7 ms·

Guerrilla London bus ads mock Kylie Jenner’s Meta glasses campaign

205 points by decimalenough 3mo ago

downrightmike 3mo ago
glassholes never change
- infinite_spin 3mo ago
  Help me understand this attitude, because I've mostly seen women wearing these types of products, and they stand to gain a lot in terms of security from wearing them. So why the ad hominems? What is your best argument against these devices? When I go to a coffee shop I do so with the understanding that the establishment is likely recording me, are we going to accept this same rhetoric for anyone that films others in public and/or commercial spaces?
  - toofy 3mo ago
    > … are we going to accept this same rhetoric for anyone that films others in public and/or commercial spaces? yes, please. i think that is exactly the direction we should be pushing. this creepy compulsion to record random people is weird af.
    - lotsofpulp 3mo ago
      Is there a better way to modulate others’ behavior? Before, when it was he said, she said, it was always tenuous for the person with less power to pursue the issue. Now, they can finally access consequences for people violating their freedoms.
      - squibonpig 3mo ago
        Social expectations, upbringing, interpersonal ties that make social behaviors potentially costly on a personal level to do wrong, all things the same people making the glasses made all of their money degrading?
        lotsofpulp 3mo ago
        Based on the numerous accounts of women being abused and police misconduct only prosecuted because it was caught on camera (and even then, not really), none of the things you bring up have worked.
      - lII1lIlI11ll 3mo ago
        Same can be said about what is going on in bedrooms but I don't think that having stronger evidence for home abuse justify the invasion of privacy. And I don't think random people filming everything in bars/restaurants/night-clubs is a price I'm willing to pay just to make it easier to prosecute some crazies or drunken catcallers.
        lotsofpulp 3mo ago
        >Same can be said about what is going on in bedrooms I don’t understand, people have the right to record their own bedrooms. >And I don't think random people filming everything in bars/restaurants/night-clubs is a price I'm willing to pay just to make it easier to prosecute some crazies or drunken catcallers But it is the price others are willing to pay. See how popular in car cameras are for taxi drivers, both for men and women. Or simply dash cams to prevent being caught in a costly litigation, with myriad accounts of intentional fraud disproven by video evidence. It’s why calls are record for “quality assurance purposes”. People don’t expect that to not be recorded, simply because the cost to record came down a long time ago, but now the cost to record video has also come down.
    - infinite_spin 3mo ago
      I would be satisfied with that, what bothers me is hypocrisy. If we want to do away with all of this behavior, then let's do so, but failing that then we're simply making up rules that some people have to follow, but others don't.
  - Nursie 3mo ago
    Easy - covert recording of other people in public is not OK. This ridiculous idea that "it's in public so you have no expectation of privacy" is a semantic retcon, the pervasiveness of cameras is new and fundamentally changes your level of exposure in the public sphere. Overtly recording people in public is not really OK. Face-mounted, covert recording is another step too far and offensive to most people. If you genuinely wish to understand the attitude, may I recommend doing a deep dive into the many fine articles written about this back in 2013-15, when Google failed to launch the original glasshole-wear.
    - Barbing 3mo ago
      What was your favorite article on Glassholery?
      - Nursie 3mo ago
        Honestly it's been so long I'd be a liar if I told you I remembered anything specific at this point!
    - infinite_spin 3mo ago
      > covert recording of other people in public is not OK This rules out the use of dash cams then.. but I'm sure you realize the public benefit those offer, so I'm reluctant to accept this argument.
      - Nursie 3mo ago
        I think it can be a general rule without being a concrete one, and is heavily context dependent. I agree that dash cams are for the most part OK, because for the most part they're recording for safety reasons and evidence in case of accidents. But sitting in a coffee shop as a private citizen, recording everyone that comes in without any particular justification would not really be OK, covertly or overtly. Even though the owner might be doing the same thing for security. So perhaps "covert recording of other people in public without an accepted, socially justifiable reason, is not OK"
  - smokedetector1 3mo ago
    you genuinely dont see a difference between (1) a single or handful of security-angled cameras controlled by a local business for security purposes (2) any individual possibly recording you at eye level at any second without you knowing, and having the ability to use and manipulate that footage and upload it to the internet
    - garciansmith 3mo ago
      Plus: (1) the security camera footage is constantly overwritten. (2) the video from the glasses is being uploaded to Meta.
      - g-b-r 3mo ago
        Ok, let's not assume (1), plenty of cameras are connected to law enforcement, upload everything to a random cloud service, are trivially accessible by others online, or are made by sketchy Chinese companies.
    - infinite_spin 3mo ago
      Not a substantial difference, recordings of both kinds are uploaded to the internet all the time. So if we're not going to forbid one, then I don't see a significant enough reason to forbid the other. What it seems like is that you offer your trust for one situation, because you benefit from it, but are unwilling to trust the other, because you don't. This seems like selfishness, especially after years of being told there is no presumption of privacy in public spaces. From my vantage, this appears to be a "rules for thee but not for me" situation. If you support filming in public spaces, but believe restricting that to only those you trust, then this is hypocrisy.
      - smokedetector1 3mo ago
        I believe NYC cops should be able to have guns. I dont want guns to be widely accessible in NYC. I’m comfortable with armed security at an airport. I’m less comfortable at a supermarket. absolute rules only hold in math. in life, almost everything is a matter of degree and of details. that doesnt make it hypocrisy
  - dabinat 3mo ago
    Generally public places do not have cameras that record your interactions with others in detail (including sound) and the owners of the establishment generally do not interact with you for the sole purpose of generating footage they can monetize online. Additionally there are laws and expectations around cameras in places like bathrooms. Those laws still exist for smartglasses-wearers, but it can be hard to police if it is not obvious that the glasses have cameras and are recording.
  - sapphicsnail 3mo ago
    > Help me understand this attitude, because I've mostly seen women wearing these types of products, and they stand to gain a lot in terms of security from wearing them. How? This is just going to give a bunch of creepy men an easier way to film me. I'm dreading these getting mainstream adoption.
    - infinite_spin 3mo ago
