6 ms·

I see the privacy issues with smart glasses. But as someone who can really use the features for daily use - visual assistance (low vision), alwyas worn set of

I see the privacy issues with smart glasses. But as someone who can really use the features for daily use - visual assistance (low vision), alwyas worn set of speakers (no need to futz around with airpods everytime i want to listen to audio without looking like a dork)... I really can't wait for android XR smart glasses (sans display)

drdaeman 7mo ago
I believe the problem is not smart glasses per se, but spyware that runs on a lot (if not most) of such devices. Shame the language makes people intrinsically hate the former by associating it with the latter without even questioning it. The idea of smart glasses is cool, the implementations are not.
- itishappy 7mo ago
  Smart glasses are spyware. The ability to record without my knowledge or consent is what I take issue with. I don't particularly care if you self host.
  - nomel 7mo ago
    > The ability to record without my knowledge or consent All major brands have a clear indicator for when they're recording. Someone could block that indicator out, but someone could also just go to Amazon.com and select one of hundred of available pinhole cameras or not-smart camera glasses. These aren't enabling an ability that hasn't been enabled for decades. If anything, seeing someone with main brand smart glasses makes it more obvious.
    - itishappy 7mo ago
      Existing alternatives also make me uncomfortable for the exact same reasons. I would prefer to avoid anyone who purchases a pinhole camera for public use, regardless of whether it came with an LED to indicate recording. To their credit, smart glasses are an obvious signal for me to avoid. That doesn't make me appreciate them any more.
      - nomel 7mo ago
        Every cellphone in every hand is a recording device, very often used in public. Where I am, you can look most anywhere, at any time, and see someone on a phone call, taking a picture/video, posing, etc. What's the significant difference that I'm not seeing, especially since the smart glasses have an indicator, and cellphones DO NOT.
        itishappy 7mo ago
        No difference. If I see your recording in public, either via cell phone or smart glasses or shoulder mounted news rig, I do my best to steer clear. I don't like Alexa or Flock or whatever else either. I do not agree that the existence of surveillance tech justifies the expansion of surveillance tech.
        nomel 7mo ago
        I see. This is entirely reasonable. :)
    - com2kid 7mo ago
      Not only that, but smart glasses have terrible recording time limits. A cheap $30 pinhole camera with a SD card will far surpass meta glasses in recording capabilities. Hidden cameras have been a thing for a long time now. Stick one in a pair of glasses and give it a super short battery life and people freak out...
      - nkrisc 7mo ago
        Wearing a hidden camera and recording people is also very socially unacceptable. If someone knew you were wearing they would probably also “freak out”.
      - itishappy 7mo ago
        It used to be if you were caught wearing a hidden camera in a department store the police would be called. Now they're being billed as fashion accessories. Sorry, but "normalize hidden cameras" isn't a movement I can get behind.
        com2kid 7mo ago
        My point is the tech is nothing new. Every person holding a cellphone up in their hands could also be pointing a camera around at people, a camera with much higher fidelity, computing power, and one that can take much longer videos. This is just panic about a new form factor. The same thing happened when cell phones came along, with the exact same talking points.
        itishappy 7mo ago
        Totally agree, but that's not a justification. "We already do a thing you don't like so you won't mind if we do it lot more, right?" The same talking points still apply to cell phones. I think people who record TikToks in public are similarly gross and I go out of my way to avoid them. I watched a guy setup a cell phone to record his laps in a pool yesterday. He swam one lap right about a meter from the 15 year-old girl playing with her mom, then climbed out of the pool, shut off his phone, and walked away. The remainder of the pool was open. Should I have called him out? I couldn't decide, and therefore didn't. This is normal now.
    - blharr 7mo ago
      I don't get the point of this argument. Yes, the people who buy pinhole cameras are creeps too
      - Markoff 7mo ago
        why is someone protecting their property/children creep?
        thunderfork 7mo ago
        Pinhole cameras ain't for that
        Markoff 7mo ago
        why not? secret camera is sometimes better than letting others know they are being filmed
        itishappy 7mo ago
        For what benefit? A secret camera is not a deterrent as by definition it can only be used reactively.
        deleted 7mo ago
        [deleted]
  - aa-jv 7mo ago
    Alas, your knowledge or consent is not a requirement if you are in public, and this is a human right worth defending, frankly. Your desire to consent to being recorded in public places does not counteract my right to record everything I can perceive in public. Period.
