We need to move beyond just banning these glasses - all smart glasses of all kinds - to breaking up these companies. Undo the acquisitions of Insta and Whatsapp - I don't care that will be expensive, thats a shareholders problem.
> As he films them from multiple angles, the predominantly English-speaking employees ask the presenter questions such as, "What are you doing?" and "Are you filming me right now?"
Meta employees themselves couldn't tell if he was recording!
I agree we should do something in this instance, but with the speed of which things are changing? Eventually, this tech is going to be undetectable.
"Oh no that's sci-fi and decades away", I really don't think so. I think neuralink, and competitors too, will next move on to reading the visual cortex. They already have plans to push data to the visual cortex, to enable the blind to "see", reading in healthy people seems quite doable.
I expect something like this to happen before 2030.
Regardless, I agree for now? Yes. But the future? I don't see it as blockable forever.
There are two ways we decide how severe the punishment for broken laws is. One is to enable just punishment. The other is deterrent. This may fall into "deterrent is the bigger part of the sentence", where people posting private information receive years in jail as a result.
There is a little bit of a conversation about this here:
I think it won't be long before it's the posting of non-consensual imagery that is so criminal, that few will do so. For years in Quebec, sharing of images captured in public isn't really legit. You control "images of yourself", regardless of where they are taken, public places or not:
> Regardless, I agree for now? Yes. But the future? I don't see it as blockable forever.
It's increasingly necessary not to allow guests to bring their devices into your house or establishment. Somebody should go into business doing courtesy phones, where you can switch your sim/esim at the door to a dumbphone owned by the business.
When it comes to smart glasses, if they're prescription you had better have spares or you're going to be blind. Canada's censorship solutions are no solution; you can't stop people from doing things by cracking down on civil liberties, people will just ignore you and do it anyway. Then you're stuck chasing anonymity, now your entire society is totalitarian and everything is rooted. In order to fight the totalitarian surveillance and tracking instituted because you wouldn't tell some pervert to take his robot glasses off, the electorate makes MechaHitler your PM, and it's now in control of your surveillance system.
It would be very funny if Skynet took over because people elected it, like Hitler did.
I don't like it but it's totally normal, especially for youth, to have their cell phones out in locker rooms. Targeting only glasses with this concern is largely out of touch with current behavior.
That isn't normal and it's actively enforced against in gyms and pools where I live.
Glasses are passively recording. Recording with a phone is active (for the most part). You need to take it out and point it at what you are recording...
Every gym I've been to is full of people with phones out in the locker room, from cheap chain gyms to the nicer athletic club I currently go to. My experience is much closer to GP.
> Glasses are passively recording
All the smart glasses I know of have a light on when recording. My phone does not and can be much more discreet (subject to the fact that everyone has a phone out already).
I agree that if a location is actively banning phone use patrons should absolutely also be asked to take off smart glasses.
Not to minimize Meta's push for these things, but there have been devices that do this for quite a while now. You can get tiny cameras hidden in pens, watches, glasses, and all sorts of other items.
It's just that in the past, these were sold by janky companies selling them as spy/hidden cameras, not massive multinational data brokers like Meta.
I would be surprised if those don't already exist, I hear stories in the news all the time about small hidden cameras places they shouldn't be. For a private space like the locker room I'm not sure what option there is besides laws making that illegal (I assume/hope that already is?). Someone dedicated already can get a much more discreet camera.
For public spaces, at least where I am, there really isn't a legal expectation of privacy. I couldn't tell if someone was watching YouTube or filming me with their phone and I probably don't have any recourse anyway.
Also as much as you might like to punish investors (most of whom just have it in their 401k) because you don't like people with money, there are legal protections and the government can't just do something like that without an actual reason.
WhatsApp is definitely part of Meta's distribution and reach strategy. So it's very relevant.
I don't think OP is trying to punish investors. I think they are saying the overall damage of letting these companies continue the current trend will be worse than the cost of unwinding it now.
I'm an advocate of reformed legislation to enable this.
Why shouldn't we punish investors? This is the risk when you invest in these types of companies where regulation is nonexistent. It's not the job of the government to make sure rich shareholders stay green.
It’s absolutely insane to me how intro economics classes spout that capital takes on risks to implement new ideas while completely glossing over the political process of ensuring profit floors and guarantees under the “rent seeking” definition. Like, rent seeking seems to be the only goal of capital now.
Public prisons have all of the same incentives to reduce costs and anything you should do to ensure public prisons are following minimum standards (regular inspections and regulations) can just as easily be applied to private prisons.
The problem isn't the profit. The problem is the lack of accountability.
I know that shareholders just want monopolies and free money and don't want to compete for it, but we should make them. Like we did before Ronald Reagan and Robert Bork shot the kneecaps out of our antitrust law. It's not about punishing shareholders, it's about making them earn their keep. It's just good business.
I think the point is, it's been a good system, but it's out of control. It's not that people don't like people having money, it's people don't like the status quo of watching society and the world be destroyed by generating share holder value alone. We need a better system. Not saying that is communism or whatever, but the monopolies and corruption are off the charts.
Also as much as you might like to punish investors (most of whom just have it in their 401k) because you don't like people with money, there are legal protections and the government can't just do something like that without an actual reason.
As much as you might like to defend the wealthy because the only thing you care about is money, regardless of the human cost, doesn't mean that we can't use the law and the government to limit the harm being done to humans.
I know what you are going to say. "Fuck people! I only worship money!" but I think you need to look beyond just the financial aspects of this situation.
93% of equities are held by the top 10% of households. Most middle class wealth in the US is primary residence real estate. The stock market isn’t the economy. No one is entitled to wealth.
> As of 2022, about half of households with a worker age 55 and older had no retirement savings, and 32% had no retirement savings or a defined benefit plan.
The scaremongering about equity values is not grounded in facts and reality.
This line of argument ("think of the retirees!!!") could be used in many cases, however when is it acceptable to break companies for the greater (non-financial) good?
On a parallel, can't we criticize any decision reducing the market cap of companies as an attack on the retirement portfolios? Say, if we required connected glasses to display a red light of more than x lumens when recording, would that be ok, even if it decreased Meta's market cap?
> decision reducing the market cap of companies as an attack on the retirement portfolios
Any decision that results in a long term net loss across the entire public economy? Yes.
That's something that hurts a lot of people and that hurt should be carefully weighed against whatever the assumed benefit is. Sometimes that's worth it, sometimes it's not
But it's never OK to just hand wave with "well I don't care about that class of people so screw them"
And let's not move the goalposts. OPs proposal was a corporate breakup of massive scale, not a minimum lumens requirement.
I'm not saying that we should or shouldn't, I would like to know the line of demarcation. Splitting Meta would have a very low effect on the economy as the services are individually profitable and would continue to be operated, without the all-knowing centralized database/24h Telescreen.
At some point, similar to the camera/face recognition debate, it's about a choice of society that we want to live in. I think that's an interesting debate.
> Splitting Meta would have a very low effect on the economy
That's...I'm not even sure how to respond to that. It would have a large direct and MASSIVE indirect chilling effect. The scale would be historic.
> it's about a choice of society that we want to live in. I think that's an interesting debate.
I fully agree with you! OP apparently doesn't, as he stated he does not care about half of the voices in that debate. That's what I'm taking issue with, not the proposal to break up Meta, which is, as you said, worth a debate!
The argumentative method of rather than saying and doing what you believe and instead doing and saying what you are opposed to, is always weak and usually a great way to shoot yourself in the foot.
That being said. I agree 100% with making Meta Employees feel uncomfortable with their own products.
That was totally unacceptable behavior. I support the choice to take down a video depicting blatant sexual harassment of its employees. I also support launching meta into the sun.
Maybe I'm too European to understand, where exactly is harassment occurring? He's asking Meta employees questions, doesn't seem to follow them around, and when they walk away or say no, he doesn't exactly force them to stay or anything? Doesn't there have to be some intimidation or humiliation or similar for it to be harassment? Or asking employees what they think of the products they develop and support is the harassment part?
To me he crossed a line by asking the woman to turn around and then crouching down to film her butt. That is a really creepy thing to do and a lot of women would find that threatening. Ask a female friend how they would feel if you find that surprising.
Arguing about whether to call this kind of behavior a harassment or "a bit" of a harassment is in my opinion all besides the point.
This video mainly shows a person approaching other people in public and recording them with these glasses. Which is one of the typical scenarios in which such a glasses are probably going to be used. And that video shows that even the Meta employees themselves generally do not seem to like it very much.
I don't know if I agree that man-on-the-street pseudo journalistic stuff is one of the "typical scenarios." Any time I see a product like this I think:
1) Can I use it to watch a more immersive movie without bothering people who may be in the next week?
2) Can I use it to make my games more enjoyable, either console or PC?
3) Can I use it to record IPSC/USPSA matches?
4) Can I use it for work?
I don't think these will make more people bother strangers on the street, it's just another way the same people can do that.
That's fine for you, but why on earth do you think every other person out there will only use these for innocuous nerdy reasons? Ask any adult woman you know and there's a good chance she will have at least one story of being stalked or getting really creeped out by someone. Consumer tech that enables creepy behavior will be used in that way by too many people.
I felt a bit uneasy when the employees indicate they're uncomfortable with the filming and he asks them why, while continuing to film. Given how they're blurred out and that their discomfort is kind-of the point w.r.t. the issue he's trying to raise, I don't think this meets the bar that Meta usually adheres to when it comes to taking down videos, but describing it as "a bit" of harassment doesn't sound too wrong to me.
Behavior like this will one day causing "no glasses beyond this point" rule, which will also hurts people that really need to use glasses.
All things you mentioned can be easily prohibited on photo-sensitive area. Perhaps phone is harder, but it's still easily get prohibited without hurting anything. Glasses so far is a requirement, not that easy to prohibit in an area.
Others are making it wrong doesn't justify another wrong.
In any case: they are different because they are in the face all day long, they are not a device some needs to start using to record;
they are not operated by the user, in the sense that the user does not show any active indication of recording (e.g. they are not holding the camera);
they are similar to regular glasses, making it hard to distinguish;
and they do not clear indicate if they are recording (and don't tell me that the LED is enough)
Bending down to stare at a female employee's ass at waist level after he asked her to turn around isn't harassment[1]? Like, up until that point it was almost ribbing but that was quite the turn given it'd be the same issue whether he was wearing smart glasses or not.
Not to mention the sarcastic, insincere tone he adopts after being asked what he's doing, claiming he's "such a huge fan" of the Meta glasses. There is a way to draw attention to privacy and this is a poor way to go about it.
[1] Cambridge Dictionary: 'behavior that annoys or upsets someone'
I am just an American, but I live in Portugal and it is legally not allowed to film people in public without their consent (you also can't have a street facing surveillance camera like in the US). Moreover, people take this rule very seriously. If it appears that you are doing so, they will be visibly bothered (I know some kids who have had uncomfortable interactions because they weren't aware).
I don't think blurring faces fully addresses that (though I'm not commenting on legality in Amsterdam).
I can see the argument that this video is in the public interest (hey, I'm Americanese), but it does seem plausible some people would find it a violation of a norm.
I realize the idea that rules exist even if you dislike the people they (momentarily) protect, even if those people have violated them, is a tough pill to swallow.
Right but the debate here is about “my gun is good and your gun is bad” rather than the right of anybody to have gun.
Cameras exist. This is a camera. All cameras have the same problems this one. So why are we debating about this camera vs that camera rather than whether cameras should be allowed.
My perfectly normal camera does not stream shit to Meta servers or any other cloud. It's in fact fully offline. So, no.
Recording is one thing and sharing the same recording with a hostile foreign entity another.
Legally, many places have strict ban on publishing photos/recordings without consent, while photographing itself is generally allowed in public spaces.
This is before even getting into with issues of recordes
d material being used as training material etc, which adds additional ethical and legal issues.