      I'll give a personal example. At a coffee shop I go to, someone repeatedly threatened to kill me. The owners would call the police, and they'd take a report, but without direct evidence the police claimed to have no power other than to trespass this individual. Which they did. Since that first time, he's threatened to kidnap, torture, and then murder me on several occasions. For my own safety, it would have been nice to have a video/audio of these events. As you might imagine, pulling out my phone and filming it seems like a dangerous option.
      - lesostep 3mo ago
        I'm sorry, there is a guy in a coffee shop that routinely threatens you, and it's still is your go to place? Damn, just how good is that coffee? (if that's real, and pulling phone out really is dangerous, can't you just ask the employee to film next time it happens for 10 bucks?)
        infinite_spin 3mo ago
        The coffee isn't why I go there, it's where my friends meet up, and I go to the gym next door. He's also threatened employees, one quit. I'm not sure why you're making jokes, but since you are it seems like I should double down and insist that I have the right to film such encounters.. especially when my account of these events isn't taken seriously.
        lesostep 3mo ago
        I'm half joking because the situation is quite bizarre and I never encountered anything like that. Where I live usually it takes a few eyewitnesses testifying for a police to take someone into custody for a few hours and give them a talk (like general "don't do it again or next time we will detain you for a 15 days" talk). And after a few talks, they would generally really just detain someone (it's different from a criminal record) Not to mention the owner could just ban a person thatch bad for business. Or just install a camera, since police demands a proof. From your retelling it seems like not only owner doesn't give a damn about it being bad for business, it's actually isn't even bad for business! You still go there, your friends still go there (do they know that you fear for your life filming the evidence of abuse for police to take action? Surely a friend would help you film this. Or at least be sympathetic enough not to go to a place where you fear for your life?). I'm not saying anything about your testimony, but from your words alone it really seems like you life on a different plane of reality from everyone around you. To hear you tell it, you can genuinely be killed or assaulted but everyone (including your friends??) is okay with that. And – most confusingly – you yourself is also okay with that? I can't just wrap my head around that. If I feared for my life and health, I would just not go there, and fuck my friends for suggesting to risk it. Are you suicidal? Is that a missing piece of puzzle? Because even when I try to believe you, those pieces do not fit together.
  - photios 3mo ago
    It's okay to record everyone around you all the time because: 1. Women do it. 2. The government does it. 3. Private businesses do it. What?!
    - infinite_spin 3mo ago
      4. Dash cams do it 5. News agencies do it 6. Parents with babysitters do it I'm not sure this is helping your argument. Why are some entities given the benefit of the doubt, while most individuals are not?
  - afavour 3mo ago
    > I've mostly seen women wearing these types of products, and they stand to gain a lot in terms of security from wearing them How?
    - Barbing 3mo ago
      Sounds like Flock CEO thinking. If everyone wore a bodycam, the world would be crime free. (The thinking must stop before downsides are considered.)
    - infinite_spin 3mo ago
      How does having a video record of encounters benefit women? I'm sure you can figure that out. You only have to remind yourself of what catcalling is.
      - lII1lIlI11ll 3mo ago
        > You only have to remind yourself of what catcalling is. What do you think all these glasshole-women are going to do with bunch of (poor quality, grainy night) videos of some drunk bro on the street telling them "nice rack you have there, sweetheart"? Call FBI so they would give chase on a helicopter immediately?
        cindyllm 3mo ago
        [dead]
        infinite_spin 3mo ago
        > glasshole-women Please stop using ad hominem attacks, this is not the appropriate forum for such remarks. > "nice rack you have there, sweetheart" I assume that would be considered sexual harassment in most jurisdictions, which local police should concern themselves with, especially if it's happening to minors. I'm at a loss for why you brought up the FBI.
        afavour 3mo ago
  - Barbing 3mo ago
    >I've mostly seen women wearing these types of products Anyone have data on this? Feelin’ doubtful
zkmon 3mo ago
Unfortunately, educating people against some technology is not going to help. It should be a state-level mandate to have any effect. Most people are discretion-less, sheep-minded money pockets. Meta and other businesses discovered this fact long ago and exploit it to maximum extent. Their products always target the "sheep-following" aspects, instead of individual usefulness.
- beej71 3mo ago
  This is why the "put the sunglasses on" fight went on forever. :)
- baxtr 3mo ago
  Education can work if there is a convincing story. What’s the story here other than a gruesome image? I wish their storytelling matched their visual designs in terms of imagination.
- pembrook 3mo ago
  How charming. A young, authoritarian-minded elitist aiming to force their views onto the rest of us 'stupid sheep'...with the implicit threat of a gun to the head via the state's monopoly on violence. Have you ever examined the idea that, people doing things you don't agree with may not all be less enlightened than you? And that, in fact, it could be you who is a sheep, angrily shouting in unison with the mob in the midst of a trendy moral panic...scapegoating all the worlds problems and your own personal frustrations onto some dumb social media app?
  - tavavex 3mo ago
    What a balanced viewpoint! On one end, we have a megacorporation that has been proven to engage in: willingly sharing private user data with random third parties; accepting and running ads for foreign state actors targeting another country; creating one of the most sophisticated tracking regimes in the world; collecting oceans of data to build profiles on everyone, user and not; enabling a genocide to be coordinated on their platform; using their money and power to influence legislation in their favor; knowingly designing their platforms to be incredibly addictive, including deliberately discussing how to get children hooked; and a practically endless list of other things. On the other end, we have HN commenters. They are really angry and that they want to undo some of the damage described above. They are pretty jaded about how elegantly Meta has been able to exploit addiction, network effects and the human mind to keep people complicit. To me it's obvious that #2 is the true evil. They obviously won't succeed because wealth controls our reality, but just for daring to question the status quo, they are authoritatian elitist sheep with superiority complexes. True freedom is when the world's biggest companies get to do whatever they want, slavery is when people to use their democratically elected governments to oppose that. Can you smell all that freedom in the air?
gdulli 3mo ago
It's hard to believe that in the late smartphone era there are people who think they're not online enough already, and want smart glasses so they can be even more online.
- wolvoleo 3mo ago
