Social Media Turns on Meta’s Pervert Glasses: “No Reason for These to Exist”
Meta Glasses have driven a ton of conversation online. But, people are fed up with the privacy violations and calling them “pervert glasses” now.
Recent reporting from people like 404 Media and Wired have highlighted multiple privacy problems with the Meta Glasses. Unsurprisingly, Streamers are using the technology to harass women and other people in public without their consent. Who could have seen that coming, except for literally everyone who heard about the technology before its wider adoption. But, now online sentiment is curdling against the technology for obvious reasons.
If you’ve been active on certain parts of the Internet, you have seen videos of awkward men trying to approach women using Meta Glasses. It’s creepy, off putting, and probably illegal for a bunch of different reasons. ( The legality comes in when the AI element creeps into focus. Some of these young men feed women’s likenesses into language learning models.) You can bet every time we reach a new “threshold of technology,” someone will find a way to threaten the safety of women in public life with it. The Internet was this way. VR technology was this way. And, whatever horrors 2026 has waiting for us will undoubtedly build on that foundation.
“Pervert Glasses” don’t have to be the norm and one of the other ills of the current political climate is helping stem the tide before things go off the rails. Government agents have been loading similar facial recognition technology onto their cell phones and Meta Glasses during operations in Minnesota and beyond. So, It’s been easier for the average American to point out just how easily this technology can be abused to nefarious ends. Much less emphasis has been put on how this affects women in the public eye.
Meta Glasses, AI, privacy and the future
A new report from SAN details how certain contractors for Meta say that they’ve been reviewing smart glasses footage to train Meta AI. Obviously, that’s problematic for a bunch of different reasons. But, the privacy concerns have certain corners of social media saying “enough is enough.” Michael Spicer from BBC Radio 4 argues that the glasses aren’t “wearable tech they’re pervert glasses.”
As more people encounter this story, folks respond like @b4olivas, “ Stop trusting big tech to be ethical. YOU are the product.” It’s hard to argue with people who think this is society-deep. @cpettway79 said, “We have a society of creeps. Sexual creeps. Prank creeps. Nerd creeps. Voyeur creeps. Evil creeps. There is no good reason to have these glasses in public. Ever.”
Safety concerns with this technology
It’s clear from all of these responses that people are finally starting to wake up when it comes to Meta’s Ray-Bans glasses. Just recently Nearby Glasses popped up to help combat some of this unwanted surveillance. That app notifies you if someone nearby is wearing those smart glasses. Everyone is thinking about how this tech could be abused fairly easily.
The Independent spoke to Refuge, a domestic abuse charity, about the smart glasses problem. If meta moves forward their planned facial recognition integration with this technology, it could have cascading effects. The company argues that they wouldn’t make facial recognition available to everybody out of the box. But, when you have videos of people easily hacking these glasses to find people’s social media platforms, pictures on the Internet and more, it’s easy to see how catastrophic this could get.
Refuge’s head of tech-facilitated abuse and economic empowerment team, Emma Pickering explained, “It also threatens the safety of all women and girls in public, by giving wearers the ability to access information about someone’s identity without consent, which risks facilitating harassment, surveillance and other abuse.”
(featured image: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
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