Polarizing Shades
The Backlash Is So Strong That People With “Pervert Glasses” Are Afraid to Use Them in Public
“A lot of men and their behaviors have ruined this product.”
https://futurism.com/future-society/backlash-meta-pervert-glasses-afraid?fbclid=IwdGRjcATCIXVjbGNrBMIhRmV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHln0QGSAYArOU-ui2RKWAzCib0L1y1Ye6Aq6LhKX6hyZt4t0Jeoqzvyj_d_3_aem_LstDveVVuzrgIzNIDbborw

Meta’s camera-equipped “AI Glasses” are so divisive that some adopters are now leaving their expensive smart glasses at home, as Engadget reports.

Influencers, mostly men, have been using the glasses to inconspicuously — and non-consensually — capture footage of themselves approaching women and attempting to hit on them, interactions they’ve then posted online for content. Some wearers have even attempted to extort victims of covert recordings for cash. That’s on top of serious allegations of alleged privacy breaches by Meta itself.

Code uncovered by journalists revealed that Meta quietly embedded facial recognition tech into its AI-enabled smart glasses — and top Meta executives are fuming.

Last week, Wired reported that Meta discreetly moved to infuse facial recognition tech into its popular smart glasses, as evidenced by a piece of code discovered in the Meta AI app by the magazine’s journalists. The unreleased feature, internally dubbed “NameTag,” would “transform faces captured by Meta’s glasses into unique biometric signatures, commonly known as faceprints, and check each one against faceprints stored on the user’s phone — a database that’s currently configured to receive updates from Meta,” as Wired put it.

Meta is adding ridiculous ‘rate limits’ and a soft paywall to its smart glasses

‘All AI glasses owners get free monthly usage for certain features.’

https://www.theverge.com/gadgets/959899/meta-ai-glasses-paywall-rate-limit

https://www.roadtovr.com/meta-connect-2026-date-announcement/

Linux folks are used to having to roll many of their own solutions, and better Linux desktop usability is a goal of the WayVR project, which aims to provide desktop control and app launching from within a VR session.

VR applications can already stream from Linux to standalone headsets with projects like WiVRn, but what WayVR does is let one launch programs and access desktop screens within VR. Put another way, instead of the headset being limited to acting as a pseudo-monitor that only receives the output of an already-running VR application, the headset and controllers can now be used to interact with one’s computer as if one were physically sitting at it. Controls and user interface are highly flexible and help users to do anything they need — including clicking, typing, and launching applications. It’s a considerable step forward for convenience and general usability.

https://github.com/wayvr-org/wayvr

In February, Meta contractors in Kenya told Swedish newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten that the company required them to review disturbing and sensitive footage captured by its Ray-Ban AI glasses.

Some reported seeing wearers naked or using the toilet. Another saw a man’s wife undressing in their bedroom, after he left the glasses on a table, the joint investigation found. Other footage they reviewed included entire “sex scenes.”

“You understand that it is someone’s private life you are looking at, but at the same time you are just expected to carry out the work,” one employee told the Swedish newspapers. “You are not supposed to question it. If you start asking questions, you are gone.”

It seems their hunch was correct.

Two months after the worker’s allegations were published in the newspapers, Meta responded in highly questionable fashion. It terminated its entire contract with the Kenyan company, Sama, the BBC reports — a decision that a Kenyan worker’s organization alleges was in retaliation to the workers speaking out.