> I am just an American, but I live in Portugal and it is legally not allowed to film people in public without their consent
If that's actual law that's a bit surprising. In many EU countries there are journalistic exceptions (which may or may not apply in this specific case depending on local law)
> (you also can't have a street facing surveillance camera like in the US)
And same here. Usually the limit is that if you do it within GDPR household exemption then you cannot have it facing street, but if you do it on GDPR scope then you need to fulfill the GDPR requirements (e.g. posting notice, be ready to answer GDPR requests, perform balancing tests for recording etc.).
This is true de jure but not de facto and if anyone wants proof just go look up the number of Teslas in portuguese streets and the zero convictions over continuous recording of the public.
It's kind of an interesting catch-22 if that's the right idiom. Places with these laws do generally have a higher rate of property crime when comparing like to like, e.g. urban areas of similar size, to those without it. However that higher crime rate often leads to installation of security cameras covering more private areas.
The original comment doesn't tell the whole story. Street facing surveillance cameras are allowed if they are strictly covering the entrances to the building.
I mean, you are being filmed everywhere you go anyway by flock cameras, police/government cctv, even cctv on business and peoples house/ring doorbells etc. Concent to being filmed in a public place is not really asked anywhere, so I dont see it as a big difference personally.
Try to have the 24/7 cameras at chest level or lower, you'll find people starting to get uncomfortable. You can easily reach those angle with the glasses, and different with smartphone which also can, the glasses can be hard to distinguish.
Ring doorbell cameras are chest high and millions of homes have them. I would bet every time you walk down the street you are captured by loads of them, but because you dont know you dont care.
I think the ironic thing in the video, is the employees of the company making the product, abject to the use of the product when it is directed towards them. So why should everyone else be comfortable with it.
But meta employs many thousands of people. Is it fair to say they all work on the meta glasses and/or all think they are a good idea? Just because you work for a company doesnt mean you share its morals.
Poor Tracy in accounts probably doesnt give 2 hoots about meta glasses, shes just an accountant and maybe she doesnt even know they exist. But now shes getting harassed by idiots with cameras as she goes into the office because of something another department on the other side of the country did.
If you were doing it to Zuck himself or following round the head of the smart glasses department then it might be different, but harassing general employees of meta is no better than any other company. These are normal people no matter where they work.
You don’t understand the difference between recording things in good faith vs recording things because you want a reaction you can exploit for personal gains.
Hahahaha, "recording things in good faith." What an insane statement to make to paint this guy in a bad light. Should people also be concerned about walking in good faith, or eating their lunch in good faith? Meta created these creep glasses so people could do exactly what this guy is doing: film people in public (without them knowing). There is no "bad faith" when you're just literally doing what the product is for.
1. You’ve inferred that the reason the glasses exist is to enable people to harass other people. That’s a very odd conclusion.
2. Where’s the without them knowing? Meta literally designed the hardware so that you do know that you’re being filmed, unlike almost every other camera on the market.
3. You haven’t managed to separate the decisions and accountability of an individual from the tool that they use to execute those decisions. This is a strange way to look at the world. It places inherent moral values into inanimate objects.
1. Whether what he did is considered "harassment" is debatable.
2. Because it looks like an everyday object and not a camera? If you design a necklace or hat that films people but displays a small light (which can easily be covered up), the vast majority of people will not know they are being filmed.
3. He went up to people in public and asked them questions. Filming their bodies and asking them to turn around was weird and inappropriate but demonstrates the point he is trying to make, which is that this is inherently a bad product that films people with a camera but it doesn't look like a camera, which people naturally find deceptive and creepy, and they don't want to be around it.
Right but if they stand near you and film you with a phone without directly interacting with you, it’s extremely difficult to notice that you’re being filmed.
If someone stands in front of you and interacts with you, firstly the camera in these glasses is not hidden and the glasses themselves are quite distinctive, and secondly, a light comes on exactly where you would be looking as you interact - next to their eyes.
On those two points, I’d argue that they’re exactly the same as phones or other cameras when it comes to being able to secretly record.
They’re nothing like glasses from spy novels, they’re extremely noticeable.
They have been around for a while. At some point it just became trendy to hate on them, but people are completely oblivious to the fact that you are more easily recorded secretly with smartphones. In fact, most viral content you see where someone is being recorded without their consent is from a smartphone, I have yet to see any such content filmed with actual smart glasses.
The camera is useful for many things besides recording video, but now we can’t have nice things because people think everyone with glasses is trying to creep on them.
Meta is butt raping our privacy 24/7 but god forbid some dude ask 3 questions to its employees, I'll never understand people bootlicking megacorps like these.
Fuck meta and fuck every single of their employee, you can't keep building hell and complain when people hit back
I've heard of journalism before, yes. So? Since when is this harassment?
Can't believe we have corporate bootlickers on HN of all places, I thought we still cared a tiny sliver about privacy? It all went away when we all gave away our private data to the AI companies, or what's the deal?
> Can't believe we have corporate bootlickers on HN of all places,
There are a very large contingent on HN who are against restrictions on corporate activities because they envision themselves as potential beneficiaries of a low regulation environment. Many of them also apparently view criticism itself as a restriction.
> let's not pretend this is not all also possible with other devices
Let's not pretend being able to beat someone with a rock and shoot them with a M61 Vulcan at 6k rounds per minute are the same thing just because they involve projectiles.
This kind of hyperbole is nonsense. It’s a camera, being compared to other cameras. If your point doesn’t stand without dubious analogy then it’s not a very good point.
The fact is that if you stood outside any company office, with a highly visible camera crew, and then asked people who were passing by whether they worked at that company, most of them would probably feel quite apprehensive.
They would also be apprehensive if there was no camera at all.
So what exactly is the point that is being made in this video? People are apprehensive when put into situations with other people where their intentions are not clear and there are signs that the intentions might be malicious. Very informative…
It's harassment when you're doing something slightly inconvenient in a way which doesn't benefit big business or the super rich.
It's fine if you're doing it to benefit them, then you can go much further, you can kill small children with your tractors (as is attempted in The Netherlands) or to murder coast guards or migrant (via drowning or fire) as happens in the UK.
Everyone keeps saying he is dutch but he was speaking a different language in the video thanks to automatic youtube dubbing. I was quite confused because not everything was even dubbed correctly. Also its an auto dubbing through AI. Didn't realize it got automatically selected. So annoying.
Realized too late into the video that I had to switch to original track
He's speaking Dutch and speaking English with a very very heavy west-Netherlands accent. Quite a lot of the Meta employees there can't speak Dutch which is why he switches to English.
I think I should have worded my comment differently. I did not mean the guy does not speak dutch, the video was not playing in dutch because of that shitty auto dubbing of youtube.
Yes exactly. But YouTube selected some AI translation voice over which I did not realize first. So I was quite confused. Once I selected the original audio it was obvious that he is dutch.
I absolutely hate that YouTube is doing that; I'm Dutch/English so obviously fluent in both languages yet YouTube randomly decides to give me this horrific AI dub for some Dutch videos.
They've broken Android too, you can't even set it up with multiple languages. I use three daily - Dutch / English / American - and also a bit of German / French / Spanish / Italian here and there. Plus of course Latin because on my English side I'm a pretentious prick :-)
It is hypocrisy because Meta are knowingly creating a product that is perfectly suited for filming or photographing people without their knowledge. I find that it speaks ill of someone's character to pretend otherwise. And then they react badly when the very thing that these products enable happens to them. Demonstrating how this is a problem. They try to pretend it isn't a problem and then their actions demonstrate that it IS a problem.
It isn't because we do have laws that actually cover these things already. Of course, they're not the same across the world, law enforcement are not always aware of what the laws are, and this causes confrontations and sometimes overreach. There are also different legal systems that interpret laws differently. For instance in some legal systems the letter of the law carries more weight. In other legal systems the intent of the law is what matters.
There are two great risks here:
1) we pretend we can get by with existing laws. That the existing laws had enough foresight to meaningfully fulfil what the laws were intended to accomplish.
2) we can overreact and damage legitimate freedoms in our eagerness to solve an immediate problem.
For instance, where I live there is a law on the books that prohibits photographing someone being arrested. The law was well-meaning. It was there to protect people from being plastered all over the media until guilt has been determined in a court of law. But it would also prohibit someone from documenting police brutality during an arrest. So the law was never enacted because it failed to balance interests properly.
Right now, where I live, there is a real risk that rules about photography may become overly strict because politicians feel they have to demonstrate an ability to act. So they may end up passing laws that have unforeseen consequences while probably failing to make much of a difference anyway.
We know why these cameras pose a problem. Let's not insult each other's intelligence by pretending they are exactly like poking a traditional camera in someone's face. They're not and we should be able to agree on simple facts. But we also know that we need to have a public discussion about what we're going to do about this so we don't end up introducing draconian laws that take away freedoms we should have. For instance the freedom to document abuses of power, criminal activity, artistic expression etc.
It's not "perfectly suited", it's EXPLICITLY DESIGNED TO do that. And it's very well designed and very effective.
But hey it's OK because Meta only want to record everything to train their AI, who cares if some of their friends use it to create CSAM material, their third-world country workers upload it to PornHub and the NSA secretly pipe all of that through their servers (or servers managed by MI5 in the case of Americans).
This is their theory of power, that the selected few get access to a state of exception (but you can lose it at any time, so don't slip up).
Trump and oligarchs broadly have offered this franchise to their most loyal.
But! I'd argue it is not precisely hypocrisy, because they never believed in a rules-based order in the first place. They just see a system they can exploit.
break things has always been right there in black and white.
Feel free to point out the hypochrisy. I'll remind you that sharing a video you took of someone without their consent is not the same as recording them and keeping the video strictly for yourself
This person was not trespassing on Meta property and nothing indicates that he was harassing employees who refused to be interviewed. It is perfectly legal in the Netherlands to record people in public places.
You don't need someone's consent to record in public, and if any of the employees objected to the publication of the recording, they could consult with an attorney about a portrait rights claim. Such a claim should be adjudicated by a court, not Facebook.
And let's be clear about the context here: these types of glasses are used by "content creators" to do street interviews that are published online, and they're also used to record all sorts of junk/nonsense ("pranks", pickup artist BS, etc.).
Meta doesn't seem to have a problem with content recorded with these glasses being posted on its platforms, even when it's objectionable, because it's literally everywhere. The only problem here, obviously, was that he was recording Meta employees.
"these types of glasses are used by "content creators" to do street interviews that are published online"
This to me is wild. I use the glasses to film my kids and share it on private hard-drives with grandparents, that's it. It's wild to me that I can surreptitiously film someone on the street and publish it online for views, and the only recourse the person has, is to go to court? Seems insane.
Why does Hollywood require a release but Youtube does not?
EDIT: People are getting hung-up on my use case. But that's not the question posed here.
You might want to think twice about this. The videos from those glasses are uploaded and used for AI training, for which they are also reviewed by humans in Kenya, according to the explainer from Bits Of Freedom (with English subs, here: https://www.bitsoffreedom.nl/campagnes/gluurbril/)
Posted article has nothing on my data ending up in Kenya. If you mean it'll be used by Meta Analytics, that's an opt-in feature (easy Fines in California if they violate this)
I agree posting videos of people without their consent should be illegal, and I thought it was? Why does Hollywood require a release form but YouTube does not?
But that's regardless of whether it was filmed on Meta Glasses or a pocket camera.
Bit of a Gish galloping happening here. None of the content/video mentioned in these articles are shown to be non-consensually shared (which is the wink wink suggestion here). I have no doubt Meta has contractors world wide
Meta's pretty explicit about asking for opt-in and laying out exactly how your videos are used as part of onboarding.
It is bizarre to me that you think Meta will be a good steward of your data, regardless of what they've told you or what the law says they can and can't do.
This would be an added fine, because its not just "oopsie I used your data for analytics when you didn't opt-in", it'll be "actually I went ahead and used it for other purposes too".
As someone who trains AI for a living, the resultant fines are definitely not worth my data.
Meta pulls >100B USD in profits, an added fine of even a few hundreds millions USD could be worth it depending on cost-benefit.
I asked what other enforcement mechanisms there could be since an added fine isn't really teeth-y enough unless it follows the EU model for privacy violations: initial fine and a requirement to change behaviour, no change in behaviour increases the fine up to 6% global revenue, and the fines will keep coming until the behaviour is changed.
