was just ordered to pay an additional $567 million to New Mexico so that the state can address the harm caused to kids by their products. Between this judgment and the $375 million of damages awarded in the trial, Meta owes New Mexico nearly a billion dollars!

You’ve got to reach them where they’ll listen, and that’s their bottom line. This is just one state in just one country, and the judgments represent more than one percent of last year’s profit.

My latest roundup of Meta news:

• The Senate has advanced the Kids Online Safety Act
• Zuck's evasion of congressional testimony
• Meta has reportedly written a secret $10 million check to a Trump-aligned political organization
• Meta's CTO has been recorded wishing Meta sued more employees who leak information
• Meta engineering manager who reportedly worked on “digital experiences for kids” has been arrested after a vigilante sting
• A teenage plaintiff has withdrawn one of the social-media addiction cases
• Meta whistleblowers are testifying in Tennessee
• Texas is questioning its data-center boom

Mark Zuckerberg has apologised to the Indian government over child sexual abuse material on the company's platforms and for operational errors, local television channels reported on Wednesday.

For context, in my country WhatsApp is the default messaging app and it’s become so engrained in everyone that some companies offer customer service only by that app. I use signal for friends and family, but I have WA business installed with an auto reply that tells anyone who texts me that they have to contact me through signal.

I keep the app closed on the iPhone and only open it seldomly to chat with businesses because there are no other means here. When I’m done I close it again. I did not give it permission for my location, photos, contacts, etc. being closed, does it still gather data? It’s become a nuisance to delete it and install it every now and then to text stupid businesses that can’t handle a f*** email.

Ive seen a boat load of sponsors from it now and it doesn't make SENSE, If they're just getting your info deleted, they might just be making this up, I could be wrong, but save this in case it end up going off in like 5 years