    - itishappy 7mo ago
      That's fair. You have the legal right. I'm still going to avoid you like the plague.
      - aa-jv 7mo ago
        Yeah, that is totally okay, its why human rights are so important to protect. You wouldn't want to be in a situation where an authority doesn't allow you to avoid them like the plague, would you? It is, therefore, your right to record those authorities .. so that they will go away, too.
        itishappy 7mo ago
        Totally agree. To be clear, I'm not arguing for a ban on smartglasses. I'm simply explaining why they make me uncomfortable. The ability to record authorities is something I fully support, but I still don't want to be in that video if I can help it. On top of that, most smartglasses are not private. If authorities can access the feeds, then my neighbor with RayBans becomes an authority, and it makes it that much harder for me to avoid them like the plague. This similarly applies to Ring doorbells and Flock ALPRs.
    - IncreasePosts 7mo ago
      You're assuming every country has laws similar to, I'm guessing, america.
      - drdaeman 7mo ago
        It's a more fundamental issue than those legal oddities of the day. It's whether people have a right to remember, right to share their memories (there must be lots of nuances here), and whether others have a right to be forgotten or deny some or all of such sharing - and how all those play together. I can't wait for the day brain-machine interfaces will become more advanced and commonplace (so cyborgs become something way more advanced than just limb prosthetics), and hope the day comes fast enough so the true issue is forced before any decisions are made off the ill-informed assumptions and the shuttle designs are left to depend on a width of horse's ass.
  - drdaeman 7mo ago
    Smart glasses (or any camera-equipped device) don’t have to record anything to provide utility. If anything, the primary utility of smart glasses is the wearable display, not camera. YMMV, of course. But even machine vision-capable devices can do a lot of useful things without causing you any trouble, unless your issues are more of a religious concern rather than anything substantial.
    - itishappy 7mo ago
      I understand there are legitimate usages. There are also usages that make me uncomfortable. My issue is that I'm unequipped to know the difference. Smart glasses sans camera would address my complaints (I take no issue with smartwatches, for instance), but that admittedly decreases the utility.
      - drdaeman 7mo ago
        I'm not entirely sure what's your exact threat scenario, if someone records your image, especially given that you've said it doesn't matter to you whether it gets siphoned straight into some megacorp database, or private home server, or gets processed on-device only. But... aren't already existing protections that make it e.g. illegal to distribute your image or its derivatives sufficient? If someone does you wrong, you can seek recourse. If everyone is respectful of each other (and we hate corporations instead of technologies), we enable a lot legitimate uses, making the world better: more accessible, and easier to learn and understand.
        itishappy 7mo ago
        Oh, it very much does matter to me what happens to recordings! I should have made that more clear. Self hosting is infinitely preferable than sending that info to Facebook. This isn't enough to flip my opinion on the technology in general, but if I had a friend who wanted to self-host their own smart glasses, I would not mind. The keyword there is friend. My issue is that I don't have the ability to audit every smart glasses user to find out what their tech stack is, so I'm looking at averages. If I saw that smart glasses were being used and promoted as assistive technology, I would likely form a different opinion. Unfortunately, that's not what I perceive. I am open to the possibility that smart glasses could end up a net positive on our society, but the history of similar technologies does not encourage. I will think more on your comments here. I find them quite insightful. Edit: For a rather recent example of my threat model, I will repost part of my comment from elsewhere in the thread: > I watched a guy setup a cell phone to record his laps in a pool yesterday. He swam one lap right about a meter from the 15 year-old girl playing with her mom, then climbed out of the pool, shut off his phone, and walked away. The remainder of the pool was open. Should I have called him out? I couldn't decide, and therefore didn't. This is normal now.
  - mrgoldenbrown 7mo ago
    Do you consider dashcams to also be spyware? I feel like dashcams are just as hidden and nonconsensual but more or less accepted.
