To no one’s surprise, women and girls are disproportionately targeted, making image-based abuse not just a technology issue but a gendered form of violence rooted in misogyny and power. In fact, in Laura Bates’ book “The New Age of Sexism”, she cites research that says that of the 96% of deepfakes that are non-consensual sexually explicit images, 99% of those depict women. In fact, most of the apps, bots and websites that will create deepfake explicit images don’t even work on pictures of men.
Deepfakes can be used to humiliate, silence, intimidate, or punish women for speaking publicly, participating online, or simply existing in digital spaces.
In the UK, women have reported being filmed by men wearing smart glasses while being approached in public spaces, with recordings subsequently uploaded to social media attracting sexualised and other gross comments. Similar “pickup” content has emerged in the US, where men have used smart glasses to record interactions with women in airports, gyms, and other public spaces, often turning those encounters into viral online content.
Last year, an Auckland man used the Ray-Ban Smart Glasses to covertly record a sex worker without her consent while she was naked. The recording was detected only because the woman noticed him activating the device (by touching the side of the glasses). He pleaded guilty to attempting to make an intimate visual recording, but was discharged without conviction - to the dismay of the brothel owner.
This is particularly concerning because wearable devices are designed to blend into everyday life. A child may not recognise that a pair of ordinary-looking sunglasses contains a camera. They may not realise they are being recorded, and will have little ability to control what happens to that image/footage afterwards.
Consent becomes much harder to meaningfully give or refuse when recording devices are hidden inside objects that look completely ordinary.
Too often, we’re told that women and girls should simply be more careful, more alert, and more aware of their surroundings, remain vigilant, and constantly assess whether they are being recorded, instead of placing responsibility on those who design, deploy, and profit from technologies with foreseeable risks of misuse. The same is true for children and young people, who should not need levels of technological awareness beyond their developmental capacity simply to protect themselves from covert recording.
While it is true that nobody should have an expectation of privacy when in public, that doesn’t automatically grant you consent to purposely film people in public either.
Filming with these glasses discreetly in public removes that element of choice. People can’t consent or avoid something they can’t even see happening, like they could if the filming was done with an action cam or with a phone (held normally). Anyone who thinks that violating consent like that is okay is someone I wouldn’t want to hang around with.
And sure, maybe most people using these glasses are honest folks that would never film people without consent, or use them for any kind of malfeasance - but to that I’d say, why should everyone else have be at the mercy of your honesty?
That’s not a fair deal, and I doubt most of these glassholes would like to be in the reverse situation of being filmed going about their life without their consent.
I think we should all yell out “Pervert” at anyone we see wearing them in public.
Careful they might be into that
So? You can turn ecstasy into torture, all it takes is conditioning.
Have you also been experiencing fertility difficulties? lol
Considering I chose not to have kids that’s a non issue for me.
Quick question though… the fuck does fertility have to do with ecstasy and torture?
Well it starts out as ecstasy but after years of trying it’s more akin to torture lol
And that has anything to do with my comment how?
whoosh
What exactly do you think I whooshed at?
“they might be into that” is clearly a joke about perverts who already like that “torture”, there’s no re-conditioning for that and even if there was, it’s obviously not to be taken seriously
So we’re supposed to develop hypervigilance? As someone with cptsd I’ve been doing that since I was in diapers. It’s incredibly taxing for your brain and takes years off your life. Terrible advice. Best thing we can do is publicly shame these people every time we see one. Call them pervert glasses, get mad, if it happens enough times they will get rid of them.
It was fun while these were just used for sports and actually interesting outdoor activities, it serves me really well while cycling and snowboarding. I gave away the original wayfarer version so my family can experiment with it for accessibility and now I have just the sports version, which hopefully it’s too dorky for these pick-up-artist idiots to start popularizing.
