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.”
They better invest in frame designs too cause as soon as they're recognizable they're gonna get slapped off faces real quick
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.
Maybe we'll see the revival of the term "glasshole"
Sometimes analog solutions are the most effective against digital problems.
Are there any less obviously aggressive tactics we can use? Wear something that is blinding to the cameras, or something else to obfuscate?
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.
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.
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.
I don't think you could justify slapping them off of anybody's face unless you really just like to assault people.
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.
Do blind people not care about data privacy? Most likely they do and should ask for good TOS now while still possible.
High end phones these days run smaller LLMs sorta fine.
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.
I would acquit
does your workplace allow recording coworkers without their permission?
In the office? No. But at lunch or outside of the office is not controlled by work place policy.
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
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.
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.”
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”
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.
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The lack of self awareness is pretty fascinating.
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.
Right, this is socipathy, kleptocracy and pure madness that having more money than need generates.
Accurate description of META.
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.
care-less people, etc...
This is unironically what happens when society rewards sociopaths
It could auto blur faces... but people wouldn't use that feature.
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
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.
If I were Meta's lawyer I would advise them to definitely put into writing how they are fully conscious that this is wrong.
Damn you’re right. I got so annoyed at the headline I didn’t even read the article so that’s on me
Yeah its more like "quick, its friday night and someone just got bombed, toggle that feature on"
> 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.
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?
I feel the same way every time I read that someone did something "quietly" in a headline.
Well to an extent, it does work. Flood the zone.
Less attention on you, less negative press, better sales.
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.
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.
That shouldn't be too difficult with the current US administration. Maybe another reason Bezos and Trump get along so well