In the EU they have.

Pictures of people, especially once they are identified, are person related data. And there are strict rules on how companies can collect / generate / process / transfer this kind of data.

Podcast Behind the Bastards has a great episode on Zuck, worth a listen.

> Zuck buys all the buildings in the block to have his privacy

It's even worse than that, now he's buying up indigenous burial sites:

https://robbreport.com/shelter/celebrity-homes/mark-zuckerbe...

Billionaires buying tons of Hawaiian land is actually a huge problem. Marc Benioff has been doing it as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Careless_People

Destroying the society is a feature for them not a bug.

This is what happens when you take people with impaired empathy for other human beings, nurture that impairment, and then present unfathomable sums of wealth to incentivize the continuation of the impairment.

Don't forget, Facebook (Meta) owns 3% of Ray-Ban's parent Luxottica group [1]. They clearly are exerting control over the future direction.

Regardless of what THEY do, what WE as consumers can do is to permanently brand these awful glasses as "pervert glasses" [2] and publicly shame them. I'm here for it.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/meta-takes-around-3-sta...

[2] https://futurism.com/future-society/meta-ray-ban-smart-perve...

It's especially frustrating because the Ray-Ban logo no longer indicates quality or exclusivity: They were acquired by Luxottica Group in 1999.

Well, RayBan was junk brand in 90s, if it becomes junk it would be just fine.

> but I can't understand how it's not absolutely destroying the Ray-Ban brand?

> Ray-Ban seems to go completely free.

because reasonable adults can distinguish between Meta and Ray-Ban.

I had my ray-ban sunglasses stolen this summer.

I replaced them with a brand I was able to confirm was a) Not Ray Ban b) Not a Luxotica brand. c) Owned and operated in America (note, that doesn't mean the glasses were made in USA). d) Cost less than 1/4 of previous ray-bans.

Anecdotal but I hear quite a few people talk negative about Ray-Ban related to the backlash. They are the "pervert glasses" brand now. I think there definitely is reputation damage. Also the "banray" [0] campaign for my country is doing well I think (I regularly see their stickers), and this name reversal may also harm the brand if it sticks.

[0] https://banray.eu/en/

Penalty because it’s based on what people think when they see them. They don’t say Meta Raybands but just Meta glasses. If influential people were to start saying the former enough that it becomes then martins. Also is the question of do other Rayband glasses look like it. If this line is distinct enough than it won’t harm other lines since the visual association isn’t made.

>> "The glass only seems to appeal to a certain type of people anyway."

What type of people is that? I am just a dad who has them and films his kids doing cute things without making the phone camera an ever present intrusion while outdoors.

It's fine, it's Meta, suspicion is warranted, but I'm hoping it can be moderated and directed. People like me are kind of left out right now in what seems to be a runaway narrative.

P.S: Would love a suggestion that doesn't involve angrily telling parents to not take pictures of their kids as an alternative. It sucks that I have to explain that this will be happening anyway.

People still keep using Instagram and X and until that changes there is no backlash. Customers and users have signaled over and over there is nothing that can be done to make them leave, so Mark and Elon get to do whatever they want.

Luxottica, the owners of Ray-Ban since 1999, realized after they survived the expose on their blatant monopolistic price gouging that none of this sticks. People just see something they recognize and go with it.

It might be destroying the brand, but does anyone care?

> I do wonder if we're just moving to shun people wearing glasses with heavy frames in the near future. The glass only seems to appeal to a certain type of people anyway.

That's ridiculous.

Currently there's a massive, and understandable, backlash against the Meta/Ray-Ban glasses

Is there? "Massive?"

Outside of HN and a few tech pubs read by a statistically insignificant number of people, 99.9995% of people don't even know these exist.

Ten years ago people would have said the same about a lot of the surveillance tech we have today: TVs that sell your viewing data, always on microphones that listen to everything in your house to send to big tech so you can easily set a timer, doorbells that record your neighbors house and upload everything to the police 24/7, etc

Not so long ago this was also the thought about mobile phones, now everyone is walking around with them so they can film/pic anyone all the time while 'faking' to be doing something else. If there is any convenience for people to be had, they will go for it. I think the convenience part over phones is just not there (yet). The experience is just not yet anything worthwhile / good / smooth so it's just lame, cringy and clunky, outside of filming. Maybe someone will make something that works, maybe it will be something completely different.

But if it gets a smartphone moment, no-one will talk about the privacy and the cameras anymore and that's why they keep trying.

There is a reason why they are partnering with Rayban; meta has no brand name it can use. Which is pretty wild, because every other big tech company has _some_ kind of brand a non trivial number of people — paying money — who would say something like: "I really need/want to use it every day because it is useful to me, my work would be severely hampered without it"(or some syntactical variation of that sentence with varying amounts of affection towards the brand)

Unfortunately, they don’t have to be very successful to have an impact. Even just their introduction to the marketplace normalizes the concept, just a bit. Google Glass failed and so have other camera-equipped glasses, but notice that they keep popping up. Look how many companies have made them, and for how many years. Collectively, it’s moved the needle. I know someone who uses them regularly, mostly for recording rollercoaster rides, but that’s still plenty for a surveillance company.

Facial recognition is becoming common enough that it’s no longer very surprising if you’re in a crowded public space. Malls argue they need it to catch thieves, airports argue they need it to catch terrorists, and so on and so forth.

Privacy is like Humpty Dumpty, except he’s being poked to death.

saw an ad today for some ear pieces that look like audio speakers but theyre actually cameras as well, so it seems manufacturers realise glasses will annoy people but arent giving up.

