this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2025
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For me at least, the killer feature is going to be tagging faces with names. Face blindness sucks.
Edit: For the downvoters, in case you're unaware, I'm talking about a real life disability.
I have this, and I cannot stress enough how much this use case is not worth being recorded and tracked in public against my consent
There's no reason it has to be one or the other, you've created a false dilemma. It's perfectly possible to have the feature operate locally without recording / tracking.
Well, there is a reason, specific to these glasses. The reason is Meta.
If someone tells me they trust Meta not to break the law or violate their privacy, I assume they haven't been paying attention to Meta in the news.
It's not beyond the realm of possibility that we could use the hardware with 3rd party software. With the Quest line of VR headsets, Meta was pretty open to letting devs mess with the hardware. At least during the time I was using one.
Not a false dilemma at all. I'm not comfortable with being recorded onto some rando's hard drive either. It's still recording and tracking me against my consent.
Still a false dilemma. Recording you against your wishes is already against the law in some countries, and not required for the feature to actually function.
How does facial recognition work without recording the faces it's supposed to recognise?
Only acquaintances with your permission would have entered your face into their local database. Beyond that, checking faces against what's stored in the database does not require recording, hence you should not be in any randos database.
That's a very good and respectful way of solving the issue, thank you for sharing!
I don't have face blindness, but I can't remember names for the fucking life of me.
And that's also the main reason I don't want these to exist. I don't want to be identified by random people, and I especially don't want police to have access to something like this. People I spend time with know who I am, and I'm fine missing out on random same place/same time coincidences with people I knew from high school or something.
I'd want them to use a local database that you've created. After you've met someone, the glasses could be like "remember this person?" and you could choose to save them or not, or something like that.
Yes. I'm all for an open specification, local only version of this.
But I don't think Meta releasing a set of smart glasses leaves anyone (other than possibly Zuckerberg) better off.
One could argue that without Meta's investments into the technology, we might never get an open specification at all. With something like Valetudo, it wouldn't exist without the privacy nightmare that is off-the-shelf robot vacuums.
Its meta so they'll get their hands on that data the way peoples numbers end up in metas hands despite not having a Facebook account because people gave the app permission to contacts.
I'm not talking about a Meta made pair of glasses. I would never buy those due to the privacy issues. I'm talking about a potential pair of glasses that are open source, or at least privacy focused, and don't phone home.
Average people will have it phone home for convenience. Just how things play out. I think the tech is cool, but not looking forward to how it'll be utilized in the end.
Yeah, not looking forwards to being in Meta (or any other massive company)'s database or whatever when a friend or family member wears one of these.
Like VR, meta's will probably be the best priced and have the best tech on top of it for the price, so end up getting the most market share too.
I'm talking about recognising people I've met and know.
I don't see how that could realistically happen without whichever company is behind the glasses taking all that juicy biometric data for themselves though.
It's up to the govts to protect the rights of the people. If you're in the US, you're already on the verge of losing all rights anyway. For the rest of the world, there's no reason to think we couldn't regulate it in a reasonably privacy-friendly way. Local face tagging and recognition could work without cloud access, so that you'd only have access to information you keyed in yourself about somebody.
You're totally right in principle.
But the conversation for this pair of glasses is different, because of Meta.
If anyone believes that Meta obeys their local laws, please refer them my way for a pyramid business opportunity...(I believe I could easily rip them off, because I believe they are suckers.)
The EU has proven very willing to levy increasingly large fines against the tech giants until they behave.
You act like America is the only place in the world where tech is being used for mass surveillance.
Your own governments are doing it to you too, whether or not it’s legal.
Wake up, they don’t give a single fuck about you.
Sure. My point is that same technology can and will be used to violate peoples' privacy, and in some cases could create dangerous situations (e.g. domestic violence victim being recognized by their attacker).
Not sure how or why the attacker wouldn't be able to recognise them normally.
Every technology can be used to do shitty stuff, and in most cases has been. It's up to the govts to protect the rights of the people. If you're in the US, you're already on the verge of losing all rights anyway. For the rest of the world, there's no reason to think we couldn't regulate it in a reasonably privacy-friendly way. Local face tagging and recognition could work without cloud access, so that you'd only have access to information you keyed in yourself about somebody.
Yup, can't wait to be tracked without my consent everywhere I go because of other people that want to pay money to become employed for free by private and government companies.
Way to belittle people with disabilities. In case you're unaware, I'm talking about a real condition.
I learned about this recently in a anime!
The Apothecary Diaries - A main character has this disability.
This reminds me of Peacemaker, a guy claiming to be ‘bird blind’. Hilarious bit
Tim Meadows was a great addition to season 2
I knew it would be fun as soon as I saw him. Love Tim