> It is not up to you to deprive anyone their right to use them.

I don't see anyone saying that people don't have the right to use them. I see people saying that they have the right to avoid being anywhere near the people who use them and to disapprove of those people. Which is just as much of a right as the right to wear spy glasses.

I'm glad to see opinion seems to be swaying back in this direction. It was only a few months ago that the general sentiment seemed to be "times are different than the glasshole days, it's fine now."

It is unfortunate that a large number of users here are not hackers, not even in an idealistic philosophical sense, and will betray the public good for their own short-term gain.

>I don't think that's fair. Smartglasses have legitimate purposes.

I think that's true in principle, but in practice there are going to be two kinds of smart glasses users; extraordinarily annoying kids or you adults acting annoying in public so they can post videos to social media, and then normal people who have no clear sense for how much they're violating the privacy of those around them, and just like cool tech.

Very, very few users are going to be an interesting or valid use case -- eg: someone who is using them to assist with a disability, or for research, or something.

Even most dash cams don't stream to Meta -- they just record the last _n_ hours and you need to know to save off the video if you're in an crash / incident. In other words, most of the time no privacy is violated, and the only potential privacy violation occurs during an incident.

Even policy body cams, which I wholeheartedly support, have some pretty strong downsides: currently, if you're at the end of your rope, having the worst day of your life, and in your dishevelment turn a speeding ticket into a BATLEO, you're famous forever for being a lunatic. Maybe the rest of the time you're a good person, and you can learn from this and move on. Except now you have a permanent albatross around your neck. This is a secondary penalty that the justice system did not intend, and has no answer for.

I saw there is at least one company working on offline smart glasses for disabled users. I don’t have such a problem with this, and I wonder if the industry as a whole could be nudged in this direction. Offline glasses seem more ok to me.

It makes a lot of sense for actual accessibility devices to be offline-capable. You don’t want to lose your “sight” when you step into a metal building or elevator.

Another bad thing about the privacy invasion glasses is that they’ve added a stigma to these potentially-useful offline ones.

Vacations smart glasses are great at translating signs, historical plaques, and even ancient inscriptions on walls. (That last one surprised me.)

For parents smart glasses are awesome, no need to pull out a phone to take a picture. No need to view the world through a phone screen.

They are also useful as being regular BT headphones as well. Podcasts while walking w/o tiny earbuds to lose.

Gross to all three. Slight convince at the cost of full surveillance. No deal.

> full surveillance

You realize smart glasses have a battery that allows for all of 15 to 20 minutes of recording right?

Hell just turning on wake word detection for asking it questions murders the battery life and it is one of the first things people turn off.

The phone in your pocket reports your position to multiple ad agencies throughout the day. Stores track individual's movements throughout their buildings and see what aisles people linger at.

15 minutes of video recording via glasses (versus on a smart phone, or go pro, or drone) is not some huge mass surveillance issue.

That's all pretty cool, but unfortunately the trade-offs do not justify it

> Very, very few users are going to be an interesting or valid use case

You then list a mere two categories.

Would your argument have been similar in 2008 if told that in ten years, everyone in the economic first world would be carrying multiple cameras including a dedicated "selfie" camera at all times?

You say that like it's assumed that ubiquitous smart phones were obviously a good thing, when it sure seems like there's an increasing number of people questioning that assumption.

This is a specious argument because selfie cameras are not pointed at people and on at all times, recording whoever somebody is looking at.

None of the cameras you're mentioning are pointed at people all the time.

When you are wearing Meta glasses, they are.

I'm not sure I understand the point about a dedicate "selfie" camera, however I think we're conflating "percentage of users" with "varieties of use cases." I think there could be quite a cornucopia of potential use cases, but I think per capita most people will not actually be making use of these. As other commenters have pointed out, I'd be a lot more tolerant if the data were not constantly piped to Meta.

The point about a dedicated selfie camera was that in 2008, few would have considered taking selfies to be a major use case that would drive >90% of teens and adults to have a camera which has no other reasonable purpose. In the age of FaceTime calls, it would seem absurd to question why it's needed, but nothing like that was mainstream in 2008, which would lead to the same argument of "there are very few legitimate reasons to want such a camera (and it will enable creepshots)".