Guess I’ll have to go back to a go pro in my helmets like a Teletubby… and find a decent combination of open ear headphones and a microphone that works against the wind. sigh maybe if they made a camera-less version that would solve most of it
I used stuff like that for hands free tourist recordings. I never did anything inappropriate with them. Unless you count the time a cop glared at me for looking at them with a suspect cuffed to a bench…
Yeah that’s a good use case too — though I do remember seeing folks use it to take pictures of things you weren’t supposed to (like temples interiors).
The “covert recording” aspect of it is a big problem, but from the privacy standpoint I honestly think this is less worse than walking around with an Insta360 that is literally recording everything. At least for now the Insta360 is less problematic because it’s so bulky that it’s not as useful for perverts; but in terms of filming a bunch of people out and about without consent it’s worse.
Watch these creeps wearing garbage glasses make life so much harder for the folks with low vision.
Do they work when driving? Maybe a sunglass version? That would be handier than window mounted cameras and the like. Fuck 'em if all they’re for is privacy invasion. Enough of that shit is enough.
Do they work when driving?
Yes
Maybe a sunglass version?
You can get them in sunglasses yes, and prescription lenses. Basically any lens you want.
That I could see as a plus - maybe even base their entire ad campaign around it. Using these as creep show, or worse, should not be allowed. In order to "film"in public an apparent camera of some sort should be used so as to notify those being filmed.
That’s fair, isn’t it?
The issue is that regardless of how Meta markets this product, making it sleek and inconspicuous was the whole point. Meta glasses succeeded because they latched on the Wayfarer design which was already widespread and accepted.
Unfortunately being inconspicuous and fashionable also lends itself as means to use these to record covertly. Whatever Meta does to fix this, folks will find a way to work around and disable. The glass already has a flashing light to indicate that it’s recording; it’s not enough. Creeps are going to creep.
Maybe society just isn’t ready for “affordable” recording-capable wearables.
Back in 2016 I bought several ‘dumb’ camera sunglasses. Why? I was going to a spy themed nerd convention and I thought having those would fit the theme. I did use some myself when I went on vacation and used them a POV camera and hands free recording of the places and things I wanted recorded.
They were air-gapped. No Bluetooth or WiFi capability. You had to plug them in to get your stuff out. No cloud storage either. You put in a microSD card.
So I do believe they can have utility… But not in the way these people are using it. Not in the ‘always on always listening and always on the cloud’ bullshit.
As somebody who has been falsely arrested, I would have loved these to prove it. But I get it’s a privacy issue…
More negatives than positives.
Getting arrested sucked. Being in jail sucked. Having the cops belittle me sucked. Having no charge actually sucked too because I couldn’t fight or do anything about it.
But the worst part is that many people don’t believe me.
Why should we give perverts the power to control what we can do? Are we really going to avoid things that can help protect ourselves from corrupt cops because perverts?
That’s not a good excuse. We need to defund law enforcement. Especially with fascism on the rise.
I agree, saying cameras are bad because creeps use them is not a good excuse to dislike an entire category of tool.
And I doubly agree, especially when fascism is on the rise. Now more than ever it’s critical that we document the crimes of those fascist pigs.
Okay but let’s use air gapped cameras and not pervert glasses that are inconsiderate towards our neighbors.
I’m willing to be inconsiderate if it helps stop fascists from terrorizing people. Aren’t you?
Problem with offline cameras is the fascists can just take them from you. You need a connection archiving it. Do not use big tech, obviously. Run your own. Flash the rom, again obviously.
But that’s all technical manusha.
Point is, I’m not going to make it easier for the fascists, and you shouldn’t either.
How about assholes stop recording people without thwir consent.
You can document without violating everyone else.
I’m not going to make things easier for fascists
I wish I could get these glasses without the camera. Playing music, scrolling stuff on my glasses on the train every morning etc. Sounds amazing.
Playing music, scrolling stuff on my glasses on the train every morning
Both of those things can be done with a phone or mp3 player and some headphones. These glasses don’t allow you view a social media feed, for example; you’re describing a different technology https://www.techlearning.com/news/what-you-need-to-know-about-meta-glasses