    - itishappy 7mo ago
      A challenge to my beliefs! What a great question! Upon reflection, I don't have anywhere near as much reaction to dashcams. There's certainly some dissonance there. I think it's an issue of perceived benefit vs perceived risk. I see the utility in both technologies, but I assign significantly higher risk to smart glasses. I really struggle to imagine widespread abuse from dashcams.
- deleted 7mo ago
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drdaeman 7mo ago

I believe the problem is not smart glasses per se, but spyware that runs on a lot (if not most) of such devices. Shame the language makes people intrinsically hate the former by associating it with the latter without even questioning it. The idea of smart glasses is cool, the implementations are not.

itishappy 7mo ago
Smart glasses are spyware. The ability to record without my knowledge or consent is what I take issue with. I don't particularly care if you self host.
- nomel 7mo ago
  > The ability to record without my knowledge or consent All major brands have a clear indicator for when they're recording. Someone could block that indicator out, but someone could also just go to Amazon.com and select one of hundred of available pinhole cameras or not-smart camera glasses. These aren't enabling an ability that hasn't been enabled for decades. If anything, seeing someone with main brand smart glasses makes it more obvious.
  - itishappy 7mo ago
    Existing alternatives also make me uncomfortable for the exact same reasons. I would prefer to avoid anyone who purchases a pinhole camera for public use, regardless of whether it came with an LED to indicate recording. To their credit, smart glasses are an obvious signal for me to avoid. That doesn't make me appreciate them any more.
    - nomel 7mo ago
      Every cellphone in every hand is a recording device, very often used in public. Where I am, you can look most anywhere, at any time, and see someone on a phone call, taking a picture/video, posing, etc. What's the significant difference that I'm not seeing, especially since the smart glasses have an indicator, and cellphones DO NOT.
      - itishappy 7mo ago
        No difference. If I see your recording in public, either via cell phone or smart glasses or shoulder mounted news rig, I do my best to steer clear. I don't like Alexa or Flock or whatever else either. I do not agree that the existence of surveillance tech justifies the expansion of surveillance tech.
        nomel 7mo ago
        I see. This is entirely reasonable. :)
  - com2kid 7mo ago
    Not only that, but smart glasses have terrible recording time limits. A cheap $30 pinhole camera with a SD card will far surpass meta glasses in recording capabilities. Hidden cameras have been a thing for a long time now. Stick one in a pair of glasses and give it a super short battery life and people freak out...
    - nkrisc 7mo ago
      Wearing a hidden camera and recording people is also very socially unacceptable. If someone knew you were wearing they would probably also “freak out”.
    - itishappy 7mo ago
      It used to be if you were caught wearing a hidden camera in a department store the police would be called. Now they're being billed as fashion accessories. Sorry, but "normalize hidden cameras" isn't a movement I can get behind.
      - com2kid 7mo ago
        My point is the tech is nothing new. Every person holding a cellphone up in their hands could also be pointing a camera around at people, a camera with much higher fidelity, computing power, and one that can take much longer videos. This is just panic about a new form factor. The same thing happened when cell phones came along, with the exact same talking points.
        itishappy 7mo ago
        Totally agree, but that's not a justification. "We already do a thing you don't like so you won't mind if we do it lot more, right?" The same talking points still apply to cell phones. I think people who record TikToks in public are similarly gross and I go out of my way to avoid them. I watched a guy setup a cell phone to record his laps in a pool yesterday. He swam one lap right about a meter from the 15 year-old girl playing with her mom, then climbed out of the pool, shut off his phone, and walked away. The remainder of the pool was open. Should I have called him out? I couldn't decide, and therefore didn't. This is normal now.
  - blharr 7mo ago
    I don't get the point of this argument. Yes, the people who buy pinhole cameras are creeps too
    - Markoff 7mo ago
      why is someone protecting their property/children creep?
      - thunderfork 7mo ago
        Pinhole cameras ain't for that
        Markoff 7mo ago
        why not? secret camera is sometimes better than letting others know they are being filmed
        itishappy 7mo ago
        For what benefit? A secret camera is not a deterrent as by definition it can only be used reactively.
      - deleted 7mo ago
        [deleted]
- aa-jv 7mo ago
  Alas, your knowledge or consent is not a requirement if you are in public, and this is a human right worth defending, frankly. Your desire to consent to being recorded in public places does not counteract my right to record everything I can perceive in public. Period.