  Well, I kinda wouldn't mind glasses that could show important notifications or maps. It could be handy for lots of things, like a heads up display. Not to watch the social feeds but to find my way or read a message from a friend saying they're late. When I use my phone or watch to navigate it's a bit more dangerous. Thinking specifically of one time when I fell badly doing just that. I absolutely wouldn't want them to incorporate a camera though. They should not have one at all. And I would want them with open firmware from a respectable company or organisation. So these ones are a non starter obviously.
  - Nursie 3mo ago
    The problem I see is you're going to want a camera built-in for vision reasons for your amazing reality-overlay, and at that point, well, you've got a camera built-in.
    - wolvoleo 3mo ago
      I'm sure you could do that without one. Gyro, accelerometer, compass, GPS, step counter, altimeter. Should be accurate enough for basic navigation. Especially with some smart dead reckoning algorithm that calibrates itself at known map points like when you turn a corner. Showing notifications shouldn't need any kind of AR awareness at all. You could just show them above the normal field of vision just like the Google glass did. Again there the problem was not the display, it was the camera. And Google glass didn't even use it for any tracking purpose. I don't think the issue is that it can't be done without the camera. I think the issue is that the whole product exists to get those cameras out there. Data is the new gold, those vision AIs need to be trained. So they've never even tried without one.
      - 3mo ago
wolvoleo 3mo ago
Wow really well done with the lenticular effect. I immediately recognised the reference to They Live too. That must have cost a lot. To get posters like that made.
- dieselgate 3mo ago
  I agree it’s very well done. Not sure if they’re all from/by EHE but the political adverts like this I’ve seen from around the UK are so clever.
  - pjmlp 3mo ago
    Yes, and we definitely need more of them, society seems to have gone numb, especially for those of us that had activism in the 70s and 80s.
- pillefitz 3mo ago
  Gemini estimated it to cost around 500€ per piece
- boomboomsubban 3mo ago
  I doubt it's that pricy. I believe you print a regular poster with a special image then apply the textured layer on top.
  - theNotFractured 3mo ago
    You literally only need a special image and a "lens": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRTe_MRSbsY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRTe_MRSbsY
- ChiperSoft 3mo ago
  Back when I worked in cinema we would occasionally get lenticular movie posters. The cost varies by how many they print as a batch, but you're looking at about $10-20 a piece.
arjie 3mo ago
I wonder if these things will meet the same fate as bluetooth headsets. Once upon a time decried as the preserve of "Bluetooth Douches" who worse the Jabra while taking their banking phone calls, now they're everywhere. Everyone's got Airpods in. One day perhaps Meta Glasses will be the same. I really like them. They're a spectacular (haha) addition to a sightseeing trip. At the aquarium you can ask them what you're looking at and it'll tell you about the fish, at the playground you can record your kids running around, and you've got music where you go and so on. The problem, of course, is that they have short battery life and I don't want to switch from my smart glasses to my other glasses since the entire point is availability. Here's a video of my daughter running around the playground from the perspective of my wife: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcLAByw6ZYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcLAByw6ZYc
- niwtsol 3mo ago
  That is an interesting perspective I hadn't thought about. I see relatives constantly throwing phone cameras in baby's faces "look here, look here" the kids are trained to look at the phone/camera. I think of the experience from your daughter here, just running up to her mom wearing glasses - I hear the mass surveillance concerns, I see the pervert/harassment angle, I saw a friend do the "recording a party" angle, but I am just surprised I didn't see something as wholesome as this - thanks for expanding my view.
  - arjie 3mo ago
    I'm glad you enjoyed it. We ended up not using the glasses very much eventually but I'm glad we got some happy moments.
- sublinear 3mo ago
  I'm very confused by this take. It's been over 20 years since then and it's still just as awkward to take a call in public. People will instinctively prefer a quiet place away from the crowd. Otherwise others may eavesdrop, think you're talking to them, or are crazy. You'll find that most of those people with airpods are listening to something, not talking on a call. The most popular "smart glasses" that I see everywhere don't have cameras. They're "AR" HUDs for watching movies or playing games. It's not about social acceptance. These hardware designs still suck big time.
deejaaymac 3mo ago
People wearing cameras is going to increase over time, no matter what. Why would it slow down? Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely anti a lot of things, including people wearing cameras all the time, but I see no logical way to stop it without stomping on freedoms. In this case, defense will be your ally, whatever form that may take,eg wearing a mask. If I had to choose between flock cameras and meta glasses existing, I'd choose the glasses.
- afavour 3mo ago
  > People wearing cameras is going to increase over time, no matter what. Why?
- somenameforme 3mo ago
  Quite simply because people don't want to be casually recorded 24/7. By "casually" I mean by other people doing so indiscriminately, if not actively fishing for "content", as opposed to entities doing so for more justifiable reasons, like a security cam.
  - drdaeman 3mo ago
    Doesn’t that strongly suggest us that it’s not the filming that’s actually problematic, but something that happens afterwards?
    - somenameforme 3mo ago
      No. People simply stop behaving naturally when being casually recorded. It creates completely artificial scenarios. For instance if for some reason I had a friend pick up one of these glasses I certainly wouldn't allow him into my house with them on, even if he assured there was no recording, and I completely believed him. The mere presence of a such would just create a dampening effect on normal behavior. It'd be akin to somebody constantly pointing their phone camera at everybody, even if it was indeed off. And in practice many of the undesirable things that will happen with these glasses are 100% legal. For instance people are going to bars, finding drunk girls, and recording everything for clicks and humiliation. Ban the filming and you ban the glasses. Banning the publication would do nothing since there's endless ways to share "content" that would sidestep this. And that's just one trend. There's endless ways for this stuff to be abused, yet very few ways it'll achieve anything good. And those are much more hypothetical than the endless abuses which are already rife in spite of these things being extremely fringe.
charcircuit 3mo ago
The UK police monitoring your social media posts is more of a risk than Meta monitoring your social media posts to their platforms.
- collingreen 3mo ago
  We can (and should) try to avoid many bad things at once, not just whatever might be the worst bad thing.
- Nursie 3mo ago