My wider point is that there are already many obvious use cases, and as adoption of cameras which are always on or plausibly always on rises, there will be a lot more, including augmented reality, translation, context hinting, AI agent awareness for assistants and personal security, and at least dozens of others, some of which I am sure no one has started building for, yet.

Meta is probably not the winner in this space (or, I hope not, at least, so we agree there!). However, the idea that people have a right to remember and process what they see and hear in full fidelity is pretty basic, in my opinion.

Thanks for clarifying, I appreciate it. I'm so burnt by the potential downsides (and by the last ~19 years of smartphones) that I don't think we can see eye to eye, but I really appreciate you taking the time to expand on your point so I could understand your perspective.

> However, the idea that people have a right to remember and process what they see and hear in full fidelity is pretty basic, in my opinion.

If that's what we were talking about, I'd be much less bothered. But it's not. What we're talking about is people recording others and feeding that data to a third party.

would your argument be similar if I told you that everyone in the economic first world is influenced by signals beamed down from space?

no? You think what I wrote is just a scary way to frame GPS? Maybe that's because you're part of the conspiracy!

"secretly"

I can't deprive someone of their right to use them, but I can refuse to interact with someone who's wearing them. This seems like a fair natural consequence. Feel free to wear them, but I won't speak to you when you do.

So happy to live in Germany. I couldn’t care less if your gadget can be useful in some cases. I don’t want it close to me

dash cams are local and pointing at the road, not everywhere.

body cams are local and mostly used by law enforcement to guarantee they are not abusing their power.

glassholes are connected to the cloud. you may have the right to record on public space, i have the right to remain anonymous in the crowd and not be constatly targeted by an advertisement company.

Even if 1% of the corner cases are legit uses (blind people having the glasses describe the world around them is fantastic.) 99% of the people using them are assholes that deserve to be put in the ground and the glasses smashed.

Yes and those blind people are easily recognised and I'm sure there will be a lot more understanding of them using such products.

What are the reasonable and legitimate uses of smart glasses with cameras in that can record without the subject being aware?

I am blind, and I could imagine several usecases which would make my life a lot easier by using glasses like this. But because of their reputation I will most likely never use them, and especially not in public. I'm already afraid enough people will think I'm recording them when I use my phone to get info about what's around me, definitely don't need to get punched in the face for wearing meta on my face.

Edit: Not that I would want Meta to get all that data anyway. But even if glasses exist which are more privacy conscious, I think Meta and Google Glass thoroughly ruined the reputation of any kind of wearable like this.

I'm sorry you are dealing with the social repercussions of assistive technology. I really wish companies weren't so gross and that they did not endanger some of the advantages of advances like this by being gross

I can imagine there are many use-cases for blind people, but I also think having some kind of visual indicator that "these glasses are recording" would be good, and I don't know what tools you use in public at the moment, but if you use, for example, a white cane, it might help people to understand "this person is using a camera for assistance". But yes, the fact that glasses manufacturers have already demonstrated they want to take every frame of data they can does sour their reputation

They have such an indication already, an LED light on the other side of the frame.

Of course you have to be able to spot that. And trust that it really doesn't record when it's off (note that it simply may be covered by the user)

I seem to recall that when the snapchat glasses were a thing, they had a very bright an obvious ring of LEDs around the camera itself, that were bright enough to shine through a sticker placed over them. Sure, there are still ways to defeat that, but it makes it a bit harder.

Also I just googled for what the light actually looks like when it's recording, and it's not even really that visible...

A parent wanting to record a fleeting moment with their child without the potential distraction of pulling out a phone or other camera.

This alone doesn't outweigh all of the negative uses, but I would argue that it's reasonable and legitimate.

If the "subject" is human, those seem rather few. Surgeries come to mind, though smart glasses would be more a convenience there. Maybe some psychiatric patients, where a doctor wants to review snippets of his interactions with lower-level staff or his family members? Law enforcement trying to record interactions between informants and targeted criminals - though the latter might wise up pretty quick. Security staff at some very-high-security facilities.

> Do you think you will know if someone has their phone in their pocket or in a holster, and is turned on and recording? You will never know.

At least this says something about the intention. Someone who films with a hidden phone implicitly shows that they intentionally hid this from the people being filmed.