Perhaps for the company you work at it might not be worth it but we are talking about one of the most profitable companies in the history of mankind.
Profitable companies still need to justify unit economics. And I know it's not believable in this particular forum but Meta doesn't operate on the "let's optimize pricing on breaking laws" principle.
Given the marginal value of my data to training anything (near zero), the lawsuit costs (even if I personally don't see any of the money) is far too large. I am not saying they definitely won't do it, they've bumbled into worse situations before but this feels like an obvious own goal if they try.
You keep referring repeatedly to fines and how easy they are to collect in California, but a quick search indicates that, to date, Facebook has paid $0 in fines to California for CCPA violations.
The biggest fine ever recorded for CCPA violations was against Disney, and it was for a paltry $2.75 million. Disney pulls in $2.75 million in revenue every ~10 mintues.
The potential fines for these types of laws are basically considered a cost of doing business if they ever need to be paid, and pale in comparison to the revenue earned by monetizing user data.
> If you mean it'll be used by Meta Analytics, that's an opt-in feature (easy Fines in California if they violate this)
And, as we all know, tech companies and especially Meta never ever lie or trick you. They were never caught red handed sharing your information and violating your privacy despite claiming the opposite. They also are never fined because they are so careful, and the fines and consequences are always big enough to make them clean up their act.
Oh, wait, for a moment I forgot about the past two decades.
Some auditors in the USA did that already. I was surprised to see that, since here in Europe, people have a much more negative view of Facebook's spyglasses. I think it is similar to getting money from Facebook directly, just as other "sports" people do product placement, such as for Red Bull (Dom Tomato; and many in the bboying scene). I find this annoying to no ends, but money convinces people. My problem is that I am not interested in ads and no "argument" can convince me otherwise. Since I am not interested in ads, I don't watch it and I don't buy from such companies. It places some restrictions onto me, since many companies advertise, in particular the big ones, but it also means I get to know smaller companies better. (Sometimes there is a de-facto monopoly, so I can not always avoid all companies and their ads; in particular for things you really need, such as food and so forth.)
> the only recourse the person has, is to go to court
Well, typically, if you are in public, you can do just about anything with regards to recording. In private the laws are a bit different. Either way it is a barrier.
FALSE! It's legal to record in public spaces and share it if you are not targeting any individual in particular. What the author did was instead purpusefully focus on those particular employees.
Author made the people he was recording unrecognizable. So even though he focused on specific employees he didn't violate their right to privacy which means it isn't illegal.
Supposing the video has not been edited further, since the original was taken down, their voices were not censored and there are people in the video who were not in the background and who clearly didn't want to be filmed. I agree that the law has many intricacies, but here I think it's much more the case of their privacy being broken and their consent being ignored
Yes, you're claiming that it's illegal to record people in public in the Netherlands. This is incorrect.
Under Article 139a of the Dutch Criminal Code, you are legally allowed to record any conversation in which you are a participant. You don't need to inform or obtain permission from another party.
There's no law that forbids recording people in public spaces. GDPR and portrait rights claims may be implicated, but if Facebook wants to take the position that it removed this man's videos as an adjudication of claims those recorded never brought themselves, it begs the question: why is it selling its glasses and allowing them to record in the Netherlands in the first place?
They want protection from liability and also editorial control?
Regardless of the legal status, it seems clear that when massive companies refuse to allow the media they own to publish a dissenting opinion, we’re not headed towards a ~~more~~ democratic society.
That's clear. But with using Facebook for public discourse, you flushed all ideas about democratic societies down the toilet. Democratic societies should have their public discourse in public places. Not in commercial walled gardens owned by some US maniacs.
> is perfectly legal in the Netherlands to record people in public places.
it's perfectly legal to record but publish, especially in but not limited to a commercial context without explicit consent violates portrait rights under the GDPR in the EU. And I strongly suspect if you posted a video in which people explicitly object to being filmed and flag that on Facebook or other platforms it will get taken down.
I cant just take a photo of a person or even car on the street and just share it online unless its clear the car or person is not the central point of the photo standing alone.
But you raise an interesting point: if this would be against the law in Germany, why is Facebook waiting for these glasses to be banned? It never should have made these available in Germany, and should be using technical means to ensure that they cannot function inside of Germany's borders.
So it's just more proof of the hypocrisy. Meta doesn't care about the privacy of the plebs.
It's perfectly fine to take pictures of the Brandenburger Tor for example and post them online. There will likely be people in that picture but as they are not the main aspect of the image, it will be fine.
It's something different if you zoom in on somebody in that scene and he becomes the main point of the image. Then his personal rights overwhelm the right to document public spaces.
In Sweden for instance it's a bit in-between (unless the law has changed). You're allowed to film in public if you're using a non-stationary camera, but stationary cameras require a permit.
That's an important caveat. We kind of have something similar, in that if you install CCTV, and if it captures an area where people would expect privacy (ie, looking through a window, or into someone's back garden ... which has its own caveats around being a public place or not) you have a right to have that area removed from video coverage.
Yeah, Germany is different here. I am not 100% sure, but in Germany it is allowed if you are not focusing on any particular individual person. It is difficult to argue in absolute terms, which is why most consider public photos forbidden completely (unless for private/personal, very narrow use). Nowadays, in Germany, it has helped me to consider everything forbidden, unless it is explicitly allowed somewhere.
That's pretty understandable, and I've no particular issue with it (although I'm now aware I broke quite a few photo- and video- laws when I was last in Berlin ;) )
Where do you get the "without their consent" bit from?
The hypocrisy is probably located around here:
> "I've been making satirical videos about all kinds of things for ten years: Gaza, Ukraine, refugees. Funny videos that push boundaries and provoke discussion. But I've never experienced a video being removed before.
The hypocrisy is that meta is creating a tool that their employees are very uncomfortable seeing used on them.
What the law says about consent is irrelevant to the hypocrisy, and the videos are automatically uploaded to meta without anyone's consent anyway. You know this very well, there is no need to cosplay the smart devil's advocate.
It's incredibly hypocritical. It's like working at Flock and complaining about being filmed on a Flock camera. Or working for a company that sells cars that emit a loud, annoying sound and complaining about those cars in your neighborhood. Or making devices for children but banning your own children from using them because the devices are harmful. They clearly don't care that the product their company is selling can legally (in most places) be used to film people in public until they themselves are filmed in public. How is that not hypocrisy?
Any camera in the world can be used to film people in public without their consent. There are lawful ways to do it (if the people are "background noise" and not the point of the video), and unlawful ways to do it (if the people become the subject of the video).
So tell me now, is a GoPro/Canon/Apple employee who doesn't consent to being the subject of a video taken with a GoPro/Canon/iPhone camera also a hypochrite?
I agree, I cannot control what other people will do. Are you applying this fear to all other facets of your life? I guess not, since that would mean you'd live in a state of constant fear and paranoia.
The mental gymnastics that people do here to defend these untouchable corporations is disgusting. From Meta to OpenAi, for a lot of people here it's just a "yeah, but actually". I've reported everything from holocaust glorification to videos of people being filmed in public in europe just to be humiliated, to obvious far right propaganda done by russian linked accounts, nothing goes against Meta's policy anymore, except when it's about them...
The asymmetry bothers me. No one corporation is going to get it right 100% of the time but it's when you report stuff and it never gets removed but they ban you that you can really see how morally bankrupt they are
(Oh, and they don't care about local solutions. Their sneakiness with Free Basics is clear. Can you blame them for Myanmar? I think you can, but it's also clear they want to supplant all the other social networks, like a system each individual country might come up with)
It does bother me being here on hacker news because it's a good aggregator but you get people standing up for their industry no matter what or flagging anything they disagree with
No one cares if you are not uploading if they still feel unsafe. The differences are marginal to those that actually have a family or a partner. I'm still going to bet that my assumption is correct because no one with a family is going to argue against this.
>I'll remind you that sharing a video you took of someone without their consent is not the same as recording them and keeping the video strictly for yourself
This distinction does not matter if people feel unsafe regardless of "keeping it to yourself". It is still very creepy for a lot of people especially women and children. So what is the point of this "reminder"?
To point out that it's not hypochritical to treat differently a private recording and a published recording of a person that hasn't given you explicit consent
I hate these glasses, but why do you need to ban them? Meta operates at scale, so it will only stay in this business if a considerable number of people buy this. Vote with your money. There are legitimate uses for camera glasses (journalism, action sports, etc.).
I'm trying to understand how to "vote with my money" for not being recorded by these glasses in public. My best interpretation would be financially supporting private establishments that have banned these devices... Which feels like exactly what you're arguing against.
Myspace had its run, it wasn't an especially good product. People moved to Facebook for any number of reasons, but those privacy settings ("friends only", etc) if they worked would've been pretty cool and good for the web
Unfortunately Zuckerberg doesn't care about privacy and actively spent time changing those from Friends Only to Public
And graph search. If I search for 'carrot' I can see any post you've ever made in your entire history with carrot in it
There's a reason Facebook's wall thing is now called 'timeline'. It lists everything you've ever done ever. Hope you managed to catch yet another one of their silent privacy changes. Oh, look, guess you have to log in to catch it. That means they rope you back into the system. Oh well. No biggie. Just the absolute antithesis of consent
Was this a action constructed so that its suppression makes the suppressed message easier to understand? If meta takes down the video they reenforce that the glasses can be used in a bad way, and if they leave it up the initial critical message can spread. Like the 2012 Barnaul “toy protest” in Siberia.
I just can’t find the user experience different enough for me to feel like my western friends have any point to make about China
the west has a thin partyless corporate layer controlling all facets of life and your ability to participate in life compared to the government doing it directly
but its okay because if you don’t care about any of that you can talk about it (in person only because nobody will hear it for long elsewhere) and you won’t be disappeared? *unless your citizenship status is questioned
I recorded a video harassing the employees of a company, I uploaded it to the servers of said company, and they removed it. Who could have imagined this would happen?
This "ban all kids" kind of take is bananas to me. It implies you either A) believe we should trust famously secure and benevolent tech companies with government ID or B) believe parents have the time or technical know-how to exhaustively monitor the internet access of kids. Even as a software engineer, I've found it insanely tiresome to try operating half-assed parental controls across devices.
Mostly vast amounts of sexism, but I also see racism, antisemitism and islamophobia waaay too much. The 'isms' tend to glom onto certain posts and go nuts. Algorithmic feeds at their finest, I guess.
Just exposing the kids to the real world will create those thoughts in their brains from first principles. The only way for them not to have those thoughts is by manipulation… which is, surprisingly, done through mass media these days.
Maybe we haven’t seen enough creative applications of these to win us over? Every time I see them on someone they instantly look like Woody Allen. Imagine what art a filmmaker like Woody Allen would make with these glasses.
I don't like it when I'm recorded without my consent. But people do that with their phones all the time for TikTok videos, for meta videos, for YouTube videos. Nobody yet has demanded that smartphones be banned or that cameras be removed from smartphones.
It smacks of hypocrisy to me. Either ban them all or allow them all.
I don't like it, but this is happening. And while we can frown on it socially, it would be self-defeating to ask our government to ban filming in public.
Instagram is full of videos of guys harassing and antagonizing people in public as "pranks". And this is not some coincidence, since both products are from the same company, they basically unleashed this for engagement.
Another thread where the top comment is "We have to do something!!" and no one stepping forward to actually do so. I suppose they know how to divide us, keep us threatening each other and never actually finding agreement.
Yes. It appears that there was another person, perhaps with another pair of such glasses, who was filming the interactions from a 3rd person's perspective.
Outside basic network effects like real names Facebook has contributed essentially nothing of value to the world. (And no, don't tell me "React, Pytorch". People were screaming about React's license) The network effects barely matter too because their AI bans you whenever and feeds are so useless you never see what anyone posts
Instagram went from a site for photographers to Reels everywhere (and login walls on every page)
Other than ad revenue, the company hasn't had any big wins. VR didn't take off. Metaverse didn't take off. AI models didn't take off. All multi-billion dollar ventures. Any other board would have sacked him by now.