  > Meta monitoring your social media posts to their platforms. Monitoring everything around you, all the time. And what you've heard about the UK police is likely to have been comically exaggerated by people with an agenda. There are problems, yes, they do not arrest thousands of people a year for being mean on twitter, no. (I'm rate limited and can't reply below - when people look into these figures what they tend to find is the majority are people getting arrested for using services like whatsapp or facebook messenger to stalk, harass and threaten others, often in a domestic-violence situation. These are categorised as social media-related but it's not what is often described or assumed by american commentators, that they said something politically sensitive in public, and OH MY GOSH just look at the state of free speech in Britain. It's often much more along the lines of abusers threatening to kill an ex that finally managed to leave them.)
  - charcircuit 3mo ago
    >they do not arrest thousands of people a year for being mean on twitter, no They arrest thousands of people for posts they make online. The public data does not break down what site it the arrests were from.
    - Nursie 3mo ago
      They arrest thousands of people under the communications act, which covers everything from the mail to Whatsapp. If I was your neighbour and I called you up on the phone and threatened to break your legs if your dog didn't stop barking, and you called the police on me, I'd likely be in those stats. It's clear they arrest some people for posts online, and that is bad. But the numbers aren't clear at all, and the one bandied around most in public at the moments is so not informative that its use is basically propaganda.
Quitschquat 3mo ago
Has the be the product of an CEO's fever dream and a bunch of yes men.
chvid 3mo ago
Ray-Ban Wayfarer used to be a such classic design. By associating them with cameras and Meta, Ray-Ban risks messing that up for good.
- jms703 3mo ago
  "Ray-Ban Wayfarer used to be a such classic design. By associating them with cameras and Meta, Essilor Luxottica has messed up an iconic name and brand." Fixed it for you.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  - tolien 3mo ago
    > Essilor Luxottica has messed up an iconic name and brand. One can only hope that part of fixing this is the observation that EssilorLuxottica is a monopoly in the markets around eyewear (sunglasses, prescription glasses, lenses) and should be forcibly broken up.
paxys 3mo ago
I don't understand why Meta is so insistent on making the camera and creepy video recording the primary feature of these glasses. They do have a ton of other uses. The speakers are genuinely great. It's useful to be able to hear notifications while walking. Having a decent AI for asking random questions is nice as well. It supports live translation. And unlike Airpods it doesn't tune out the rest of the world, which I like. And the new models have a display, which could be useful for stuff like maps. Release a model without a camera and people might actually give it a chance.
- PurelyApplied 3mo ago
  I do all* of that with my phone and a Bluetooth bone conduction headphones. It kinda seems like the glasses part only make sense if it's for loading it up with a camera. You know, for looking at things, with your glasses. I agree it would be nice to have a non-skeezy offering, but I think that would be an entirely different product line. [Edit: oh, well, I didn't realize some but not all of the meta glasses do actually have a tiny display built in. That would be the other use case, for the looking at things, through your glasses.] * Okay, the sound quality is just alright, but if Meta wanted to pivot to headphones, I'm all ears, as it were.
- sbrother 3mo ago
  In theory I could see really enjoying them in an action sports (backcountry skiing, mountain biking, rock climbing) setting. I'd want 1) true AR that could annotate terrain with stuff like slope angle, aspect etc, 2) all the GPS and monitoring functionality of a Garmin watch, and 3) a high quality action camera that could replace a gopro with less faff. From what I can tell we aren't particularly close to putting this all together in a consumer usable package.
- ffsm8 3mo ago
  Eh, realistically speaking the camera is it's main selling point. If you want just audio, why not get eg an aftershockz headset. They've been around for over 10 yrs and work very well for that exact usecase (speaker that doesn't block your ears whatsoever) The translation feature is also available on your phone which you'll need to pull out when using it anyway, because otherwise the other party won't understand what you're saying either...
_carbyau_ 3mo ago
Basically, "small cameras/microphones, cheap enough to be everywhere" completely changes the "free to take photos/video in public" equation - so that's probably worth revisiting legally. Clearly there is a difference between someone waving a SLR camera around (digital or film) and the possibilities of today and where the content ends up. However... the pub/bar/nightclub, gym, pool, etc etc etc isn't public. It is the private property of the owner. So if people don't like them - as is evident it seems - these glasses should hit social resistance.
- ndsipa_pomu 3mo ago
  It'd be fun to adapt copyright law to cover people's physical form. Imagine a huge class action suit against Meta for enabling such copyright infingement.
gumby 3mo ago
The real killer app form me requires a camera (though it doesn’t need to record photos or video for me to access — I have a phone for that). I need a device that tells me who I’m talking to if I’ve been introduced to them before and tell me how I know them (This is Bob Dobbs, you first met him in Texas in 1985 and he saved you at that party when you needed some Slack)”. Especially great when I meet someone out of context. But bad actors mean I’ll probably never get this prosthesis.
- dom2 3mo ago
  You can actually accomplish this pretty easily with off the shelf components! You can just say, "Hey, I think we've met before but I can't remember exactly where?"
  - runtime_lens 3mo ago
    [flagged]
  - alex_suzuki 3mo ago
    It also works really well as a conversation starter for me. I forget people’s names and the context all the time, but the faces stay familiar, and of course you can tell from their facial expression that we’ve met.
    - drcongo 3mo ago
      Showoff. I can't remember names or recognise faces. I've settled on a strategy of simply greeting everyone as though I've met them before, which feels a lot more empathic than sending everyone I meet's details to a mass surveillance company.
  - gumby 3mo ago
    I sometimes have trouble recognizing faces and sometimes it’s quite embarrassing (like when it’s one of your in laws or running into an important customer at a conference. However yes, I usually do that.
- 3mo ago
pjmlp 3mo ago
Love the ads.
runtime_lens 3mo ago
[flagged]
Content_AI 3mo ago
one questions , Meta with joint venture product Kylie Jenner's, how its possible
jmward01 3mo ago
AR will happen. Exactly what that future will look like I don't know. The one thing I do know though is that meta, the same company that decided you can be AI injected into an ad without informed consent, has no business paving the path to AR adoption.
jader201 3mo ago
Could you imagine someone walking around with their phone pointed wherever they look, recording the whole time, as they casually walk down the street, sit at a cafe, or engage in a conversation with you? How are these things not publicly shamed out of existence? It feels like each year lately has been a new Black Mirror episode.
- jareklupinski 3mo ago
  this is basically what it's already like to live in any area with tourism
andai 3mo ago
Dang that's good production value. Did they pick the lock on the box?
zombot 3mo ago
> A visual depiction of the ad’s transformation from different angles How does the ad know from what angle I'm watching? "We're always watching" must be literally true! Anyway, gotta love British humor.
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]