Filming with glasses is hidden by design. It gives plausible deniability to the person filming, so they can film covertly but pretend they weren't hiding anything.

In most cases this doesn't make a difference but there are some cases where the premeditation can make it worse for the person doing the "abusive" filming.

If someone is recording you on video with a smartphone, you are generally aware of it, because it has to be pointed at you. Sure, you have a right to record people in public, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place, but I would quite like to know if you are recording me. I'm also not terribly worried about people recording me having sex or being naked in public without my knowledge...

>> even if they're on vacation, they have a right to record something/everything and someone/everyone around them in public

Big assumption here that the place you're on vacation doesn't have different laws. You may have absolutely no right to record "everything and everyone" around you.

> they have a right to record something/everything and someone/everyone around them in public

Subject to local law. It's an offence to make indecent images of children, for example.

However, it is absolutely not the case that Meta has a right to that data, as a data controller under GDPR.

> feels at risk

This is a red flag phrase: it's a justification that people whip out for all sorts of unjustified things up to and including murder.

I hope you can appreciate that you're capturing this data for Meta and their contractors and that they have the capability of doing whatever they want with this data. My spouse and I ask everyone taking pictures of our kid to never post them to social media because Meta et. al. create a shadow profile using those pictures, and they can share those photos with contractors and with other people and we don't want a company like that to have my son's data without his 18-year-old self's consent.

I get this argument and largely agree with it in regards to these meta glasses. Its why I don't currently use them.

But I'd like to have some smart glasses that do respect my privacy and offer this kind of functionality. Honestly, most of the things smart glasses do today are stuff I'd really like. Having my glasses just be the bone conduction headphones I often wear anyways? Check. Easy access to taking photos and short videos of life experiences? Love it. Integrated into the thing I'm often wearing on my head anyways? Perfect.

I think the only legitimate use is for spies? And by commoditizing them it makes spies slightly less obvious?

Oh blind people too. That one makes sense.

If you walk up to me and shove a camera in my face I'll get very loud and very angry with you very quickly. That's kind of paradoxical, if you intended the camera to make you feel safer. I don't think I'm in the minority.

I could see an argument being made for smart glasses that keep everything local.

But smart glasses that send everything to The Cloud? Burn them all. Especially if they're from fricken' Meta.

> Smartglasses have reasonabl eand legitimate uses. People also use bodycams that record continuously, such as for legal reasons. People have a right to record in public, such as if they feel at risk. Are you going to go after car cameras next?

None of those default to sharing your recording with anyone else, let alone with no practical way to opt out.

>It is not up to you to deprive anyone their right to use them.

Why is it a right?

>Are you going to go after car cameras next?

No. A car cannot follow me into a building very easily. It cannot turn as quickly as a human head.

>Any American who has any opposition to public recording is violating the First Amendment and doesn't even deserve to be an American.

lmao

I have no idea why you are downvoted.

I do not want my employees recording their day job and selling it, or the creepy dude next to me in the bathroom filming my goods or the log jam flying out of my butt so meta can try to sell me pepto.

I also don't want that one time I did something minor illegal like jay walking get auto fed into palantir so they can ship me to the latest internment camp.

Or someone stealing my biometrics by just walking past me.

Downvoted because I was flippant about the American comment (because it was _insane_)

> People have a right to record in public

I do not want to live in such a dystopian country. No this right shouldn't exist and I'm glad it doesn't in my country.

> If none of this makes sense to you, wait till standalone cameras become much smaller to where they become a smartbutton -- what will you do then?

Why are you against killing? Wait till you don't need to hit them but can accelerate metal pieces at them -- what will you do then?

> Any American who has any opposition to public recording is fighting the First Amendment and doesn't even deserve to be an American.

Anyone who is against X deserves not to be protected by law. "First they came for the communists..."

> No this right shouldn't exist and I'm glad it doesn't in my country.

Smartphones are illegal in your country? I am skeptical.

The right to record is the right to remember.

Recording people without consent is illegal.

That seems backwards to me. In your country, if you were to record someone committing a crime against you in public, you’re the one who will go to jail?

Is the law applied equally, so that businesses, police officers, and government agencies are also not allowed to record in public?