4 ms·

Former Facebook wanker, who worked in research. 1) we were always told and legal always pushed back hard on anything face detecting.(ie haar cascade "this is a

Former Facebook wanker, who worked in research. 1) we were always told and legal always pushed back hard on anything face detecting.(ie haar cascade "this is a face" let alone actual this is dave/sally) 2) the FTC would audit us to make sure we weren't doing that kind of stuff 3) all of the research prototypes had inbuilt/inline face removers up until 2024(I left after that so I don't know when/if that changed) 3.1) One of the very first things I worked on was face removal, it was a central core of the entire fucking project. Like if we didn;t have any of those constraints we'd have been 2 years ahead. 4) Stella is the name for v1 rayban stories, so its very odd that they get the update when they've not had any new features since for a long time(unless I am mistaken).

KaiserPro 4mo ago
now, I will say that Boz was pushing to have facial recognition when I was were, and some of the early storyboards for XROS were pretty reilant on it (ie in an office having the sims like diamonds above your head that indicated who you were and if you were busy) I assumed that Zuck said no because he'd had enough time with the lawyer and the FTC sniffing about to not bother. However the glasses based AI lifelog stuff (which was basically a really effective personal assistant) would be a lot more effective if it could use facial recognition (we weren't allowed to use speaker diarization as that would allow us to record individual audio from users and recognise them like with facial recognition)
- giobox 4mo ago
  I know a few folks who work in FTC compliance roles at Meta. I don't think the wider nerd-sphere appreciates the extent to which the FTC regulates Meta following the consent order after their privacy scandals of the 2010s, or the sheer number of roles within Meta now working only on FTC related compliance. I'm sure Zuck is no doubt desperate to ramp it down. > https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/07/ftc-imposes-5-billion-penalty-sweeping-new-privacy-restrictions-facebook https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/07/...
ninininino 4mo ago
Pure speculation, probably they finally figured out the correct legal ToS and privacy policy and everything else that made them feel confident + some regulatory/lawmaker discussions reached a certain point that they finally decided they could do it? Does that add up?
- vaylian 4mo ago
  Trump is POTUS. And Zuckerberg seems to be on good terms with Trump.
- KaiserPro 4mo ago
  I think the ToS is lenient enough to get away with most things. I suspect that its a two-fer, 1) zuckerberg has said "it must be done" as part of the AI push 1.1) it might be also that Wang has pushed to get that data, but thats a guess. I doubt he has that kind of sway 2) they've realised that the FTC isn't either capable, or they have bribed the right part of the government to avoid getting nailed. The thing that gets me is the number of lawyers that are there, and the sheer amount of process that is there to stop this kind of thing happening requires Zuck to explicitly say "I WANT THIS" repeatedly.
- michaelt 4mo ago
  > probably they finally figured out the correct legal ToS and privacy policy Unlikely IMHO - the person who agreed to the TOS is the one person the glasses don’t record. More likely they’ve decided to launch it and see what happens; they can always withdraw the feature later, and laws can be surprisingly flexible when you’re a large corporation.
johndough 4mo ago
I recall that Facebook asked me to identify faces of my friends in order to "verify" myself about 15 years ago. Do you know whether Facebook still stores that data?
- KaiserPro 4mo ago
  > Do you know whether Facebook still stores that data? Honestly I couldn’t answer that. I never really touched production userdata (mainly because it was scary and also it was in PHP or some horrid transpiled interface to PHP) My gut feeling is that facebook doesn't throw data away unless its forced to. So its probably there on your graph somewhere.
- pseudalopex 4mo ago
  Wired reported in 2021 Facebook said it would stop using facial recognition technology to identify people in photos and videos and delete accompanying data on more than 1 billion people.[1] [1] https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-drops-facial-recognition-tag-people-photos/ https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-drops-facial-recognitio...
  - pesus 4mo ago
    I'd love to see a thorough audit of the company done to see whether they actually did this. I strongly suspect they did not actually delete that data.
pseudalopex 4mo ago
“We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,” according to the document from Meta’s Reality Labs, which works on hardware including smart glasses.[1] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/meta-facial-recognition-smart-glasses.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/meta-facial-re...
- pesus 4mo ago
  They really are mask off evil now. Any idea what those "other concerns" could be?
  - browsingonly 4mo ago
    Donald Trump.
ncr100 4mo ago
Amazingly valuable insight. It also suggests a certain amount of self-policing by Facebook, which leads to obvious failure cases: Since Mark Zuckerberg attended Trump's most recent inauguration celebration and NOT non-billionaire average citizens, by and large, I speculate that the FTC threat is no longer a concern to Zuckerberg's Meta corporation. Back scratching all around?