He can't be fired as CEO due to the way he set up the company (Class A and Class B stocks, Class A worth 1 vote, Class B worth 10 votes, he owns like 90% of Class B stock)
it's because he controls the board by being the majority voting shareholder.
This is what happens when the gov't decides that it is legal for share classes with different voting rights. It ensures that you can sell equity to obtain money, without actually giving up control of said company at all. In theory, buyers would discount the sold equity due to this, but in practice, they don't (esp. if they're retail buyers).
Thanks for clearing that up. One less thing to sort out.
Interesting consequence.
EDIT: Initially, this is nuts. How can I give "own" part of a company and not have a say. Sounds like a silent partner scheme. Looks like this a per state thing.
There is this ruling Business Roundtable v. SEC (1990) that strikes down an SEC rule that prevented corps from going public if they didn't follow "one-share-one-vote".
Oh, like the video metrics scandal? Or how their ads are shown to more people in an area than physically exist?
Of course the counter-argument is "makes money". That first of all doesn't make a good CEO (if you put no money into maintaining your site, for example), second of all it ignores all the fraud
All over the US people are freaking out about Flock cameras and that's justified.
Meanwhile, these Meta glasses are far more ubiquitous, far more intrusive, being sold all over the world (not only the US) and their images have a lot less oversight than Flock's. And I don't need to tell anyone how irresponsible Meta is with other people's privacy.
Huh? Not in my area. I've seen one pair of these in the wild and dozens of Flock cameras. Will that change? Maybe. For now, the _freak outs_ about Flock are absolutely justified.
Their footprints are also completely different. I can't avoid Flock cameras unless I want to change my path of travel and take back roads, which costs me time and money. Whereas I _might_ encounter someone wearing Meta glasses _if_ I happen to cross paths with them.
Yeah, I also find it weird to make a comparison with a random private individual and/or corporation with an actor that has the monopoly on violence.
The government doing surveillance is much much worse.
And, ultimately, the issue here is that individuals are using these products in a bad way. Go to Japan and this shit is prolifically bad. Upskirt cameras on shoes and all this shit. Banning these glasses doesn't get rid of bad behaviors. Japan has been at the forefront of pervy invasive shit for decades.
Corporate censorship. Do we want such a future in general,
where big companies decide onto you what you can see and what
you can not see? These walled digital gardens they built up
are already such a huge issue.
Now I don't depend on CIAbook, formerly
known as Facebook, in any way, shape or form. And I don't use
Suckerberg's Spyglasses either - hopefully others feel in a
similar way, but unfortunately money convinces people, and I
noticed a few "auditors" using spyglasses allegedly for
"protection" (though, why they don't use normal vide cameras
instead, beats me - perhaps they are not truthful). I fear
that the spyglasses will be a success since Suckerberg is so
sold on spying on mankind. If Google were not to exist, Facebook
would be the number #1 evil company right now.
I cant believe this is a thing. I just turned on dead comments and there are loads of them, most I dont consider offensive or bad in any way. I had no idea HN was so severely censored, my opinion of it has gone down (even though I assume this comment will now be killed).
Interesting - yes, Epstein glasses. Hmm.. Pervert glasses, epstein glasses, pervert glasses, Epstein glasses. Pervstein glasses? <looks at coffee>, <looks outside>, <wonders why this world is so dumb>, <wonders when the revolution will come>
Anyone can just go on Temu and easily buy stalking gadgets like gps trackers and tiny spy cameras etc for very little money. Any legislation against this type of thing would need to be very wide reaching to be effective, as there are much cheaper and easier to obtain devices which secretly film than meta glasses.
The title is misleading - it sounds like they specifically went there to harass employees by filming them, and Meta took down the videos for harassment, like they routinely do if this is reported on their platforms. I'm really not sure what the issue is.
Meta only cares about this video because it directly targets Meta. If this guy was asking questions to employees of any other company they would not give a shit.
I have read news article about people wearing meta glasses, removing the red recording LED and filming woman and girls at beaches in bikini without their knowledge. And these video often stay up on metas Instagram, accounts don't get suspended. THAT is the issue.
We need to move beyond just banning these glasses - all smart glasses of all kinds - to breaking up these companies. Undo the acquisitions of Insta and Whatsapp - I don't care that will be expensive, thats a shareholders problem.
We should together stop calling devices which film in dressing / locker rooms smart.
These devices record video & sound track serve Ads and do Data fusion
What if you took a cam corder to a locker room? People would be upset, that is not allowed. That would not be nice. This is not nice either
Much like a cell phone, nobody would even really care if you brought a camcorder down so long as you aren't operating it (which is very obvious).
What makes these things gross is that it's not obvious when someone is recording.
Which Meta Glasses try to counter by making it obvious when someone is recording with the recording light; arguably more obvious than cell phones.
> As he films them from multiple angles, the predominantly English-speaking employees ask the presenter questions such as, "What are you doing?" and "Are you filming me right now?"
Meta employees themselves couldn't tell if he was recording!
There's a technology that can hide an LED light, it is called "a small piece of tape."
I don't know how effective it or how it works but Meta says they disable recording if the recording light is blocked.
https://9to5google.com/2026/07/07/meta-ray-ban-smart-glasses...
And the next generation of "smart glasses" made by companies that aren't so reliant on public image will just forgo this entirely voluntary nicety.
They are designed to be easy to bypass. Plenty of tutorials exist online and I can't imagine that Meta engineers didn't know about it beforehand.
Provide this 'easy' tutorial please.
https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/4352861484/smart-glasses-led...
> Take control of your privacy with this easy-to-use LED and Camera Blocker
That is a camera blocker. your camera will not work with that.
I agree we should do something in this instance, but with the speed of which things are changing? Eventually, this tech is going to be undetectable.
"Oh no that's sci-fi and decades away", I really don't think so. I think neuralink, and competitors too, will next move on to reading the visual cortex. They already have plans to push data to the visual cortex, to enable the blind to "see", reading in healthy people seems quite doable.
I expect something like this to happen before 2030.
Regardless, I agree for now? Yes. But the future? I don't see it as blockable forever.
There are two ways we decide how severe the punishment for broken laws is. One is to enable just punishment. The other is deterrent. This may fall into "deterrent is the bigger part of the sentence", where people posting private information receive years in jail as a result.
There is a little bit of a conversation about this here:
https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/other-autre/cndii-cdncii...
And the above certainly covers Meta glasses too.
I think it won't be long before it's the posting of non-consensual imagery that is so criminal, that few will do so. For years in Quebec, sharing of images captured in public isn't really legit. You control "images of yourself", regardless of where they are taken, public places or not:
https://educaloi.qc.ca/en/capsules/your-right-to-control-pho...
And they're so worried about problems with image sharing, they've almost automated the process to deal with it:
https://www.quebec.ca/en/justice-and-civil-status/support-vi...
So this is already being criminalized in a lot of places.
> Regardless, I agree for now? Yes. But the future? I don't see it as blockable forever.
It's increasingly necessary not to allow guests to bring their devices into your house or establishment. Somebody should go into business doing courtesy phones, where you can switch your sim/esim at the door to a dumbphone owned by the business.
When it comes to smart glasses, if they're prescription you had better have spares or you're going to be blind. Canada's censorship solutions are no solution; you can't stop people from doing things by cracking down on civil liberties, people will just ignore you and do it anyway. Then you're stuck chasing anonymity, now your entire society is totalitarian and everything is rooted. In order to fight the totalitarian surveillance and tracking instituted because you wouldn't tell some pervert to take his robot glasses off, the electorate makes MechaHitler your PM, and it's now in control of your surveillance system.
It would be very funny if Skynet took over because people elected it, like Hitler did.
Yep, they're spy glasses / perv glasses.
I don't like it but it's totally normal, especially for youth, to have their cell phones out in locker rooms. Targeting only glasses with this concern is largely out of touch with current behavior.
That isn't normal and it's actively enforced against in gyms and pools where I live.
Glasses are passively recording. Recording with a phone is active (for the most part). You need to take it out and point it at what you are recording...
> That isn't normal
Every gym I've been to is full of people with phones out in the locker room, from cheap chain gyms to the nicer athletic club I currently go to. My experience is much closer to GP.
> Glasses are passively recording
All the smart glasses I know of have a light on when recording. My phone does not and can be much more discreet (subject to the fact that everyone has a phone out already).
I agree that if a location is actively banning phone use patrons should absolutely also be asked to take off smart glasses.
> All the smart glasses I know of have a light on when recording.
How long until someone differentiates themselves on the market by not having the light?
Not to minimize Meta's push for these things, but there have been devices that do this for quite a while now. You can get tiny cameras hidden in pens, watches, glasses, and all sorts of other items.
It's just that in the past, these were sold by janky companies selling them as spy/hidden cameras, not massive multinational data brokers like Meta.
I would be surprised if those don't already exist, I hear stories in the news all the time about small hidden cameras places they shouldn't be. For a private space like the locker room I'm not sure what option there is besides laws making that illegal (I assume/hope that already is?). Someone dedicated already can get a much more discreet camera.
For public spaces, at least where I am, there really isn't a legal expectation of privacy. I couldn't tell if someone was watching YouTube or filming me with their phone and I probably don't have any recourse anyway.
People already sell services to disable the light.
What does this have to do with WhatsApp?
Also as much as you might like to punish investors (most of whom just have it in their 401k) because you don't like people with money, there are legal protections and the government can't just do something like that without an actual reason.
WhatsApp is definitely part of Meta's distribution and reach strategy. So it's very relevant.
I don't think OP is trying to punish investors. I think they are saying the overall damage of letting these companies continue the current trend will be worse than the cost of unwinding it now.
I'm an advocate of reformed legislation to enable this.
Why shouldn't we punish investors? This is the risk when you invest in these types of companies where regulation is nonexistent. It's not the job of the government to make sure rich shareholders stay green.
It’s absolutely insane to me how intro economics classes spout that capital takes on risks to implement new ideas while completely glossing over the political process of ensuring profit floors and guarantees under the “rent seeking” definition. Like, rent seeking seems to be the only goal of capital now.
Egregious example:
https://www.loevy.com/for-profit-prison/
Public prisons have all of the same incentives to reduce costs and anything you should do to ensure public prisons are following minimum standards (regular inspections and regulations) can just as easily be applied to private prisons.
The problem isn't the profit. The problem is the lack of accountability.
I know that shareholders just want monopolies and free money and don't want to compete for it, but we should make them. Like we did before Ronald Reagan and Robert Bork shot the kneecaps out of our antitrust law. It's not about punishing shareholders, it's about making them earn their keep. It's just good business.
I think the point is, it's been a good system, but it's out of control. It's not that people don't like people having money, it's people don't like the status quo of watching society and the world be destroyed by generating share holder value alone. We need a better system. Not saying that is communism or whatever, but the monopolies and corruption are off the charts.
Also as much as you might like to punish investors (most of whom just have it in their 401k) because you don't like people with money, there are legal protections and the government can't just do something like that without an actual reason.
As much as you might like to defend the wealthy because the only thing you care about is money, regardless of the human cost, doesn't mean that we can't use the law and the government to limit the harm being done to humans.
I know what you are going to say. "Fuck people! I only worship money!" but I think you need to look beyond just the financial aspects of this situation.
> I don't care that will be expensive, thats a shareholders problem.
"I have no empathy for the two-thirds of Americans who will lose their personal savings that they need to retire" really undermines your case.
Edit: thoughtful tradeoffs against the stock market are reasonable. "I don't care" is not a carefully weighed tradeoff
It's also possible that it would benefit those same people. It doesn't necessarily need to be expensive.
93% of equities are held by the top 10% of households. Most middle class wealth in the US is primary residence real estate. The stock market isn’t the economy. No one is entitled to wealth.
> As of 2022, about half of households with a worker age 55 and older had no retirement savings, and 32% had no retirement savings or a defined benefit plan.
