6 ms·
I was in engineering school back in ~2012 when Google Glass came out. One of my classmates got hold of a pair when they were still quite uncommon and wore them
by MerrimanInd 7mo ago
I was in engineering school back in ~2012 when Google Glass came out. One of my classmates got hold of a pair when they were still quite uncommon and wore them to an extracurricular club meeting. Within minutes someone made a comment about him wearing the "creeper" glasses and asked if he was filming. He never wore them to the club again.
I just don't see a world where that doesn't happen with Meta glasses.
- idontwantthis 7mo agoIt can happen if it’s not easy to tell immediately what they are.
- yonatan8070 7mo agoUnfortunately, the Meta glasses look much more normal, and a person who isn't actively looking for them (and especially one who is unaware of them) isn't likely to notice them.
- NicuCalcea 7mo agoThere is a way to sus them out: https://www.404media.co/this-app-warns-you-if-someone-is-wearing-smart-glasses-nearby/ https://www.404media.co/this-app-warns-you-if-someone-is-wea... Not perfect, but better than nothing I guess. I don't think I've noticed the glasses IRL anywhere, but if I start seeing them, I'm definitely installing the app and avoiding any interactions with those people.
- paulpauper 7mo agothey look like big bulky ray-bans that no one would wear unless they were starring in a 50s remake or something . easy to spot
- giobox 7mo agoThe Wayfarer style was always bulky, they have been a fashion staple for decades at this point. The Meta gen2 ones aren't really that noticeably larger than "normal" Wayfarers - probably why they latched on this style as it gives the most room to stuff electronics while remaining similar sized to the original Wayfarer design. I still see folks wearing Wayfarers almost every single day, and have owned various (non-Meta) pairs of them for most of my adult life. It's literally one of the most popular sunglasses designs of all time.
- ghostpepper 7mo agoAs an aside, it’s crazy that Ray Ban would hitch their most valuable brand cachet to such a controversial wagon
- giobox 7mo agoMeta have a minority stake in Ray Ban and Oakley's parent company, EssilorLuxottica. The investment was largely to support development of future AI glasses. It does make me a little sad to see Wayfarers end up this way too. > https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/meta-takes-around-3-stake-ray-ban-parent-essilorluxottica-source-says-2025-07-08/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/meta-takes-around-3-sta...
- paulpauper 7mo agothey are still very easy to spot. they are very bulky around the rims
- yonatan8070 7mo agoIf you know what to look for, yes. But the average person doesn't browse Hacker News and watch tech YT videos in their free time and has likely not even heard of them.
- yonatan8070 7mo agoCase in point: @http-teapot's reply to my comment
- http-teapot 7mo agoA family member has one and I didn't notice until they had to charge their pair. The little circles are subtle giveaways otherwise they look like regular pair of glasses. When everything is always on, I'd like to keep my house "off" and those things are a direct violation of that.
- flir 7mo agoIt's strange to me that that's the line society seems to have drawn in the sand. Body cam, no problem. Doorbell cam, practically universal. Body cam worn on the face? No way. I wonder why.
- nephihaha 7mo agoSome doorbell cams film other people's homes.
- mmh0000 7mo ago"Surveillance Camera Man"[1] makes a good practical example of it. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9sVqKFkjiY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9sVqKFkjiY
- Retric 7mo agoCop body cam footage is more likely to help you vs a cop than get you into trouble because a cop is already there watching what you’re doing. IE: Thank god the cop’s camera was off when I was buying crack, I might have gotten in trouble otherwise… fails because a cop was already watching you. Cops also announce their presence in uniforms and are operating as government agents. People already moderate their behavior around cops so being recorded isn’t as big a deal.
- sillystuff 7mo ago> body cameras had no statistically significant impact on officer use of force, civilian complaints, or arrests for disorderly conduct by officers. In other words, body cameras did not reduce police misconduct . . . 92.6 percent of prosecutors’ offices in jurisdictions with body cameras have used that footage as evidence to prosecute civilians, while just 8.3 percent have used it to prosecute police officers[1] Cops control when the cameras are filming, if footage is retained and what/when/if footage is released. Body cams are just yet another surveillance tool against the population. [1]https://www.aclu-wa.org/news/will-body-cameras-help-end-police-violence/ https://www.aclu-wa.org/news/will-body-cameras-help-end-poli...