205 points by decimalenough 3mo ago

downrightmike 3mo ago

glassholes never change

infinite_spin 3mo ago
Help me understand this attitude, because I've mostly seen women wearing these types of products, and they stand to gain a lot in terms of security from wearing them. So why the ad hominems? What is your best argument against these devices? When I go to a coffee shop I do so with the understanding that the establishment is likely recording me, are we going to accept this same rhetoric for anyone that films others in public and/or commercial spaces?
- toofy 3mo ago
  > … are we going to accept this same rhetoric for anyone that films others in public and/or commercial spaces? yes, please. i think that is exactly the direction we should be pushing. this creepy compulsion to record random people is weird af.
  - lotsofpulp 3mo ago
    Is there a better way to modulate others’ behavior? Before, when it was he said, she said, it was always tenuous for the person with less power to pursue the issue. Now, they can finally access consequences for people violating their freedoms.
    - squibonpig 3mo ago
      Social expectations, upbringing, interpersonal ties that make social behaviors potentially costly on a personal level to do wrong, all things the same people making the glasses made all of their money degrading?
      - lotsofpulp 3mo ago
        Based on the numerous accounts of women being abused and police misconduct only prosecuted because it was caught on camera (and even then, not really), none of the things you bring up have worked.
    - lII1lIlI11ll 3mo ago
      Same can be said about what is going on in bedrooms but I don't think that having stronger evidence for home abuse justify the invasion of privacy. And I don't think random people filming everything in bars/restaurants/night-clubs is a price I'm willing to pay just to make it easier to prosecute some crazies or drunken catcallers.
      - lotsofpulp 3mo ago
        >Same can be said about what is going on in bedrooms I don’t understand, people have the right to record their own bedrooms. >And I don't think random people filming everything in bars/restaurants/night-clubs is a price I'm willing to pay just to make it easier to prosecute some crazies or drunken catcallers But it is the price others are willing to pay. See how popular in car cameras are for taxi drivers, both for men and women. Or simply dash cams to prevent being caught in a costly litigation, with myriad accounts of intentional fraud disproven by video evidence. It’s why calls are record for “quality assurance purposes”. People don’t expect that to not be recorded, simply because the cost to record came down a long time ago, but now the cost to record video has also come down.
  - infinite_spin 3mo ago
    I would be satisfied with that, what bothers me is hypocrisy. If we want to do away with all of this behavior, then let's do so, but failing that then we're simply making up rules that some people have to follow, but others don't.
- Nursie 3mo ago
  Easy - covert recording of other people in public is not OK. This ridiculous idea that "it's in public so you have no expectation of privacy" is a semantic retcon, the pervasiveness of cameras is new and fundamentally changes your level of exposure in the public sphere. Overtly recording people in public is not really OK. Face-mounted, covert recording is another step too far and offensive to most people. If you genuinely wish to understand the attitude, may I recommend doing a deep dive into the many fine articles written about this back in 2013-15, when Google failed to launch the original glasshole-wear.
  - Barbing 3mo ago
    What was your favorite article on Glassholery?
    - Nursie 3mo ago
      Honestly it's been so long I'd be a liar if I told you I remembered anything specific at this point!
  - infinite_spin 3mo ago
    > covert recording of other people in public is not OK This rules out the use of dash cams then.. but I'm sure you realize the public benefit those offer, so I'm reluctant to accept this argument.
    - Nursie 3mo ago
      I think it can be a general rule without being a concrete one, and is heavily context dependent. I agree that dash cams are for the most part OK, because for the most part they're recording for safety reasons and evidence in case of accidents. But sitting in a coffee shop as a private citizen, recording everyone that comes in without any particular justification would not really be OK, covertly or overtly. Even though the owner might be doing the same thing for security. So perhaps "covert recording of other people in public without an accepted, socially justifiable reason, is not OK"
- smokedetector1 3mo ago
  you genuinely dont see a difference between (1) a single or handful of security-angled cameras controlled by a local business for security purposes (2) any individual possibly recording you at eye level at any second without you knowing, and having the ability to use and manipulate that footage and upload it to the internet
  - garciansmith 3mo ago
    Plus: (1) the security camera footage is constantly overwritten. (2) the video from the glasses is being uploaded to Meta.
    - g-b-r 3mo ago
      Ok, let's not assume (1), plenty of cameras are connected to law enforcement, upload everything to a random cloud service, are trivially accessible by others online, or are made by sketchy Chinese companies.
  - infinite_spin 3mo ago
    Not a substantial difference, recordings of both kinds are uploaded to the internet all the time. So if we're not going to forbid one, then I don't see a significant enough reason to forbid the other. What it seems like is that you offer your trust for one situation, because you benefit from it, but are unwilling to trust the other, because you don't. This seems like selfishness, especially after years of being told there is no presumption of privacy in public spaces. From my vantage, this appears to be a "rules for thee but not for me" situation. If you support filming in public spaces, but believe restricting that to only those you trust, then this is hypocrisy.
    - smokedetector1 3mo ago
      I believe NYC cops should be able to have guns. I dont want guns to be widely accessible in NYC. I’m comfortable with armed security at an airport. I’m less comfortable at a supermarket. absolute rules only hold in math. in life, almost everything is a matter of degree and of details. that doesnt make it hypocrisy
- dabinat 3mo ago
  Generally public places do not have cameras that record your interactions with others in detail (including sound) and the owners of the establishment generally do not interact with you for the sole purpose of generating footage they can monetize online. Additionally there are laws and expectations around cameras in places like bathrooms. Those laws still exist for smartglasses-wearers, but it can be hard to police if it is not obvious that the glasses have cameras and are recording.
- sapphicsnail 3mo ago
  > Help me understand this attitude, because I've mostly seen women wearing these types of products, and they stand to gain a lot in terms of security from wearing them. How? This is just going to give a bunch of creepy men an easier way to film me. I'm dreading these getting mainstream adoption.
  - infinite_spin 3mo ago
    I'll give a personal example. At a coffee shop I go to, someone repeatedly threatened to kill me. The owners would call the police, and they'd take a report, but without direct evidence the police claimed to have no power other than to trespass this individual. Which they did. Since that first time, he's threatened to kidnap, torture, and then murder me on several occasions. For my own safety, it would have been nice to have a video/audio of these events. As you might imagine, pulling out my phone and filming it seems like a dangerous option.
    - lesostep 3mo ago
      I'm sorry, there is a guy in a coffee shop that routinely threatens you, and it's still is your go to place? Damn, just how good is that coffee? (if that's real, and pulling phone out really is dangerous, can't you just ask the employee to film next time it happens for 10 bucks?)
      - infinite_spin 3mo ago
        The coffee isn't why I go there, it's where my friends meet up, and I go to the gym next door. He's also threatened employees, one quit. I'm not sure why you're making jokes, but since you are it seems like I should double down and insist that I have the right to film such encounters.. especially when my account of these events isn't taken seriously.
        lesostep 3mo ago
        I'm half joking because the situation is quite bizarre and I never encountered anything like that. Where I live usually it takes a few eyewitnesses testifying for a police to take someone into custody for a few hours and give them a talk (like general "don't do it again or next time we will detain you for a 15 days" talk). And after a few talks, they would generally really just detain someone (it's different from a criminal record) Not to mention the owner could just ban a person thatch bad for business. Or just install a camera, since police demands a proof. From your retelling it seems like not only owner doesn't give a damn about it being bad for business, it's actually isn't even bad for business! You still go there, your friends still go there (do they know that you fear for your life filming the evidence of abuse for police to take action? Surely a friend would help you film this. Or at least be sympathetic enough not to go to a place where you fear for your life?). I'm not saying anything about your testimony, but from your words alone it really seems like you life on a different plane of reality from everyone around you. To hear you tell it, you can genuinely be killed or assaulted but everyone (including your friends??) is okay with that. And – most confusingly – you yourself is also okay with that? I can't just wrap my head around that. If I feared for my life and health, I would just not go there, and fuck my friends for suggesting to risk it. Are you suicidal? Is that a missing piece of puzzle? Because even when I try to believe you, those pieces do not fit together.
- photios 3mo ago
  It's okay to record everyone around you all the time because: 1. Women do it. 2. The government does it. 3. Private businesses do it. What?!
  - infinite_spin 3mo ago
    4. Dash cams do it 5. News agencies do it 6. Parents with babysitters do it I'm not sure this is helping your argument. Why are some entities given the benefit of the doubt, while most individuals are not?
- afavour 3mo ago
  > I've mostly seen women wearing these types of products, and they stand to gain a lot in terms of security from wearing them How?
  - Barbing 3mo ago
    Sounds like Flock CEO thinking. If everyone wore a bodycam, the world would be crime free. (The thinking must stop before downsides are considered.)
  - infinite_spin 3mo ago
    How does having a video record of encounters benefit women? I'm sure you can figure that out. You only have to remind yourself of what catcalling is.
    - lII1lIlI11ll 3mo ago
      > You only have to remind yourself of what catcalling is. What do you think all these glasshole-women are going to do with bunch of (poor quality, grainy night) videos of some drunk bro on the street telling them "nice rack you have there, sweetheart"? Call FBI so they would give chase on a helicopter immediately?
      - cindyllm 3mo ago
        [dead]
      - infinite_spin 3mo ago
        > glasshole-women Please stop using ad hominem attacks, this is not the appropriate forum for such remarks. > "nice rack you have there, sweetheart" I assume that would be considered sexual harassment in most jurisdictions, which local police should concern themselves with, especially if it's happening to minors. I'm at a loss for why you brought up the FBI.
        afavour 3mo ago
- Barbing 3mo ago
  >I've mostly seen women wearing these types of products Anyone have data on this? Feelin’ doubtful