The scaremongering about equity values is not grounded in facts and reality.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49357337
This line of argument ("think of the retirees!!!") could be used in many cases, however when is it acceptable to break companies for the greater (non-financial) good?
On a parallel, can't we criticize any decision reducing the market cap of companies as an attack on the retirement portfolios? Say, if we required connected glasses to display a red light of more than x lumens when recording, would that be ok, even if it decreased Meta's market cap?
> decision reducing the market cap of companies as an attack on the retirement portfolios
Any decision that results in a long term net loss across the entire public economy? Yes.
That's something that hurts a lot of people and that hurt should be carefully weighed against whatever the assumed benefit is. Sometimes that's worth it, sometimes it's not
But it's never OK to just hand wave with "well I don't care about that class of people so screw them"
And let's not move the goalposts. OPs proposal was a corporate breakup of massive scale, not a minimum lumens requirement.
I'm not saying that we should or shouldn't, I would like to know the line of demarcation. Splitting Meta would have a very low effect on the economy as the services are individually profitable and would continue to be operated, without the all-knowing centralized database/24h Telescreen.
At some point, similar to the camera/face recognition debate, it's about a choice of society that we want to live in. I think that's an interesting debate.
> Splitting Meta would have a very low effect on the economy
That's...I'm not even sure how to respond to that. It would have a large direct and MASSIVE indirect chilling effect. The scale would be historic.
> it's about a choice of society that we want to live in. I think that's an interesting debate.
I fully agree with you! OP apparently doesn't, as he stated he does not care about half of the voices in that debate. That's what I'm taking issue with, not the proposal to break up Meta, which is, as you said, worth a debate!
> Undo the acquisitions of Insta and Whatsapp - I don't care that will be expensive, thats a shareholders problem.
Yikes. I thought this was America.
The US has laws against monopolies and trusts.
Those laws have been nerfed since the Ronald Reagan / Robert Bork / Consumer Welfare Standard takeover. We should un-nerf the anti-trust laws.
Yep, and heck, on occasion we even enforce them.
When we do, it can be pretty effective.
I just wish we did so more frequently, and, more importantly, that the consumer welfare principle hadn't emerged as the prevalent antitrust standard.
That sounds like “we’ve always done things this way and therefore will continue doing things this way”.
Which is a great mindset if you want to ignore new information and avoid improving the status quo.
If anyone wants to see the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHKhYL3is5o
He did harass them a bit. I'm looking forward to Meta taking down all videos where someone is a bit harassed. Internet will be a much nicer place!
I think he could've gotten his point across without making her turn around and then putting his face behind her ass.
He did it to men too.
The argumentative method of rather than saying and doing what you believe and instead doing and saying what you are opposed to, is always weak and usually a great way to shoot yourself in the foot.
That being said. I agree 100% with making Meta Employees feel uncomfortable with their own products.
That was totally unacceptable behavior. I support the choice to take down a video depicting blatant sexual harassment of its employees. I also support launching meta into the sun.
> He did harass them a bit.
Maybe I'm too European to understand, where exactly is harassment occurring? He's asking Meta employees questions, doesn't seem to follow them around, and when they walk away or say no, he doesn't exactly force them to stay or anything? Doesn't there have to be some intimidation or humiliation or similar for it to be harassment? Or asking employees what they think of the products they develop and support is the harassment part?
To me he crossed a line by asking the woman to turn around and then crouching down to film her butt. That is a really creepy thing to do and a lot of women would find that threatening. Ask a female friend how they would feel if you find that surprising.
Arguing about whether to call this kind of behavior a harassment or "a bit" of a harassment is in my opinion all besides the point.
This video mainly shows a person approaching other people in public and recording them with these glasses. Which is one of the typical scenarios in which such a glasses are probably going to be used. And that video shows that even the Meta employees themselves generally do not seem to like it very much.
That is the point.
Do you know how harnessed I feel by people wearing pervert glasses around my kids?
I don't know if I agree that man-on-the-street pseudo journalistic stuff is one of the "typical scenarios." Any time I see a product like this I think:
I don't think these will make more people bother strangers on the street, it's just another way the same people can do that.That's fine for you, but why on earth do you think every other person out there will only use these for innocuous nerdy reasons? Ask any adult woman you know and there's a good chance she will have at least one story of being stalked or getting really creeped out by someone. Consumer tech that enables creepy behavior will be used in that way by too many people.
I felt a bit uneasy when the employees indicate they're uncomfortable with the filming and he asks them why, while continuing to film. Given how they're blurred out and that their discomfort is kind-of the point w.r.t. the issue he's trying to raise, I don't think this meets the bar that Meta usually adheres to when it comes to taking down videos, but describing it as "a bit" of harassment doesn't sound too wrong to me.
They feel uncomfortable with being filmed while going about their day to day life? Maybe they should stop making products that enable such a thing.
How do these glasses "enable" it any more than a gopro, a security camera, or the phone that nearly every person in the developed world already has?
Behavior like this will one day causing "no glasses beyond this point" rule, which will also hurts people that really need to use glasses.
All things you mentioned can be easily prohibited on photo-sensitive area. Perhaps phone is harder, but it's still easily get prohibited without hurting anything. Glasses so far is a requirement, not that easy to prohibit in an area.
Others are making it wrong doesn't justify another wrong.
In any case: they are different because they are in the face all day long, they are not a device some needs to start using to record; they are not operated by the user, in the sense that the user does not show any active indication of recording (e.g. they are not holding the camera); they are similar to regular glasses, making it hard to distinguish;
and they do not clear indicate if they are recording (and don't tell me that the LED is enough)
Because it's intentionally a camera that blends into normal clothing so it's less obvious you are being filmed.
because these always-available features changes the threshold for it happening
Bending down to stare at a female employee's ass at waist level after he asked her to turn around isn't harassment[1]? Like, up until that point it was almost ribbing but that was quite the turn given it'd be the same issue whether he was wearing smart glasses or not.
Not to mention the sarcastic, insincere tone he adopts after being asked what he's doing, claiming he's "such a huge fan" of the Meta glasses. There is a way to draw attention to privacy and this is a poor way to go about it.
[1] Cambridge Dictionary: 'behavior that annoys or upsets someone'
I am just an American, but I live in Portugal and it is legally not allowed to film people in public without their consent (you also can't have a street facing surveillance camera like in the US). Moreover, people take this rule very seriously. If it appears that you are doing so, they will be visibly bothered (I know some kids who have had uncomfortable interactions because they weren't aware).
I don't think blurring faces fully addresses that (though I'm not commenting on legality in Amsterdam).
I can see the argument that this video is in the public interest (hey, I'm Americanese), but it does seem plausible some people would find it a violation of a norm.
> it is legally not allowed to film people in public without their consent
Lots places have laws like that. Maybe Meta shouldn't sell a device that makes it easy to do it anyway.
Not defending Meta, they suck.
I realize the idea that rules exist even if you dislike the people they (momentarily) protect, even if those people have violated them, is a tough pill to swallow.
Working at meta is a violation of the norm, it's hard to care.
Then I guess Meta glasses will be banned in Portugal.
Why? Cameras are not banned, filming without consent is.
I'm sure you could think of a few reasons.
Meta and it's employees seem to have thought of a few.
This is technically correct but also giving "guns don't kill people; people kill people" vibes from that NRA marketing/propaganda campaign.
Right but the debate here is about “my gun is good and your gun is bad” rather than the right of anybody to have gun.
Cameras exist. This is a camera. All cameras have the same problems this one. So why are we debating about this camera vs that camera rather than whether cameras should be allowed.
> All cameras have the same problems this one.
My perfectly normal camera does not stream shit to Meta servers or any other cloud. It's in fact fully offline. So, no.
Recording is one thing and sharing the same recording with a hostile foreign entity another.
Legally, many places have strict ban on publishing photos/recordings without consent, while photographing itself is generally allowed in public spaces.
This is before even getting into with issues of recordes d material being used as training material etc, which adds additional ethical and legal issues.
Yours might not, but what other people choose to do with their recordings is out of your control.
You may have a specific issue with the fact that the media goes through meta’s services, but that’s not the point that is being made in this thread.
All of the ethical and legal issues apply to all other cameras and camera footage too.
> I am just an American, but I live in Portugal and it is legally not allowed to film people in public without their consent
If that's actual law that's a bit surprising. In many EU countries there are journalistic exceptions (which may or may not apply in this specific case depending on local law)
> (you also can't have a street facing surveillance camera like in the US)
And same here. Usually the limit is that if you do it within GDPR household exemption then you cannot have it facing street, but if you do it on GDPR scope then you need to fulfill the GDPR requirements (e.g. posting notice, be ready to answer GDPR requests, perform balancing tests for recording etc.).
This is true de jure but not de facto and if anyone wants proof just go look up the number of Teslas in portuguese streets and the zero convictions over continuous recording of the public.
>you also can't have a street facing surveillance camera like in the US
That's wild. Their solved crime rate must be in the gutter.
It's kind of an interesting catch-22 if that's the right idiom. Places with these laws do generally have a higher rate of property crime when comparing like to like, e.g. urban areas of similar size, to those without it. However that higher crime rate often leads to installation of security cameras covering more private areas.
The original comment doesn't tell the whole story. Street facing surveillance cameras are allowed if they are strictly covering the entrances to the building.
I don’t know the legal of boundary harassment but he’s clearly trolling them and making people uncomfortable.
That's the point.
If everyone is wearing the glasses, wherever you go, you'll be filmed all the time, with most people not bothering to ask.
I mean, you are being filmed everywhere you go anyway by flock cameras, police/government cctv, even cctv on business and peoples house/ring doorbells etc. Concent to being filmed in a public place is not really asked anywhere, so I dont see it as a big difference personally.
Try to have the 24/7 cameras at chest level or lower, you'll find people starting to get uncomfortable. You can easily reach those angle with the glasses, and different with smartphone which also can, the glasses can be hard to distinguish.
Ring doorbell cameras are chest high and millions of homes have them. I would bet every time you walk down the street you are captured by loads of them, but because you dont know you dont care.
I think the ironic thing in the video, is the employees of the company making the product, abject to the use of the product when it is directed towards them. So why should everyone else be comfortable with it.
But meta employs many thousands of people. Is it fair to say they all work on the meta glasses and/or all think they are a good idea? Just because you work for a company doesnt mean you share its morals.
Poor Tracy in accounts probably doesnt give 2 hoots about meta glasses, shes just an accountant and maybe she doesnt even know they exist. But now shes getting harassed by idiots with cameras as she goes into the office because of something another department on the other side of the country did.
If you were doing it to Zuck himself or following round the head of the smart glasses department then it might be different, but harassing general employees of meta is no better than any other company. These are normal people no matter where they work.
You don’t understand the difference between recording things in good faith vs recording things because you want a reaction you can exploit for personal gains.
Hahahaha, "recording things in good faith." What an insane statement to make to paint this guy in a bad light. Should people also be concerned about walking in good faith, or eating their lunch in good faith? Meta created these creep glasses so people could do exactly what this guy is doing: film people in public (without them knowing). There is no "bad faith" when you're just literally doing what the product is for.
This is a strange take…
1. You’ve inferred that the reason the glasses exist is to enable people to harass other people. That’s a very odd conclusion. 2. Where’s the without them knowing? Meta literally designed the hardware so that you do know that you’re being filmed, unlike almost every other camera on the market. 3. You haven’t managed to separate the decisions and accountability of an individual from the tool that they use to execute those decisions. This is a strange way to look at the world. It places inherent moral values into inanimate objects.
1. Whether what he did is considered "harassment" is debatable. 2. Because it looks like an everyday object and not a camera? If you design a necklace or hat that films people but displays a small light (which can easily be covered up), the vast majority of people will not know they are being filmed. 3. He went up to people in public and asked them questions. Filming their bodies and asking them to turn around was weird and inappropriate but demonstrates the point he is trying to make, which is that this is inherently a bad product that films people with a camera but it doesn't look like a camera, which people naturally find deceptive and creepy, and they don't want to be around it.
There are other plausible explanations to do with interacting with strangers generally. I don’t think he really made a point at all.
it's the opposite actually.