- 7mo ago
- groos 7mo agoI have a strict policy of no Meta glasses for guests in my house. Socially, they're poison.
- nothrowaways 7mo agoWe have "NO meta glasses" rule at my workplace.
- webdevver 7mo ago[flagged]
- bonoboTP 7mo agoPeople don't care about privacy as long as a faceless corporation is doing the spying. People very much care if it has a plausible path to embarrassing or creepy situations involving actual people in your life. The chilling effect of ubiquitous phone cameras is well documented now this would amp it up by a 100. Many cool clubs already put stickers on phone cameras.
- wredcoll 7mo ago> Many cool clubs already put stickers on phone cameras. Can you elaborate on this?
- bonoboTP 7mo agoDiscussion a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47111137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47111137 And longer ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42352825 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42352825
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- Nevermark 7mo ago
- zer0zzz 7mo ago2026 is not 2012
- esafak 7mo agoThey're okay in your circle today? Not mine.
- zer0zzz 7mo agoAnecdotal screeching aside, they’re objectively selling far better than any headgear ever made. The sales figures show they’re pretty popular as far as wearables go. That leads me to believe we’re not in the same world as Google glass especially when back then folks were far more trusting of tech (let alone the fact that it’s meta). The times I do I see folks wearing them the normie reaction is typically “oh cool” and not some libertarian allergic reaction to technology.
- zer0zzz 7mo agoI don’t know what the downvote is about. I’ve not said anything for or against this tech or the company that makes it. I just don’t think it’s valuable to inform your world view on tech takes that are old enough to be taking the practice SAT.
- pseudalopex 7mo ago> I don’t know what the downvote is about. > screeching > libertarian allergic reaction to technology
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- array_key_first 7mo agoYou're right, it's much worse and we should be doing everything we can to turn it around. I propose we just assume people with meta glasses are recording others in public and we call them creeps. Shaming works, we should use it more.
- webdevver 7mo ago[flagged]
- gambiting 7mo ago>>I just don't see a world where that doesn't happen with Meta glasses. Apparently they sold 7 million of these. So I think a whole lot of people don't care about this aspect.
- wongarsu 7mo agoJudging from the examples reported on in the article, Meta's smart glasses are either very easy to accidentally trigger or quite popular with actual creeps
- _trampeltier 7mo agoThere are a lot of creeps out there. In summertime I'm pretty often tanning in nude beaches. Almost every time, somewhere there is a guy around with a cellphone or such a spy glass.
- dyauspitr 7mo agoIt’s just going to be accepted. Or there is going to be some sort of Japanesque requirement that there be some light on when the camera is filming.
- derwiki 7mo agoThey do have a light that’s on when recording
- Geonode 7mo agoThere is a world, because when the displays are high quality and they're thinner and lighter, they're going to replace phones, and almost everyone will be wearing them.
- mr_toad 7mo agoAre they going to be as hard to keep clean as glasses. Honestly it’s the biggest problem I have with sunglasses, it’s that as soon as you get a speck of dirt on them they’re annoying. And if it starts raining you can’t see anything (and you look like a tool).
- hnuser847 7mo agoNah, I don't see it. They've been trying to make smart glasses a thing for over a decade and it's not working. Nobody wants them. I don't think it's necessarily a privacy thing, it's just that smart glasses don't solve a real problem. Same with VR.
- rbtprograms 7mo agoi actually agree with this take; i dont see the problem that smart glasses solve. what, my phone screen isnt literally in front of my eyeballs 24/7? i have a need to be absolutely plugged into scrolling social media and consuming content so much that i just have to have the screen in my glasses? this feels much more like what tech companies want people to want rather than what people want.
- array_key_first 7mo agoNot to mention the input methods just suck major ass. They're extremely slow, error prone, and annoying. Hands are better. And that's why I don't talk to Siri to drive my car.
- jayd16 7mo agoYou don't want your hands free?
- r0fl 7mo agoI’ve had meta ray bans since the week they came out My friends always have a cheap shot when I wear them but are completely fine now and appreciate fun candid videos I send them Amazing for vacations with the kids
- rationalist 7mo agoAs much as I disagree with the cameras, you should not have been downvoted. If anything, people who are against the cameras need to see your anecdotal experience so that they can see how easy it will be for these cameras to proliferate.