All they have to do is create a new child company with the same tech (new name new trust) and give the glasses away for free if capturing the data is more valuable than the hardware sales. People don't have the time or energy to research every single company and product they want to buy so corporations (and politicians) take advantage of this.

Things have become normalized which just a decade ago would have been thought to never be socially acceptable. Frame it differently, make things convenient and offer something "for free" and everybody around you will forget their concerns, if they ever had any.

As much as I want this to be true, tech not being socially acceptable has not been much of a barrier in the past. At least not in the US.

At best adoption is delayed a while until the marketing department figures out a strategy that is more palatable.

Never understimate people's ability to not care.

They may not need to be, as some are discrete. I am concerned because I wear tinted glasses a lot for completely different reasons.

Google Glass comes to mind

Yes, but also no.

A longer argument can be put here: https://www.secretbatcave.co.uk/software/we-need-to-talk-abo...

Its perfectly possible that AR glasses could be _more_ privacy preserving than mobile phones. THe problem is, either the market needs to make it financially advantageous to be privacy preserving (yes I can hear the laughing from here) or the legal mechanism by which the end user can request damages from either the user of the glasses, or the maker ofthe glasses, or both.

In this future you describe, you forgot the key feature: that "everyone" is not really "everyone", because if you are not an individual in the system with all this augmentation, you are "no one" and effectively cut out of the economy. so, sure "everyone" will have this, because society will create an environment where the tech have nots are treated as if they do not exist.

Luckily, the future isn't set in stone. I see a ton of skepticism towards this surveillance tech.

>> in the future there will be no privacy, because everyone will be able to watch everyone else.

"Mark Zuckerberg spends $30 million on four homes to ensure privacy" - https://www.nbcnews.com/businessmain/mark-zuckerberg-spends-...

But some are everyone-er than others.

thats a nightmare for privacy enthusiasts :/

Fully accessible to all? Not when there's money to be made by putting it behind a paywall. Unless it's served with ads I guess.

3GC

That series was prescient.

Government agencies love this stuff. Everything that's illegal for them to do (just in case they still care), Meta does it for them.

You can create a patent that builds on other patents. You can make up all kinds of "what if" "inventions" and spend a lot of money acquiring patents for them, if you have the money to do this originally. Then it is a game of having the financing to "protect" those patents from infringers. If a corporation has more legal reserves than a patent holder, it can be a long drawn out legal battle where the corporation eventually wins, or the patent holder can just not fight and it ends there. This is the patent system.

Won't happen, that's what campaign contributions are for.

They will get periodic slaps on the wrist, but this is purely for show. There is too much money to be made and spread around.

You're buying supporter status in the National Surveillance Effort. Seats in patriot heaven don't come for free.

Technically quite a big difference.

I'm not sure what part of meta delevoped that, I can't find those names in linkedin. I vaguely recognise one name but can't be sure about it.

In meta, there are a number of research teams, SOme are pure hardware, although they are less now, some are software and some are about specific modes of interaction. Ie agios is about touch, opals are about displays (assuming they exist anymore) surreal is about visual understanding and graphics is well, graphics.

Surreal built a "ego centric" platform, ie research perv glasses. They are quite capable https://www.projectaria.com/

Recording data is easy, processing and making that data usable, within the power budget is hard.

On the face of this, its trivially simple to do. Just record all that video and sound, do some STT facial recogntion and location extraction and jobs a goodun.

Doing it with a total power envelope of <500mwhrs is the hard part.

However, in terms or problems. These glasses have the ability to precisly locate the wearer. By inference it can locate anything it can see. If you have more than one wearer, you can locate lots of objects/people in real time.

This means that you can trivially map people's movments,s thoughts and actions in more or less real time.

Great for advertising, great for visually impaired, shit for everyone else.

Security cameras generally don't change their location.

The massive database it's connected to, the government's awareness of said database, and the government's intentions regarding the database.

I wouldn't ever buy anything with camera from Meta. Or to be honest any device. It's pretty much guaranteed to steal your data.

When did you last see a security camera in the bathroom?

this is a type of false equivalency. the comments you read earlier were likely left by different people

the whiplash can be jarring, but it's important to remember that the commentariat are many individuals, not a single entity you can agree or disagree with

Who, what, when, where were people praising Meta? I don't live in that bubble

"Current lawsuits are pushing for universal recording because we require users to tell us their age" is a weird argument.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_book

>A face book or facebook is a paper or online directory of individuals' photographs and names published by some American universities. In particular, the term denotes publications of this type distributed by university administrations at the start of the academic year, with the intention of helping students to get to know each other. A face book or facebook is a paper or online directory of individuals' photographs and names published by some American universities. In particular, the term denotes publications of this type distributed by university administrations at the start of the academic year, with the intention of helping students to get to know each other.

You're suggesting total surveillance as an answer. That's going to happen then everyone will be oppressed in mo time at all.

Your examples and grievances are real and shared by me and many reading your comment, however, maybe let's start by making sure police are accountable? At the same time stop employing thugs and racists. Stop giving them weapons and a uniform. And make them unaccountable for (as the rest of the world see it) out and out cold bloodied murder.

Your arguments sounds just like their internet.org pitch. Also advertised as great equalizer for the poor. Facebook used it for data extraction and political plays, with no regard for actual people using it. Meta should never be involved in any matters of public interest.

Police can and should be reined in. There are so many better levers that can be pulled to do this, if only the political will were present. A technofeudalist surveillance state is a poor solution.

I would also love for ubiquitous surveillance to be used for good, but what would happen in your scenario is ICE using the footage to hunt and kidnap people who "look" like undocumented immigrants.