zkmon 3mo ago

Unfortunately, educating people against some technology is not going to help. It should be a state-level mandate to have any effect. Most people are discretion-less, sheep-minded money pockets. Meta and other businesses discovered this fact long ago and exploit it to maximum extent. Their products always target the "sheep-following" aspects, instead of individual usefulness.

beej71 3mo ago
This is why the "put the sunglasses on" fight went on forever. :)
baxtr 3mo ago
Education can work if there is a convincing story. What’s the story here other than a gruesome image? I wish their storytelling matched their visual designs in terms of imagination.
pembrook 3mo ago
How charming. A young, authoritarian-minded elitist aiming to force their views onto the rest of us 'stupid sheep'...with the implicit threat of a gun to the head via the state's monopoly on violence. Have you ever examined the idea that, people doing things you don't agree with may not all be less enlightened than you? And that, in fact, it could be you who is a sheep, angrily shouting in unison with the mob in the midst of a trendy moral panic...scapegoating all the worlds problems and your own personal frustrations onto some dumb social media app?
- tavavex 3mo ago
  What a balanced viewpoint! On one end, we have a megacorporation that has been proven to engage in: willingly sharing private user data with random third parties; accepting and running ads for foreign state actors targeting another country; creating one of the most sophisticated tracking regimes in the world; collecting oceans of data to build profiles on everyone, user and not; enabling a genocide to be coordinated on their platform; using their money and power to influence legislation in their favor; knowingly designing their platforms to be incredibly addictive, including deliberately discussing how to get children hooked; and a practically endless list of other things. On the other end, we have HN commenters. They are really angry and that they want to undo some of the damage described above. They are pretty jaded about how elegantly Meta has been able to exploit addiction, network effects and the human mind to keep people complicit. To me it's obvious that #2 is the true evil. They obviously won't succeed because wealth controls our reality, but just for daring to question the status quo, they are authoritatian elitist sheep with superiority complexes. True freedom is when the world's biggest companies get to do whatever they want, slavery is when people to use their democratically elected governments to oppose that. Can you smell all that freedom in the air?

gdulli 3mo ago

It's hard to believe that in the late smartphone era there are people who think they're not online enough already, and want smart glasses so they can be even more online.