- baby_souffle 7mo ago10 years have elapsed, peoples expectations have changed a lot. Back around the time of the first iPhone, it was pretty common to see signs in gym changing rooms akin to 'no cameras permitted'... Now you'd have to physically separate people from their phones before entering the locker room if you are going to enforce that. And all of that is to ignore that neither gen1 or 2 of Google Glass attempted to look like regular glasses. The Meta frames are largely indistinguishable from regular glasses unless you are very up close.
- AlienRobot 7mo agoUnfortunately the frog is boiling and some people already think that "in public" means "it's okay to record people and post it on the Internet."
- linkjuice4all 7mo agoIn the US, at least, it's pretty much legal to record the public as long as people have no expectation of privacy (IANAL, exclusions apply, non-commercial use, etc) It's difficult to draw a bright line between these activities: - I told someone else something I saw the other day - I painted a picture of the public square or wrote a book about specific activities that I witnessed - I specifically remembered an individual based on their face, visible tattoos, location, license plate, or some other unique factor and voluntarily testified to that fact in a court of law - I spent every day at the same corner making note of the various people/vehicles that I saw - I stuck a camera at that same point (perhaps on my private properly directly abutting a public space) and recorded everything, posted it publicly on the internet, and used automated technology to identify people, text, vehicles, etc - I paid a different person every day to follow someone around and record what they did - I developed a drone system that could follow specific individuals/vehicles from airspace I'm allowed to occupy Pretty much everything I described above is legal in most of the United States. Obviously it gets creepier and more uncomfortable going down the list (I don't really like it when I'm the subject of any of these activities) but how do you stop this? I'll at least throw out some options - Implement some form of right to forget - Forbid individuals or organizations from doing any of these - Enact actual "civil rights" level privacy protections (extend HIPAA? automatic copyright for human faces? new amendment?) that include protection of individual's DNA, unique facial features, and other "uniquely human" attributes
- AlienRobot 7mo agoIt's not a legal problem but a cultural one. Piracy, for example, is already illegal, but everyone does it. Smartphones and social media apps made it frictionless to post public videos on the Internet. The only legislation that could be effective would be to forbid social media from hosting videos of public places somehow, and I'm not sure how effective or practical would that even be. We live in a world where people have a literal phone in their hands and they would rather make a video call than a simple phone call. Something needs to happen to fundamentally change people's habits or it will only get worse in the future.
- xboxnolifes 7mo agoAn entire new generation of people have been born and raised into a world that is more accepting of always recording and being recorded since 14 years ago.
- designerarvid 7mo agoIn Sweden, kids have stopped showering after PE class due to this concern. The world is not deterministic, and we can shape norms of how we interact with each other. We don't have to accept being constantly recorded just because the technology makes it possible.
- martin1975 7mo agoAnd they will soon find out that world's make believe. No one I know, and I know hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of people would allow themselves in a room to be recorded surreptitiously.
- alanbernstein 7mo agoAnd yet we are surrounded by cameras that do this constantly
- nitwit005 7mo agoA common fear for younger people has become being recorded and becoming famous in some embarrassing video. I don't see the problem as having gone away.
- monero-xmr 7mo ago[flagged]
- kingkawn 7mo ago[flagged]
- hackyhacky 7mo ago
- kwar13 7mo agoPeople who get shamed with a comment like that are usually not the "creepers" in public. You don't need social pressure. You need actual safeguards.
- rockskon 7mo agoSafeguard? No, we need to make this as socially radioactive as possible. We don't need to establish a permission structure to allow Facebook to continue doing this without repercussion.
- ThrowawayR2 7mo agoUnfortunately, "The French-Italian eyewear brand [EssilorLuxottica] said it sold over 7 million AI glasses last year, up from the 2 million that the company sold in 2023 and 2024 combined." from https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/11/ray-ban-maker-essilorluxottica-triples-sales-of-meta-ai-glasses.html https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/11/ray-ban-maker-essilorluxotti... . That's at least 9 million units in the field, probably 1000x more than Google Glass ever sold, and more than 3x growth in sales in one year. [EDIT] I really shouldn't need to say this on Hacker News but don't shoot the messenger for messages you don't want to hear. Reporting a fact does not imply approval or disapproval of it.