If someone holds their camera or a phone facing you directly you can guess they are filming you.
Normally looking glasses with a hidden camera is a Spywear from spy novels. The diode doesn't change much
Right but if they stand near you and film you with a phone without directly interacting with you, it’s extremely difficult to notice that you’re being filmed.
If someone stands in front of you and interacts with you, firstly the camera in these glasses is not hidden and the glasses themselves are quite distinctive, and secondly, a light comes on exactly where you would be looking as you interact - next to their eyes.
On those two points, I’d argue that they’re exactly the same as phones or other cameras when it comes to being able to secretly record.
They’re nothing like glasses from spy novels, they’re extremely noticeable.
The outrage over these glasses is overblown.
They have been around for a while. At some point it just became trendy to hate on them, but people are completely oblivious to the fact that you are more easily recorded secretly with smartphones. In fact, most viral content you see where someone is being recorded without their consent is from a smartphone, I have yet to see any such content filmed with actual smart glasses.
The camera is useful for many things besides recording video, but now we can’t have nice things because people think everyone with glasses is trying to creep on them.
It’s just generic AI/tech bubble rage.
Meta is butt raping our privacy 24/7 but god forbid some dude ask 3 questions to its employees, I'll never understand people bootlicking megacorps like these.
Fuck meta and fuck every single of their employee, you can't keep building hell and complain when people hit back
I've heard of journalism before, yes. So? Since when is this harassment?
Can't believe we have corporate bootlickers on HN of all places, I thought we still cared a tiny sliver about privacy? It all went away when we all gave away our private data to the AI companies, or what's the deal?
> Can't believe we have corporate bootlickers on HN of all places,
There are a very large contingent on HN who are against restrictions on corporate activities because they envision themselves as potential beneficiaries of a low regulation environment. Many of them also apparently view criticism itself as a restriction.
Read The Nerd Reich to see what this is about.
Or search "nerd reich" or "tech fascism" here to see the instantly flagged topics.
> Can't believe we have corporate bootlickers on HN of all places
I urge you to see the output of this:
This place is full of bootlickers what are you talking about? It's a corporate web site
He's specifically bending down to look at the behinds of the persons, also asks them to turn around "scanning" them.
If anything I think the employees are all nice people. I get the message but it's cringy to watch.
I'm also against cameras everywhere, but let's not pretend this is not all also possible with other devices.
Of course, Meta taking this down but not a lot of other, completely the same, stuff is the bad thing.
> let's not pretend this is not all also possible with other devices
Let's not pretend being able to beat someone with a rock and shoot them with a M61 Vulcan at 6k rounds per minute are the same thing just because they involve projectiles.
Facebook started explicitly (https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/19/facemash-creat...) as a way to creep on women.
This kind of hyperbole is nonsense. It’s a camera, being compared to other cameras. If your point doesn’t stand without dubious analogy then it’s not a very good point.
The fact is that if you stood outside any company office, with a highly visible camera crew, and then asked people who were passing by whether they worked at that company, most of them would probably feel quite apprehensive.
They would also be apprehensive if there was no camera at all.
So what exactly is the point that is being made in this video? People are apprehensive when put into situations with other people where their intentions are not clear and there are signs that the intentions might be malicious. Very informative…
> This kind of hyperbole is nonsense. It’s a camera, being compared to other cameras.
This kind of false equivalency is nonsense. Facebook's been making clear attempts to reduce the obviousness of their camera glasses.
The problem isn't "I get apprehensive when I see a camera". The problem is "I don't want to be filmed without my knowledge".
Citations please. I’ve only seen glasses which are obviously meta glasses with a clearly visible camera.
Being filmed without your knowledge is happening all the time, these glasses haven’t moved the needle at all.
> Citations please.
https://www.ray-ban.com/usa/ray-ban-meta-ai-glasses
I'm supposed to peer closely at peoples' sunglasses to try and figure out if that little black-on-black dot is a camera versus a design embellishment?
> Being filmed without your knowledge is happening all the time…
Murders happen all the time. That doesn't mean I need to be pro-murder.
Maybe I’m just more used to them. I see obvious camera in clearly identifiable smart glasses…
Isn't that the point? The camera glasses add a 10x harassment factor.
Asking questions is harassment now?
It's obvious he's making a point, but there is no harassment that I see.
FFS ... it's this kind of goal-post shifting that ends with sign-holding grannies being arrested for terrorism.
It's harassment when you're doing something slightly inconvenient in a way which doesn't benefit big business or the super rich.
It's fine if you're doing it to benefit them, then you can go much further, you can kill small children with your tractors (as is attempted in The Netherlands) or to murder coast guards or migrant (via drowning or fire) as happens in the UK.
Everyone keeps saying he is dutch but he was speaking a different language in the video thanks to automatic youtube dubbing. I was quite confused because not everything was even dubbed correctly. Also its an auto dubbing through AI. Didn't realize it got automatically selected. So annoying.
Realized too late into the video that I had to switch to original track
He's speaking Dutch and speaking English with a very very heavy west-Netherlands accent. Quite a lot of the Meta employees there can't speak Dutch which is why he switches to English.
I think I should have worded my comment differently. I did not mean the guy does not speak dutch, the video was not playing in dutch because of that shitty auto dubbing of youtube.
Once you realize you are wrong, try to edit your comment. It doesn’t add to the discussion.
I edited it. It was not clear enough that I am referring to the auto dubbing not the guy.
As far as I know he is Dutch and he sounds like a native Dutch speaker. But he but also uses English with some of the people that do not speak Dutch.
Yes exactly. But YouTube selected some AI translation voice over which I did not realize first. So I was quite confused. Once I selected the original audio it was obvious that he is dutch.
I absolutely hate that YouTube is doing that; I'm Dutch/English so obviously fluent in both languages yet YouTube randomly decides to give me this horrific AI dub for some Dutch videos.
They've broken Android too, you can't even set it up with multiple languages. I use three daily - Dutch / English / American - and also a bit of German / French / Spanish / Italian here and there. Plus of course Latin because on my English side I'm a pretentious prick :-)
It's like those reddit translations where I notice it only after a few comments that they got translated ....
This hypocrisy is not at all surprising. The modus operandi for these people has been rules for thee, but not for me for quite a while now.
Well, it is and it isn't hypocrisy.
It is hypocrisy because Meta are knowingly creating a product that is perfectly suited for filming or photographing people without their knowledge. I find that it speaks ill of someone's character to pretend otherwise. And then they react badly when the very thing that these products enable happens to them. Demonstrating how this is a problem. They try to pretend it isn't a problem and then their actions demonstrate that it IS a problem.
It isn't because we do have laws that actually cover these things already. Of course, they're not the same across the world, law enforcement are not always aware of what the laws are, and this causes confrontations and sometimes overreach. There are also different legal systems that interpret laws differently. For instance in some legal systems the letter of the law carries more weight. In other legal systems the intent of the law is what matters.
There are two great risks here:
1) we pretend we can get by with existing laws. That the existing laws had enough foresight to meaningfully fulfil what the laws were intended to accomplish.
2) we can overreact and damage legitimate freedoms in our eagerness to solve an immediate problem.
For instance, where I live there is a law on the books that prohibits photographing someone being arrested. The law was well-meaning. It was there to protect people from being plastered all over the media until guilt has been determined in a court of law. But it would also prohibit someone from documenting police brutality during an arrest. So the law was never enacted because it failed to balance interests properly.
Right now, where I live, there is a real risk that rules about photography may become overly strict because politicians feel they have to demonstrate an ability to act. So they may end up passing laws that have unforeseen consequences while probably failing to make much of a difference anyway.
We know why these cameras pose a problem. Let's not insult each other's intelligence by pretending they are exactly like poking a traditional camera in someone's face. They're not and we should be able to agree on simple facts. But we also know that we need to have a public discussion about what we're going to do about this so we don't end up introducing draconian laws that take away freedoms we should have. For instance the freedom to document abuses of power, criminal activity, artistic expression etc.
It's not "perfectly suited", it's EXPLICITLY DESIGNED TO do that. And it's very well designed and very effective.
But hey it's OK because Meta only want to record everything to train their AI, who cares if some of their friends use it to create CSAM material, their third-world country workers upload it to PornHub and the NSA secretly pipe all of that through their servers (or servers managed by MI5 in the case of Americans).
Citation needed buddy…
We should be thankful for the small mercy they their manta at least rhymes.
> rules for thee, but not for me
This is their theory of power, that the selected few get access to a state of exception (but you can lose it at any time, so don't slip up).
Trump and oligarchs broadly have offered this franchise to their most loyal.
But! I'd argue it is not precisely hypocrisy, because they never believed in a rules-based order in the first place. They just see a system they can exploit.
break things has always been right there in black and white.
Feel free to point out the hypochrisy. I'll remind you that sharing a video you took of someone without their consent is not the same as recording them and keeping the video strictly for yourself
This person was not trespassing on Meta property and nothing indicates that he was harassing employees who refused to be interviewed. It is perfectly legal in the Netherlands to record people in public places.
You don't need someone's consent to record in public, and if any of the employees objected to the publication of the recording, they could consult with an attorney about a portrait rights claim. Such a claim should be adjudicated by a court, not Facebook.
And let's be clear about the context here: these types of glasses are used by "content creators" to do street interviews that are published online, and they're also used to record all sorts of junk/nonsense ("pranks", pickup artist BS, etc.).
Meta doesn't seem to have a problem with content recorded with these glasses being posted on its platforms, even when it's objectionable, because it's literally everywhere. The only problem here, obviously, was that he was recording Meta employees.
"these types of glasses are used by "content creators" to do street interviews that are published online"
This to me is wild. I use the glasses to film my kids and share it on private hard-drives with grandparents, that's it. It's wild to me that I can surreptitiously film someone on the street and publish it online for views, and the only recourse the person has, is to go to court? Seems insane.
Why does Hollywood require a release but Youtube does not?
EDIT: People are getting hung-up on my use case. But that's not the question posed here.
You might want to think twice about this. The videos from those glasses are uploaded and used for AI training, for which they are also reviewed by humans in Kenya, according to the explainer from Bits Of Freedom (with English subs, here: https://www.bitsoffreedom.nl/campagnes/gluurbril/)
Posted article has nothing on my data ending up in Kenya. If you mean it'll be used by Meta Analytics, that's an opt-in feature (easy Fines in California if they violate this)
I agree posting videos of people without their consent should be illegal, and I thought it was? Why does Hollywood require a release form but YouTube does not?
But that's regardless of whether it was filmed on Meta Glasses or a pocket camera.
> Posted article has nothing on my data ending up in Kenya.
Did you think they were making it up? https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0q33nvj0qpo
I couldn't conceive of a world in which I'd provide meta with video of my family. Or... anything, really.
Bit of a Gish galloping happening here. None of the content/video mentioned in these articles are shown to be non-consensually shared (which is the wink wink suggestion here). I have no doubt Meta has contractors world wide
Meta's pretty explicit about asking for opt-in and laying out exactly how your videos are used as part of onboarding.
It is bizarre to me that you think Meta will be a good steward of your data, regardless of what they've told you or what the law says they can and can't do.
Fines can be just a cost for the business of training AI if they deem it valuable enough. Is there any enforcement apart from fines?
This would be an added fine, because its not just "oopsie I used your data for analytics when you didn't opt-in", it'll be "actually I went ahead and used it for other purposes too".
As someone who trains AI for a living, the resultant fines are definitely not worth my data.
Meta pulls >100B USD in profits, an added fine of even a few hundreds millions USD could be worth it depending on cost-benefit.
I asked what other enforcement mechanisms there could be since an added fine isn't really teeth-y enough unless it follows the EU model for privacy violations: initial fine and a requirement to change behaviour, no change in behaviour increases the fine up to 6% global revenue, and the fines will keep coming until the behaviour is changed.
Perhaps for the company you work at it might not be worth it but we are talking about one of the most profitable companies in the history of mankind.
Profitable companies still need to justify unit economics. And I know it's not believable in this particular forum but Meta doesn't operate on the "let's optimize pricing on breaking laws" principle.