wolvoleo 3mo ago
Well, I kinda wouldn't mind glasses that could show important notifications or maps. It could be handy for lots of things, like a heads up display. Not to watch the social feeds but to find my way or read a message from a friend saying they're late. When I use my phone or watch to navigate it's a bit more dangerous. Thinking specifically of one time when I fell badly doing just that. I absolutely wouldn't want them to incorporate a camera though. They should not have one at all. And I would want them with open firmware from a respectable company or organisation. So these ones are a non starter obviously.
- Nursie 3mo ago
  The problem I see is you're going to want a camera built-in for vision reasons for your amazing reality-overlay, and at that point, well, you've got a camera built-in.
  - wolvoleo 3mo ago
    I'm sure you could do that without one. Gyro, accelerometer, compass, GPS, step counter, altimeter. Should be accurate enough for basic navigation. Especially with some smart dead reckoning algorithm that calibrates itself at known map points like when you turn a corner. Showing notifications shouldn't need any kind of AR awareness at all. You could just show them above the normal field of vision just like the Google glass did. Again there the problem was not the display, it was the camera. And Google glass didn't even use it for any tracking purpose. I don't think the issue is that it can't be done without the camera. I think the issue is that the whole product exists to get those cameras out there. Data is the new gold, those vision AIs need to be trained. So they've never even tried without one.
    - 3mo ago

wolvoleo 3mo ago

Wow really well done with the lenticular effect. I immediately recognised the reference to They Live too. That must have cost a lot. To get posters like that made.

dieselgate 3mo ago
I agree it’s very well done. Not sure if they’re all from/by EHE but the political adverts like this I’ve seen from around the UK are so clever.
- pjmlp 3mo ago
  Yes, and we definitely need more of them, society seems to have gone numb, especially for those of us that had activism in the 70s and 80s.
pillefitz 3mo ago
Gemini estimated it to cost around 500€ per piece
boomboomsubban 3mo ago
I doubt it's that pricy. I believe you print a regular poster with a special image then apply the textured layer on top.
- theNotFractured 3mo ago
  You literally only need a special image and a "lens": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRTe_MRSbsY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRTe_MRSbsY
ChiperSoft 3mo ago
Back when I worked in cinema we would occasionally get lenticular movie posters. The cost varies by how many they print as a batch, but you're looking at about $10-20 a piece.

arjie 3mo ago

I wonder if these things will meet the same fate as bluetooth headsets. Once upon a time decried as the preserve of "Bluetooth Douches" who worse the Jabra while taking their banking phone calls, now they're everywhere. Everyone's got Airpods in. One day perhaps Meta Glasses will be the same. I really like them. They're a spectacular (haha) addition to a sightseeing trip. At the aquarium you can ask them what you're looking at and it'll tell you about the fish, at the playground you can record your kids running around, and you've got music where you go and so on. The problem, of course, is that they have short battery life and I don't want to switch from my smart glasses to my other glasses since the entire point is availability. Here's a video of my daughter running around the playground from the perspective of my wife: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcLAByw6ZYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcLAByw6ZYc

niwtsol 3mo ago
That is an interesting perspective I hadn't thought about. I see relatives constantly throwing phone cameras in baby's faces "look here, look here" the kids are trained to look at the phone/camera. I think of the experience from your daughter here, just running up to her mom wearing glasses - I hear the mass surveillance concerns, I see the pervert/harassment angle, I saw a friend do the "recording a party" angle, but I am just surprised I didn't see something as wholesome as this - thanks for expanding my view.
- arjie 3mo ago
  I'm glad you enjoyed it. We ended up not using the glasses very much eventually but I'm glad we got some happy moments.
sublinear 3mo ago
I'm very confused by this take. It's been over 20 years since then and it's still just as awkward to take a call in public. People will instinctively prefer a quiet place away from the crowd. Otherwise others may eavesdrop, think you're talking to them, or are crazy. You'll find that most of those people with airpods are listening to something, not talking on a call. The most popular "smart glasses" that I see everywhere don't have cameras. They're "AR" HUDs for watching movies or playing games. It's not about social acceptance. These hardware designs still suck big time.

deejaaymac 3mo ago

People wearing cameras is going to increase over time, no matter what. Why would it slow down? Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely anti a lot of things, including people wearing cameras all the time, but I see no logical way to stop it without stomping on freedoms. In this case, defense will be your ally, whatever form that may take,eg wearing a mask. If I had to choose between flock cameras and meta glasses existing, I'd choose the glasses.

afavour 3mo ago
> People wearing cameras is going to increase over time, no matter what. Why?
somenameforme 3mo ago
Quite simply because people don't want to be casually recorded 24/7. By "casually" I mean by other people doing so indiscriminately, if not actively fishing for "content", as opposed to entities doing so for more justifiable reasons, like a security cam.
- drdaeman 3mo ago
  Doesn’t that strongly suggest us that it’s not the filming that’s actually problematic, but something that happens afterwards?
  - somenameforme 3mo ago
    No. People simply stop behaving naturally when being casually recorded. It creates completely artificial scenarios. For instance if for some reason I had a friend pick up one of these glasses I certainly wouldn't allow him into my house with them on, even if he assured there was no recording, and I completely believed him. The mere presence of a such would just create a dampening effect on normal behavior. It'd be akin to somebody constantly pointing their phone camera at everybody, even if it was indeed off. And in practice many of the undesirable things that will happen with these glasses are 100% legal. For instance people are going to bars, finding drunk girls, and recording everything for clicks and humiliation. Ban the filming and you ban the glasses. Banning the publication would do nothing since there's endless ways to share "content" that would sidestep this. And that's just one trend. There's endless ways for this stuff to be abused, yet very few ways it'll achieve anything good. And those are much more hypothetical than the endless abuses which are already rife in spite of these things being extremely fringe.

charcircuit 3mo ago

The UK police monitoring your social media posts is more of a risk than Meta monitoring your social media posts to their platforms.

collingreen 3mo ago
We can (and should) try to avoid many bad things at once, not just whatever might be the worst bad thing.
Nursie 3mo ago
> Meta monitoring your social media posts to their platforms. Monitoring everything around you, all the time. And what you've heard about the UK police is likely to have been comically exaggerated by people with an agenda. There are problems, yes, they do not arrest thousands of people a year for being mean on twitter, no. (I'm rate limited and can't reply below - when people look into these figures what they tend to find is the majority are people getting arrested for using services like whatsapp or facebook messenger to stalk, harass and threaten others, often in a domestic-violence situation. These are categorised as social media-related but it's not what is often described or assumed by american commentators, that they said something politically sensitive in public, and OH MY GOSH just look at the state of free speech in Britain. It's often much more along the lines of abusers threatening to kill an ex that finally managed to leave them.)
- charcircuit 3mo ago
  >they do not arrest thousands of people a year for being mean on twitter, no They arrest thousands of people for posts they make online. The public data does not break down what site it the arrests were from.
  - Nursie 3mo ago
    They arrest thousands of people under the communications act, which covers everything from the mail to Whatsapp. If I was your neighbour and I called you up on the phone and threatened to break your legs if your dog didn't stop barking, and you called the police on me, I'd likely be in those stats. It's clear they arrest some people for posts online, and that is bad. But the numbers aren't clear at all, and the one bandied around most in public at the moments is so not informative that its use is basically propaganda.

