Yesterday I saw someone with Meta smart glasses in public for the first time. Even just standing near him was unpleasant. It doesn’t matter whether it’s recording, pointing a camera and mics at somebody who didn’t agree to it feels rude and a bit shocking.

I worry that this is becoming more acceptable or do others feel the same way? Companies keep pushing forward, now with smart neckleses, smart headphones, (all equipped with camera and mic). Are these all doomed to fail? What feature would convince me or others to actually start using them? It’s certainly not chatgpt strapped on your face, or a shitty quality spy camera either.

If any of my friends or family wore these, I wouldn’t feel comfortable speaking to them.

Im interested in your experiences. Thanks for reading.

    • kibiz0r@midwest.socialEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      One project that can help with this is the OUI-SPY, a small piece of open source hardware. The OUI-SPY runs on a cheap Arduino compatible chip called an ESP-32. There are multiple programs available for loading on the chip, such as “Flock You,” which allows people to detect Flock cameras and “Sky-Spy” to detect overhead drones. There’s also “BLE Detect,” which detects various Bluetooth signals including ones from Axon, Meta’s Ray-Bans that secretly record you, and more. It also has a mode commonly known as “fox hunting” to track down a specific device.

      https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01/how-hackers-are-fighting-back-against-ice

    • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
      0·
      2 months ago

      People used to call me a creep whenever I raised concerns about mass surveillance. Like, obviously if I wasn’t okay with that then I must have been planning something nasty, right?

      Well this is precisely the scenario I was trying to warn about, and it’s far nastier than anything I could have possibly done, even if that were my intention…

    • utopiah@lemmy.ml
      0·
      2 months ago

      Written in jest and yet using CV at scale on GPUs initially used for LLMs make sense.

      Yet… why do so? As I wrote just minutes ago in https://lemmy.ml/post/41546700/23280257 there is already very high quality signal that requires nearly no compute : your wireless trace. Google/Apple and your mobile provider or ISP and thus the government hosting it already know 24/7 where you are, how active you are, etc solely from your 5G/4G signal. Well OK for activity it’s with the IMU but the point is this is basically computationally free.

      You move around,

      • your mobile phone scans for 5G signals,
      • login in a nearby tower via its SIM/eSIM
      • and voila, you are there. It’s basically few requests on some databases and it’s instantaneous.

      compare this with

      • your identity with facial features (lots of photo) is store in a large DB
      • there is no known location so a network of thousands if not millions of cameras have to be queried to try to match your facial features again the last frames, so that’s ~gigabytes of data to send somewhere or query all those cameras with setup locally
      • there is a match! then repeat this locally for the next cameras, maybe just hundreds
      • light change or hoodie on, no match, restart process

      this is ridiculously expensive to run. I’m not saying it can’t be done (it’s been done and it’s not hard to setup) but… WHY would one do so when the first setup works more reliably and is orders of magnitude cheaper?

      Obviously both can be combined but also both can be bypassed conveniently and extremely cheaply (leave your phone home, wear sunglasses and a hygiene mask) so even though a realistic scenario I’d argue it’s not rational to not just rely on what already works for the vast majority of situations.

  • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
    0·
    2 months ago

    I remember back in the 80s,.and SONY Walkman cassette players became a thing. I worked in a record store, and I was an early adopter, although I had to go with a knock-off because I couldn’t afford the SONY at $3.35 /hour minimum wage.

    I loved being able to listen to music while I was driving (way better sounding than whatever shitty radio I had in my shitty car), park, get out, walk across the parking lot, through the mall, and to my store (or wherever), without stopping the music.

    I quickly realized that as I walked through the mall, I would get really dirty looks from people, especially older ones. They really took offense at me minding my own business and listening to music. I’m sure they would have been more offended if I was just walking around with a boombox blasting on my shoulder, like the style in some places at the time.

    I don’t know why they would care about me listening to music, or why they would think they have any right to let me know their opinion (through their visual cues), and mostly why I’d care what they’d think. I didn’t care what they thought about it, and I was offended that they presumed that I should care what they think.

    • bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      2 months ago

      They’d care if you were recording them with it constantly!

      The technology isnt the problem. Its the interconnected corporations that are the problem. In the 80s sony couldn’t tap into all your mix tapes and your microphone.

      This is why the past was better ;)

  • LemmyFeed@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    To be fair, you should have no expectation of privacy when in public. You’re constantly being recorded when in public whether you know it or not. If you keep this mindset then you can take steps to secure what little privacy is possible. Masks, hats, and IR blocking eyeglass lenses or sunglasses would be my protocol. And mindfully avoiding unscrupulous cameras. Also don’t discredit the power of blending in, become an unnoticeable object that blends into the background.

    In private, if a friend was wearing them, you should have more expectation of privacy and should voice the concerns to the friend. And if they don’t care then walk away, they’re not a good friend anyways.

  • termaxima@slrpnk.net
    0·
    2 months ago

    If I ever see someone with those glasses I will straight up punch them in the eye. I am not kidding. I would rather have someone walk around with a gun than those (and guns are illegal here)

  • Aria@lemmygrad.ml
    0·
    2 months ago

    I feel the same way about smartphones but it’s now completely normalised. Glasses are less paranoia-inducing since you can clearly see where it’s pointed and it’s at eye-level. I’d rather discourage smartphone use than smart-glasses use.

    • rcbrk@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      LoL @ the downvotes. Step one is acknowledging one’s addiction.

  • Libb@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    I would not stay nearby.

    Imho this ‘trend’ will end:

    • the day enough of the wearers start getting punched in the face. Not that I encourage anyone to do that, I don’t, but seeing how… angry and and willing to fight so many people already are, I can’t imagine it won’t happen more and more as those stupid glasses become more common.
    • If enough people start shaming them/their behavior, and it becomes a hurdle to wear those in public.

    Otherwise, it will probably become as ‘normal’ as messaging people sitting right next to you instead of, you know, talking to them.

  • ijustliketrains@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 months ago

    My first time seeing anything about the meta Rayban glasses was some guy sexually harassing my friend at work as a “prank video.” He used the glasses as a secret recording device then posted it on facebook.

  • ZiggyTheZygote@lemmy.ca
    0·
    2 months ago

    I would get a very powerful magnet and ruin their devices. That works right? Otherwise I’ll get a device that scrambles smart devices. Fuck Zuckerberg.

      • ZiggyTheZygote@lemmy.ca
        0·
        2 months ago

        😄 I’m a millennial so back in the day we learned that magnets ruin some electronics, but things might have changed now. So we need a knowledgeable tech person to let us know.

        • 9point6@lemmy.world
          0·
          2 months ago

          Magnets mostly messed with tapes, floppies and hard disks. I believe you could also mess up a CRT’s calibration with one.

          None of those technologies are particularly commonplace these days, especially not in those glasses.

          I mean an MRI level magnet could crush them, but you’re gonna struggle to move that around

      • Cherry@piefed.socialEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        Is there any song or maybe some audio that could be played out loud to discourage sharing of content or maybe get them on a list or something?

      • a4ng3l@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 months ago

        If you hit the glasses hard enough it will to the job as good as a hammer… failing that it takes a tad too much power for a « magnet » to affect electronics at a distance.

  • Allero@lemmy.today
    0·
    2 months ago

    I worry you might not have a representative audience here, as most of Lemmy is privacy-savvy. I guess most people just don’t care, and if it keeps this way, it will be no different than smartphones (which are primarily spy devices most people carry around all the time and no one notices anymore).

  • 73ms@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Having seen what people now accept I would not want to bet that these will fail. Never thought people would be OK with Google using their phone to record their exact location 24/7 and save a searchable history of it for example but it seems that never was even controversial. Same with phones and other dedicated little devices that are always listening…

  • James R Kirk@startrek.websiteEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    I recently asked a friend to remove their meta glasses while we were out to eat. It was awkward for a moment but they were understanding, and we had a good talk about privacy and tech after.