Given the marginal value of my data to training anything (near zero), the lawsuit costs (even if I personally don't see any of the money) is far too large. I am not saying they definitely won't do it, they've bumbled into worse situations before but this feels like an obvious own goal if they try.
You keep referring repeatedly to fines and how easy they are to collect in California, but a quick search indicates that, to date, Facebook has paid $0 in fines to California for CCPA violations.
The biggest fine ever recorded for CCPA violations was against Disney, and it was for a paltry $2.75 million. Disney pulls in $2.75 million in revenue every ~10 mintues.
The potential fines for these types of laws are basically considered a cost of doing business if they ever need to be paid, and pale in comparison to the revenue earned by monetizing user data.
> If you mean it'll be used by Meta Analytics, that's an opt-in feature (easy Fines in California if they violate this)
And, as we all know, tech companies and especially Meta never ever lie or trick you. They were never caught red handed sharing your information and violating your privacy despite claiming the opposite. They also are never fined because they are so careful, and the fines and consequences are always big enough to make them clean up their act.
Oh, wait, for a moment I forgot about the past two decades.
Not just their grandparents, the chances are that Meta is processing those videos you take of your kids too even when they say they aren't.
They've played fast and loose with copyrighted material for years, as shown in court records.
They company was founded on the principle of breaking privacy law, as highlighted in Zuckerberg's famous Dumb Fucks conversation.
Meta does what Meta can get away with and you really can't do anything about it without exceptionally deep pockets.
The publishing industry has more money than you do and they failed too.
Wasn't all that long ago people posted pictures of their kids on social media. Someone is going to watch your 12 year old in a swimsuit.
From my private hard-drive?
And unless Meta want's to pay me $1000's in fines (pretty sure my videos are worth less to them), sharing with Meta analytics is opt-in.
If the whole publishing industry can't collect copyright violation fines from Meta what makes you think you can?
Some auditors in the USA did that already. I was surprised to see that, since here in Europe, people have a much more negative view of Facebook's spyglasses. I think it is similar to getting money from Facebook directly, just as other "sports" people do product placement, such as for Red Bull (Dom Tomato; and many in the bboying scene). I find this annoying to no ends, but money convinces people. My problem is that I am not interested in ads and no "argument" can convince me otherwise. Since I am not interested in ads, I don't watch it and I don't buy from such companies. It places some restrictions onto me, since many companies advertise, in particular the big ones, but it also means I get to know smaller companies better. (Sometimes there is a de-facto monopoly, so I can not always avoid all companies and their ads; in particular for things you really need, such as food and so forth.)
> the only recourse the person has, is to go to court
Well, typically, if you are in public, you can do just about anything with regards to recording. In private the laws are a bit different. Either way it is a barrier.
FALSE! It's legal to record in public spaces and share it if you are not targeting any individual in particular. What the author did was instead purpusefully focus on those particular employees.
Author made the people he was recording unrecognizable. So even though he focused on specific employees he didn't violate their right to privacy which means it isn't illegal.
https://www.anp.nl/blog/305/privacywetgeving-mag-je-filmen-o... is a decent article(in Dutch) about some of the complexities of Dutch privacy law when it comes to filming people in public spaces.
Supposing the video has not been edited further, since the original was taken down, their voices were not censored and there are people in the video who were not in the background and who clearly didn't want to be filmed. I agree that the law has many intricacies, but here I think it's much more the case of their privacy being broken and their consent being ignored
Wouldn't the ones in the background match exactly this part of your point though?
> if you are not targeting any individual in particular.
Highly dependent on jurisdiction.
Yelling "FALSE" doesn't make you correct.
You could use Google, ChatGPT, Claude, etc. to educate yourself about the law before you post.
Are you claiming I didn't inform myself? Can you provide some proof for this accusation?
Yes, you're claiming that it's illegal to record people in public in the Netherlands. This is incorrect.
Under Article 139a of the Dutch Criminal Code, you are legally allowed to record any conversation in which you are a participant. You don't need to inform or obtain permission from another party.
There's no law that forbids recording people in public spaces. GDPR and portrait rights claims may be implicated, but if Facebook wants to take the position that it removed this man's videos as an adjudication of claims those recorded never brought themselves, it begs the question: why is it selling its glasses and allowing them to record in the Netherlands in the first place?
>you're claiming that it's illegal to record people in public in the Netherlands
No I haven't, you should re-read what I actually wrote.
But we are talking about Meta removing content from their own website, right?
In contrast to what people think, Facebook IS NOT public infrastructure.
If Meta removes some content from Meta website, and you don't like that, it's a you problem, right?
> Facebook IS NOT public infrastructure
They want protection from liability and also editorial control?
Regardless of the legal status, it seems clear that when massive companies refuse to allow the media they own to publish a dissenting opinion, we’re not headed towards a ~~more~~ democratic society.
That's clear. But with using Facebook for public discourse, you flushed all ideas about democratic societies down the toilet. Democratic societies should have their public discourse in public places. Not in commercial walled gardens owned by some US maniacs.
If they want common carrier protections I actually think it should not up to meta to remove things they don’t like.
No problem with that as long as content responsibility is enlarged to all videos published on their platform.
Given all the sh*t that FB videos contain, I guess Meta's direction will soon be in jail.
They have to choose, safe harbor provisioning or responsibility for the content.
> portrait rights claim
Note that the employees were not recognisable; their faces were blurred out.
> is perfectly legal in the Netherlands to record people in public places.
it's perfectly legal to record but publish, especially in but not limited to a commercial context without explicit consent violates portrait rights under the GDPR in the EU. And I strongly suspect if you posted a video in which people explicitly object to being filmed and flag that on Facebook or other platforms it will get taken down.
It's illegal to record people in public spaces in Germany. Not sure how NL is important here, did I miss something?
It wasn't in Germany, and my understanding is that in Germany, the issue isn't the video, it's the recording of the audio conversation.
Anyway, still not applicable in the Netherlands.
In Germany it would also be about the video.
I cant just take a photo of a person or even car on the street and just share it online unless its clear the car or person is not the central point of the photo standing alone.
Only few exceptions on that
This did not happen in Germany! If my grandmother was a bike she would have two wheels.
And? This wasn't in Germany.
But you raise an interesting point: if this would be against the law in Germany, why is Facebook waiting for these glasses to be banned? It never should have made these available in Germany, and should be using technical means to ensure that they cannot function inside of Germany's borders.
So it's just more proof of the hypocrisy. Meta doesn't care about the privacy of the plebs.
Are these constantly filming without user control? How about regular cameras, just ban them?
> Roel Maalderink visited the company's Amsterdam office
That's not true in that simplified form.
It's perfectly fine to take pictures of the Brandenburger Tor for example and post them online. There will likely be people in that picture but as they are not the main aspect of the image, it will be fine.
It's something different if you zoom in on somebody in that scene and he becomes the main point of the image. Then his personal rights overwhelm the right to document public spaces.
> It's illegal to record people in public spaces in Germany.
That's wild. In Ireland, there's no expectation of privacy in a public place, so you can record without issue.
In Sweden for instance it's a bit in-between (unless the law has changed). You're allowed to film in public if you're using a non-stationary camera, but stationary cameras require a permit.
Yes, but youre not allowed to use it commercially afaik. Even a youtube clip which is monetised is commercial, I guess.
That's an important caveat. We kind of have something similar, in that if you install CCTV, and if it captures an area where people would expect privacy (ie, looking through a window, or into someone's back garden ... which has its own caveats around being a public place or not) you have a right to have that area removed from video coverage.
Yeah, Germany is different here. I am not 100% sure, but in Germany it is allowed if you are not focusing on any particular individual person. It is difficult to argue in absolute terms, which is why most consider public photos forbidden completely (unless for private/personal, very narrow use). Nowadays, in Germany, it has helped me to consider everything forbidden, unless it is explicitly allowed somewhere.
It's because of history. That's why Germany also resisted Google Street View initially.
That's pretty understandable, and I've no particular issue with it (although I'm now aware I broke quite a few photo- and video- laws when I was last in Berlin ;) )
Users of these devices already share that data with Meta.
Where do you get the "without their consent" bit from?
The hypocrisy is probably located around here:
> "I've been making satirical videos about all kinds of things for ten years: Gaza, Ukraine, refugees. Funny videos that push boundaries and provoke discussion. But I've never experienced a video being removed before.
The hypocrisy is that meta is creating a tool that their employees are very uncomfortable seeing used on them.
What the law says about consent is irrelevant to the hypocrisy, and the videos are automatically uploaded to meta without anyone's consent anyway. You know this very well, there is no need to cosplay the smart devil's advocate.
Since you can apparently read my mind, there is no need for me to reply
They made a device that will create this problem by the millions for other people, they should have it inflicted on them every day.
It's incredibly hypocritical. It's like working at Flock and complaining about being filmed on a Flock camera. Or working for a company that sells cars that emit a loud, annoying sound and complaining about those cars in your neighborhood. Or making devices for children but banning your own children from using them because the devices are harmful. They clearly don't care that the product their company is selling can legally (in most places) be used to film people in public until they themselves are filmed in public. How is that not hypocrisy?
Any camera in the world can be used to film people in public without their consent. There are lawful ways to do it (if the people are "background noise" and not the point of the video), and unlawful ways to do it (if the people become the subject of the video).
So tell me now, is a GoPro/Canon/Apple employee who doesn't consent to being the subject of a video taken with a GoPro/Canon/iPhone camera also a hypochrite?
It is not as you feel any different when you are being recorded. Once recorded, you don't know what they will do with the video.
I agree, I cannot control what other people will do. Are you applying this fear to all other facets of your life? I guess not, since that would mean you'd live in a state of constant fear and paranoia.
>since that would mean you'd live in a state of constant fear and paranoia.
we do indeed live in a low trust society as of now.
The mental gymnastics that people do here to defend these untouchable corporations is disgusting. From Meta to OpenAi, for a lot of people here it's just a "yeah, but actually". I've reported everything from holocaust glorification to videos of people being filmed in public in europe just to be humiliated, to obvious far right propaganda done by russian linked accounts, nothing goes against Meta's policy anymore, except when it's about them...
The asymmetry bothers me. No one corporation is going to get it right 100% of the time but it's when you report stuff and it never gets removed but they ban you that you can really see how morally bankrupt they are
(Oh, and they don't care about local solutions. Their sneakiness with Free Basics is clear. Can you blame them for Myanmar? I think you can, but it's also clear they want to supplant all the other social networks, like a system each individual country might come up with)
It does bother me being here on hacker news because it's a good aggregator but you get people standing up for their industry no matter what or flagging anything they disagree with
Spoken as a man with no children or partner. Any women or child being recorded by a stranger will feel unsafe.
Do you have a point beside saying something completely unrelated while making up stuff about me?
No one cares if you are not uploading if they still feel unsafe. The differences are marginal to those that actually have a family or a partner. I'm still going to bet that my assumption is correct because no one with a family is going to argue against this.
You are the only one arguing this since you made up an argument I haven't made
>I'll remind you that sharing a video you took of someone without their consent is not the same as recording them and keeping the video strictly for yourself
This distinction does not matter if people feel unsafe regardless of "keeping it to yourself". It is still very creepy for a lot of people especially women and children. So what is the point of this "reminder"?
To point out that it's not hypochritical to treat differently a private recording and a published recording of a person that hasn't given you explicit consent
You have drawn an imaginary line on what will feel like an intrusion of privacy regardless. There is visibly hypocrisy by Meta employees.
Are you filming? - Can't you see the light?
Case closed. People that are very familiar with these glasses need to ask. These devices need to get banned.
I hate these glasses, but why do you need to ban them? Meta operates at scale, so it will only stay in this business if a considerable number of people buy this. Vote with your money. There are legitimate uses for camera glasses (journalism, action sports, etc.).
How does me not buying these glasses stop creeps from buying them to film people surreptitiously?
the legit uses don't need to be surreptitious.
I'm trying to understand how to "vote with my money" for not being recorded by these glasses in public. My best interpretation would be financially supporting private establishments that have banned these devices... Which feels like exactly what you're arguing against.