  - itishappy 7mo ago
    That's fair. You have the legal right. I'm still going to avoid you like the plague.
    - aa-jv 7mo ago
      Yeah, that is totally okay, its why human rights are so important to protect. You wouldn't want to be in a situation where an authority doesn't allow you to avoid them like the plague, would you? It is, therefore, your right to record those authorities .. so that they will go away, too.
      - itishappy 7mo ago
        Totally agree. To be clear, I'm not arguing for a ban on smartglasses. I'm simply explaining why they make me uncomfortable. The ability to record authorities is something I fully support, but I still don't want to be in that video if I can help it. On top of that, most smartglasses are not private. If authorities can access the feeds, then my neighbor with RayBans becomes an authority, and it makes it that much harder for me to avoid them like the plague. This similarly applies to Ring doorbells and Flock ALPRs.
  - IncreasePosts 7mo ago
    You're assuming every country has laws similar to, I'm guessing, america.
    - drdaeman 7mo ago
      It's a more fundamental issue than those legal oddities of the day. It's whether people have a right to remember, right to share their memories (there must be lots of nuances here), and whether others have a right to be forgotten or deny some or all of such sharing - and how all those play together. I can't wait for the day brain-machine interfaces will become more advanced and commonplace (so cyborgs become something way more advanced than just limb prosthetics), and hope the day comes fast enough so the true issue is forced before any decisions are made off the ill-informed assumptions and the shuttle designs are left to depend on a width of horse's ass.
- drdaeman 7mo ago
  Smart glasses (or any camera-equipped device) don’t have to record anything to provide utility. If anything, the primary utility of smart glasses is the wearable display, not camera. YMMV, of course. But even machine vision-capable devices can do a lot of useful things without causing you any trouble, unless your issues are more of a religious concern rather than anything substantial.
  - itishappy 7mo ago
    I understand there are legitimate usages. There are also usages that make me uncomfortable. My issue is that I'm unequipped to know the difference. Smart glasses sans camera would address my complaints (I take no issue with smartwatches, for instance), but that admittedly decreases the utility.
    - drdaeman 7mo ago
      I'm not entirely sure what's your exact threat scenario, if someone records your image, especially given that you've said it doesn't matter to you whether it gets siphoned straight into some megacorp database, or private home server, or gets processed on-device only. But... aren't already existing protections that make it e.g. illegal to distribute your image or its derivatives sufficient? If someone does you wrong, you can seek recourse. If everyone is respectful of each other (and we hate corporations instead of technologies), we enable a lot legitimate uses, making the world better: more accessible, and easier to learn and understand.
      - itishappy 7mo ago
        Oh, it very much does matter to me what happens to recordings! I should have made that more clear. Self hosting is infinitely preferable than sending that info to Facebook. This isn't enough to flip my opinion on the technology in general, but if I had a friend who wanted to self-host their own smart glasses, I would not mind. The keyword there is friend. My issue is that I don't have the ability to audit every smart glasses user to find out what their tech stack is, so I'm looking at averages. If I saw that smart glasses were being used and promoted as assistive technology, I would likely form a different opinion. Unfortunately, that's not what I perceive. I am open to the possibility that smart glasses could end up a net positive on our society, but the history of similar technologies does not encourage. I will think more on your comments here. I find them quite insightful. Edit: For a rather recent example of my threat model, I will repost part of my comment from elsewhere in the thread: > I watched a guy setup a cell phone to record his laps in a pool yesterday. He swam one lap right about a meter from the 15 year-old girl playing with her mom, then climbed out of the pool, shut off his phone, and walked away. The remainder of the pool was open. Should I have called him out? I couldn't decide, and therefore didn't. This is normal now.
- mrgoldenbrown 7mo ago
  Do you consider dashcams to also be spyware? I feel like dashcams are just as hidden and nonconsensual but more or less accepted.
  - itishappy 7mo ago
    A challenge to my beliefs! What a great question! Upon reflection, I don't have anywhere near as much reaction to dashcams. There's certainly some dissonance there. I think it's an issue of perceived benefit vs perceived risk. I see the utility in both technologies, but I assign significantly higher risk to smart glasses. I really struggle to imagine widespread abuse from dashcams.
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