Quitschquat 3mo ago

Has the be the product of an CEO's fever dream and a bunch of yes men.

chvid 3mo ago

Ray-Ban Wayfarer used to be a such classic design. By associating them with cameras and Meta, Ray-Ban risks messing that up for good.

jms703 3mo ago
"Ray-Ban Wayfarer used to be a such classic design. By associating them with cameras and Meta, Essilor Luxottica has messed up an iconic name and brand." Fixed it for you.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- tolien 3mo ago
  > Essilor Luxottica has messed up an iconic name and brand. One can only hope that part of fixing this is the observation that EssilorLuxottica is a monopoly in the markets around eyewear (sunglasses, prescription glasses, lenses) and should be forcibly broken up.

paxys 3mo ago

I don't understand why Meta is so insistent on making the camera and creepy video recording the primary feature of these glasses. They do have a ton of other uses. The speakers are genuinely great. It's useful to be able to hear notifications while walking. Having a decent AI for asking random questions is nice as well. It supports live translation. And unlike Airpods it doesn't tune out the rest of the world, which I like. And the new models have a display, which could be useful for stuff like maps. Release a model without a camera and people might actually give it a chance.

PurelyApplied 3mo ago
I do all* of that with my phone and a Bluetooth bone conduction headphones. It kinda seems like the glasses part only make sense if it's for loading it up with a camera. You know, for looking at things, with your glasses. I agree it would be nice to have a non-skeezy offering, but I think that would be an entirely different product line. [Edit: oh, well, I didn't realize some but not all of the meta glasses do actually have a tiny display built in. That would be the other use case, for the looking at things, through your glasses.] * Okay, the sound quality is just alright, but if Meta wanted to pivot to headphones, I'm all ears, as it were.
sbrother 3mo ago
In theory I could see really enjoying them in an action sports (backcountry skiing, mountain biking, rock climbing) setting. I'd want 1) true AR that could annotate terrain with stuff like slope angle, aspect etc, 2) all the GPS and monitoring functionality of a Garmin watch, and 3) a high quality action camera that could replace a gopro with less faff. From what I can tell we aren't particularly close to putting this all together in a consumer usable package.
ffsm8 3mo ago
Eh, realistically speaking the camera is it's main selling point. If you want just audio, why not get eg an aftershockz headset. They've been around for over 10 yrs and work very well for that exact usecase (speaker that doesn't block your ears whatsoever) The translation feature is also available on your phone which you'll need to pull out when using it anyway, because otherwise the other party won't understand what you're saying either...

_carbyau_ 3mo ago

Basically, "small cameras/microphones, cheap enough to be everywhere" completely changes the "free to take photos/video in public" equation - so that's probably worth revisiting legally. Clearly there is a difference between someone waving a SLR camera around (digital or film) and the possibilities of today and where the content ends up. However... the pub/bar/nightclub, gym, pool, etc etc etc isn't public. It is the private property of the owner. So if people don't like them - as is evident it seems - these glasses should hit social resistance.

ndsipa_pomu 3mo ago
It'd be fun to adapt copyright law to cover people's physical form. Imagine a huge class action suit against Meta for enabling such copyright infingement.

gumby 3mo ago

The real killer app form me requires a camera (though it doesn’t need to record photos or video for me to access — I have a phone for that). I need a device that tells me who I’m talking to if I’ve been introduced to them before and tell me how I know them (This is Bob Dobbs, you first met him in Texas in 1985 and he saved you at that party when you needed some Slack)”. Especially great when I meet someone out of context. But bad actors mean I’ll probably never get this prosthesis.

dom2 3mo ago
You can actually accomplish this pretty easily with off the shelf components! You can just say, "Hey, I think we've met before but I can't remember exactly where?"
- runtime_lens 3mo ago
  [flagged]
- alex_suzuki 3mo ago
  It also works really well as a conversation starter for me. I forget people’s names and the context all the time, but the faces stay familiar, and of course you can tell from their facial expression that we’ve met.
  - drcongo 3mo ago
    Showoff. I can't remember names or recognise faces. I've settled on a strategy of simply greeting everyone as though I've met them before, which feels a lot more empathic than sending everyone I meet's details to a mass surveillance company.
- gumby 3mo ago
  I sometimes have trouble recognizing faces and sometimes it’s quite embarrassing (like when it’s one of your in laws or running into an important customer at a conference. However yes, I usually do that.
3mo ago

pjmlp 3mo ago

Love the ads.

runtime_lens 3mo ago

[flagged]

Content_AI 3mo ago

one questions , Meta with joint venture product Kylie Jenner's, how its possible

jmward01 3mo ago

AR will happen. Exactly what that future will look like I don't know. The one thing I do know though is that meta, the same company that decided you can be AI injected into an ad without informed consent, has no business paving the path to AR adoption.

jader201 3mo ago

Could you imagine someone walking around with their phone pointed wherever they look, recording the whole time, as they casually walk down the street, sit at a cafe, or engage in a conversation with you? How are these things not publicly shamed out of existence? It feels like each year lately has been a new Black Mirror episode.

jareklupinski 3mo ago
this is basically what it's already like to live in any area with tourism

andai 3mo ago

Dang that's good production value. Did they pick the lock on the box?

zombot 3mo ago

> A visual depiction of the ad’s transformation from different angles How does the ad know from what angle I'm watching? "We're always watching" must be literally true! Anyway, gotta love British humor.

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]