> so it will only stay in this business if a considerable number of people buy this. Vote with your money.
How many billions of dollars have been wasted on the Metaverse?
>Vote with your money
That doesn't work in a society with such extreme wealth inequality.
There are some Meta employees reading this thread and thinking: "well, he did harass them!"
That said, I hope that real harassment starts to happen. Meta doesn't care about social boundaries when it benefits them, so it's fair game
I've always wondered if people who work for Meta/Twitter/whoever think that the Nuremberg defense is valid
Zuckerberg has a knack for creating the most anti-human products possible. It is a mystery he didn't create or buy out OF.
I can't think of a more human place .
Facebook included, by the way
Myspace had its run, it wasn't an especially good product. People moved to Facebook for any number of reasons, but those privacy settings ("friends only", etc) if they worked would've been pretty cool and good for the web
Unfortunately Zuckerberg doesn't care about privacy and actively spent time changing those from Friends Only to Public
And graph search. If I search for 'carrot' I can see any post you've ever made in your entire history with carrot in it
There's a reason Facebook's wall thing is now called 'timeline'. It lists everything you've ever done ever. Hope you managed to catch yet another one of their silent privacy changes. Oh, look, guess you have to log in to catch it. That means they rope you back into the system. Oh well. No biggie. Just the absolute antithesis of consent
Great idea for protests outside meta offices. Just stand on the public right of way outside the entrance, smiling in your meta ray bans.
Would only be an effective protest if you stole the glasses.
Why does the effectiveness of the protest be contingent on stealing the glasses?
I'd guess because buying the meta glasses to use them is in a way helping it succeed.
Was this a action constructed so that its suppression makes the suppressed message easier to understand? If meta takes down the video they reenforce that the glasses can be used in a bad way, and if they leave it up the initial critical message can spread. Like the 2012 Barnaul “toy protest” in Siberia.
Hopefully the Streisand effect will be in full force on this one.
In China the government controls the discourse. Here it's the corporations.
agreed
I just can’t find the user experience different enough for me to feel like my western friends have any point to make about China
the west has a thin partyless corporate layer controlling all facets of life and your ability to participate in life compared to the government doing it directly
but its okay because if you don’t care about any of that you can talk about it (in person only because nobody will hear it for long elsewhere) and you won’t be disappeared? *unless your citizenship status is questioned
amusing cope
And you let it happen.
Ok I don't anymore. Are we good now?
I recorded a video harassing the employees of a company, I uploaded it to the servers of said company, and they removed it. Who could have imagined this would happen?
It's a bit frustrating to see this video immediately sniped while Meta continues to host some of the most insidious content on the internet.
It actually scares me that kids can read IG comment sections.
They cant if they dont have an Instagram account. Easy solution.
This "ban all kids" kind of take is bananas to me. It implies you either A) believe we should trust famously secure and benevolent tech companies with government ID or B) believe parents have the time or technical know-how to exhaustively monitor the internet access of kids. Even as a software engineer, I've found it insanely tiresome to try operating half-assed parental controls across devices.
The world is not black and white, it is possible to have completely different opinions to the narrow dichotomy you have presented.
Please educate me on what other options are viable for keeping kids off social media.
I've found Instagram comments to be heavily censored. What exactly are you worried about?
Mostly vast amounts of sexism, but I also see racism, antisemitism and islamophobia waaay too much. The 'isms' tend to glom onto certain posts and go nuts. Algorithmic feeds at their finest, I guess.
Just exposing the kids to the real world will create those thoughts in their brains from first principles. The only way for them not to have those thoughts is by manipulation… which is, surprisingly, done through mass media these days.
They host literal child porn as of now but ok... looks like they have their priorities in check
When did they stop calling them "spy glasses"?
The marketers must be doing a great job.
The correct term is "perv glasses"
It's a good bit.
My guess is if you went to the Apple Campus and held up an iPhone recording its employees, you'd have the same thing happen to you.
Who remembers the picture of inside Zuckerberg's home that got leaked with the grotesks living their private lives?
Meta glasses are a great sign the wearer is a midwit. Feels like a favor/heads up on someone's personality and mindset, which is nice.
Maybe we haven’t seen enough creative applications of these to win us over? Every time I see them on someone they instantly look like Woody Allen. Imagine what art a filmmaker like Woody Allen would make with these glasses.
I don't like it when I'm recorded without my consent. But people do that with their phones all the time for TikTok videos, for meta videos, for YouTube videos. Nobody yet has demanded that smartphones be banned or that cameras be removed from smartphones.
It smacks of hypocrisy to me. Either ban them all or allow them all.
We talked about it when it was a newer phenomenon. Some of us grew up when that didn’t exist. Nothing happened.
Now this might be normalized (which feels ugly) but in a few years it could just be “the way things are.”
I wonder what’s next. Constant haze of personal drones over all our heads, incidentally surveilling everyone 24/7 like ring doorbells in the sky?
Yeah, and it's got to be that we allow them all.
I don't like it, but this is happening. And while we can frown on it socially, it would be self-defeating to ask our government to ban filming in public.
Instagram is full of videos of guys harassing and antagonizing people in public as "pranks". And this is not some coincidence, since both products are from the same company, they basically unleashed this for engagement.
Yes, having a taste of their own medicine.
taste of their own poison*
Privacy for me but not for thee.
this will inspire short-range EMP
Another thread where the top comment is "We have to do something!!" and no one stepping forward to actually do so. I suppose they know how to divide us, keep us threatening each other and never actually finding agreement.
That's hilarious. Keep it up!
But the video was not just the view from his glasses?
Yes. It appears that there was another person, perhaps with another pair of such glasses, who was filming the interactions from a 3rd person's perspective.
Outside basic network effects like real names Facebook has contributed essentially nothing of value to the world. (And no, don't tell me "React, Pytorch". People were screaming about React's license) The network effects barely matter too because their AI bans you whenever and feeds are so useless you never see what anyone posts
Instagram went from a site for photographers to Reels everywhere (and login walls on every page)
Zuckerberg is awful. Awful, awful, awful.
I sometimes wonder how he's still CEO.
Other than ad revenue, the company hasn't had any big wins. VR didn't take off. Metaverse didn't take off. AI models didn't take off. All multi-billion dollar ventures. Any other board would have sacked him by now.
He can't be fired as CEO due to the way he set up the company (Class A and Class B stocks, Class A worth 1 vote, Class B worth 10 votes, he owns like 90% of Class B stock)
> wonder how he's still CEO.
it's because he controls the board by being the majority voting shareholder.
This is what happens when the gov't decides that it is legal for share classes with different voting rights. It ensures that you can sell equity to obtain money, without actually giving up control of said company at all. In theory, buyers would discount the sold equity due to this, but in practice, they don't (esp. if they're retail buyers).
Thanks for clearing that up. One less thing to sort out.
Interesting consequence.
EDIT: Initially, this is nuts. How can I give "own" part of a company and not have a say. Sounds like a silent partner scheme. Looks like this a per state thing.
There is this ruling Business Roundtable v. SEC (1990) that strikes down an SEC rule that prevented corps from going public if they didn't follow "one-share-one-vote".
Other than making buttloads of money, what has he accomplished?
If that’s your only criterion then you must be really upset that El Chapo is in the jail instead of making buttloads of money for his cartel
Fair. Meta seems to be as an advertisement utility, not really a tech company that is taking said buttloads and breaking into new areas.
In my mind, eventually it has the same fate as twitter? KTLO ops for printing money.
Oh, like the video metrics scandal? Or how their ads are shown to more people in an area than physically exist?
Of course the counter-argument is "makes money". That first of all doesn't make a good CEO (if you put no money into maintaining your site, for example), second of all it ignores all the fraud
> I sometimes wonder how he's still CEO.
Because of the existence of Class B shares.
I personally think React made webdev worse. Overcomplicated shite I call it.
All over the US people are freaking out about Flock cameras and that's justified.
Meanwhile, these Meta glasses are far more ubiquitous, far more intrusive, being sold all over the world (not only the US) and their images have a lot less oversight than Flock's. And I don't need to tell anyone how irresponsible Meta is with other people's privacy.
And, yet, very few make a scandal about it.
> these Meta glasses are far more ubiquitous
Huh? Not in my area. I've seen one pair of these in the wild and dozens of Flock cameras. Will that change? Maybe. For now, the _freak outs_ about Flock are absolutely justified.
Their footprints are also completely different. I can't avoid Flock cameras unless I want to change my path of travel and take back roads, which costs me time and money. Whereas I _might_ encounter someone wearing Meta glasses _if_ I happen to cross paths with them.
Yeah, I also find it weird to make a comparison with a random private individual and/or corporation with an actor that has the monopoly on violence.
The government doing surveillance is much much worse.
And, ultimately, the issue here is that individuals are using these products in a bad way. Go to Japan and this shit is prolifically bad. Upskirt cameras on shoes and all this shit. Banning these glasses doesn't get rid of bad behaviors. Japan has been at the forefront of pervy invasive shit for decades.
Corporate censorship. Do we want such a future in general, where big companies decide onto you what you can see and what you can not see? These walled digital gardens they built up are already such a huge issue.
Now I don't depend on CIAbook, formerly known as Facebook, in any way, shape or form. And I don't use Suckerberg's Spyglasses either - hopefully others feel in a similar way, but unfortunately money convinces people, and I noticed a few "auditors" using spyglasses allegedly for "protection" (though, why they don't use normal vide cameras instead, beats me - perhaps they are not truthful). I fear that the spyglasses will be a success since Suckerberg is so sold on spying on mankind. If Google were not to exist, Facebook would be the number #1 evil company right now.
Btw, I found out a few days ago HN censors comments. Not just down voting, but if you say something they HN finds offensive it disappears.
You can enable viewing dead comments in your settings.
I cant believe this is a thing. I just turned on dead comments and there are loads of them, most I dont consider offensive or bad in any way. I had no idea HN was so severely censored, my opinion of it has gone down (even though I assume this comment will now be killed).
Maybe post two comments about it, maybe in different stories, and ask people that respond with bewilderment to post twice as well.
Okay I'll bite. What do you mean by auditors in scare quotes? Like actual auditors of business practices? Or something else?
Corporation under no obligation to uphold journalistic standards. In other news, water still wet.
meta's pervert glasses
Epstein Glasses by Meta. For people who don't do consent.
Interesting - yes, Epstein glasses. Hmm.. Pervert glasses, epstein glasses, pervert glasses, Epstein glasses. Pervstein glasses? <looks at coffee>, <looks outside>, <wonders why this world is so dumb>, <wonders when the revolution will come>
Why are these Mets glasses still allowed to be sold? It needs to be stopped and the product recalled.
Google glasses came and went. Mets glasses should follow a similar fate.
Some countries are already discussing just that. From Norway (where people call them "pervobriller" or "pervert glasses"): https://www.nrk.no/norge/regjeringa-vurderer-forbud-mot-meta...
Anyone can just go on Temu and easily buy stalking gadgets like gps trackers and tiny spy cameras etc for very little money. Any legislation against this type of thing would need to be very wide reaching to be effective, as there are much cheaper and easier to obtain devices which secretly film than meta glasses.
The title is misleading - it sounds like they specifically went there to harass employees by filming them, and Meta took down the videos for harassment, like they routinely do if this is reported on their platforms. I'm really not sure what the issue is.
Having watched the video, this hardly meets the standard of 'harassment' or bullying. This is a vox pop, that people can (and do) walk away from.
TBH this is tamer than 99% of the content published by Creeper Glasses users that Meta itself relentlessly shows to me.
Meta only cares about this video because it directly targets Meta. If this guy was asking questions to employees of any other company they would not give a shit.
I didn't see any harassment.
They made a product, interviewer is using it as intended. He walked up to people, asked questions while using their product.
If they don't like it, walk away. Zero harassment.
I have read news article about people wearing meta glasses, removing the red recording LED and filming woman and girls at beaches in bikini without their knowledge. And these video often stay up on metas Instagram, accounts don't get suspended. THAT is the issue.