KaiserPro 4mo ago

now, I will say that Boz was pushing to have facial recognition when I was were, and some of the early storyboards for XROS were pretty reilant on it (ie in an office having the sims like diamonds above your head that indicated who you were and if you were busy) I assumed that Zuck said no because he'd had enough time with the lawyer and the FTC sniffing about to not bother. However the glasses based AI lifelog stuff (which was basically a really effective personal assistant) would be a lot more effective if it could use facial recognition (we weren't allowed to use speaker diarization as that would allow us to record individual audio from users and recognise them like with facial recognition)

giobox 4mo ago
I know a few folks who work in FTC compliance roles at Meta. I don't think the wider nerd-sphere appreciates the extent to which the FTC regulates Meta following the consent order after their privacy scandals of the 2010s, or the sheer number of roles within Meta now working only on FTC related compliance. I'm sure Zuck is no doubt desperate to ramp it down. > https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/07/ftc-imposes-5-billion-penalty-sweeping-new-privacy-restrictions-facebook https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/07/...

ninininino 4mo ago

Pure speculation, probably they finally figured out the correct legal ToS and privacy policy and everything else that made them feel confident + some regulatory/lawmaker discussions reached a certain point that they finally decided they could do it? Does that add up?

vaylian 4mo ago
Trump is POTUS. And Zuckerberg seems to be on good terms with Trump.
KaiserPro 4mo ago
I think the ToS is lenient enough to get away with most things. I suspect that its a two-fer, 1) zuckerberg has said "it must be done" as part of the AI push 1.1) it might be also that Wang has pushed to get that data, but thats a guess. I doubt he has that kind of sway 2) they've realised that the FTC isn't either capable, or they have bribed the right part of the government to avoid getting nailed. The thing that gets me is the number of lawyers that are there, and the sheer amount of process that is there to stop this kind of thing happening requires Zuck to explicitly say "I WANT THIS" repeatedly.
michaelt 4mo ago
> probably they finally figured out the correct legal ToS and privacy policy Unlikely IMHO - the person who agreed to the TOS is the one person the glasses don’t record. More likely they’ve decided to launch it and see what happens; they can always withdraw the feature later, and laws can be surprisingly flexible when you’re a large corporation.

johndough 4mo ago

I recall that Facebook asked me to identify faces of my friends in order to "verify" myself about 15 years ago. Do you know whether Facebook still stores that data?

KaiserPro 4mo ago
> Do you know whether Facebook still stores that data? Honestly I couldn’t answer that. I never really touched production userdata (mainly because it was scary and also it was in PHP or some horrid transpiled interface to PHP) My gut feeling is that facebook doesn't throw data away unless its forced to. So its probably there on your graph somewhere.
pseudalopex 4mo ago
Wired reported in 2021 Facebook said it would stop using facial recognition technology to identify people in photos and videos and delete accompanying data on more than 1 billion people.[1] [1] https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-drops-facial-recognition-tag-people-photos/ https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-drops-facial-recognitio...
- pesus 4mo ago
  I'd love to see a thorough audit of the company done to see whether they actually did this. I strongly suspect they did not actually delete that data.

pseudalopex 4mo ago

“We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,” according to the document from Meta’s Reality Labs, which works on hardware including smart glasses.[1] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/meta-facial-recognition-smart-glasses.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/meta-facial-re...

pesus 4mo ago
They really are mask off evil now. Any idea what those "other concerns" could be?
- browsingonly 4mo ago
  Donald Trump.

ncr100 4mo ago

Amazingly valuable insight. It also suggests a certain amount of self-policing by Facebook, which leads to obvious failure cases: Since Mark Zuckerberg attended Trump's most recent inauguration celebration and NOT non-billionaire average citizens, by and large, I speculate that the FTC threat is no longer a concern to Zuckerberg's Meta corporation. Back scratching all around?