- lofaszvanitt 7mo agoWell, then they gonna offer implants in another 5-10 years later.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- navaed01 7mo agoThese glasses are doing incredibly well from a sales perspective. Social norms have shifted, user generated content is huge, being a video influencer is a real job - so seeing people filming is more accepted than 12 yea ago. It doesn’t mean I like it but these are not going away. I do think they lack a killer app, but there’s a part there with conversational AI that can act on your behalf
- grigri907 7mo agoI don't know. I clearly remember a time when phones first got cameras and there were debates on whether or not we should prohibit phones in public bathrooms. Perceptions changed. Fast.
- al_borland 7mo agoI think the social contract is still such that your phone’s camera should not be used in the bathroom. I’ve seen stories of people banned from gyms for taking selfies in the locker room as people were walking by.
- cindyllm 7mo ago[dead]
- SoftTalker 7mo agoYeah sometimes the younger gym bros are in the dressing room at my gym taking pictures of themselves in the mirror. If they accidentally include my ~60 year old ass cheeks in the background, IDGAF. Probably ruins the photo for them.
- lossyalgo 7mo agoYou should care, if they post it to socials then you are further tracked and online in at least one more sketchy database, and half naked as well.
- jackcviers3 7mo agoIt seems like a more polite way of handling this in private spaces is just to ask that people take them off - just like we do when a pig farmer walks into our house with their boots on. I get why people are creeped out by them, but we get filmed or photographed hundreds of times a day in a big city when we are in public spaces. Gatekeeping a potentially useful technology for being filmed in public -- well, everyone is _already_ filmed in public. ATM cameras, stoplight cameras, drone cameras, smartphone cameras, security cameras, doorbell cameras. You are on camera every time you step out of your house. You are on camera every time you open your work computer. Singling out cameras in eyeglasses as "creepy" is kind of worrying about a drop in the ocean. Cameras on self-driving cars. Nanny cams. Closed-circuit cameras. The things are everywhere, and they are always invasions of privacy. Why is the line the "creeper" glasses? I'd be ok with it if we were for banning all non-consensual recordings in all spaces. But we're very much not. And if we're not, then having a personal heads-up display that is contextual to your current surroundings or has augmented reality capability is too useful to not use (eventually). I'm bad with names, and good with faces. That use-case alone would be worth it for me, if it were available.
- fc417fc802 7mo ago> well, everyone is _already_ filmed in public. ATM cameras, stoplight cameras, drone cameras, smartphone cameras, security cameras, doorbell cameras. And we probably ought to regulate how all such footage is handled. > banning all non-consensual recordings in all spaces It's a false dichotomy. Even if recording is permitted that doesn't mean the systemic invasion of personal privacy needs to be.
- jackcviers3 7mo agoGreat, let's regulate it! And why are glasses more offensive than cell phone cameras, or go pros, or drones? I genuinely do not understand why people don't worry about the other form factors, but draw the line at the glasses, so help me here. To be clear - I understand why people find being recorded creepy. I don't understand why the glasses form factor is creepy but random cell phone recordings that are shared on the internet all the time without the consent of the recorded people aren't.
- socalgal2 7mo agoYou're already in that world. Phones have ubiqitous cameras and they are normalized at this point. It's a common scene in a movie where instead of helping someone who was hurt, people just pull out their phones and film. Cameras on glasses will be normalized too. A few HNer types will scream. The rest of the "nothing to hide so nothing to fear" group will just wear them. (not saying I agree with "nothing to hide so nothing to fear". Rather, I'm saying that's common way of thinking. Common enough that it's likely people will wear these eventually. How about this marketing approach: "College woman, tired of creepers trying to hit on you. Worried about getting roofied. Wear these glasses and turn the creeps in".
- f33d5173 7mo agoThe google glasses deliberately looked distinct from normal glasses. The facebook glasses don't. That has a massive impact.
- mmooss 7mo ago> I just don't see a world where that doesn't happen with Meta glasses. People widely accept mass surveilance and facial recognition, including by doorbells, phones, cameras on the street, etc. They post images and videos online to corporations that perform facial recognition. They accept government collecting data broadly by facial recognition. People accept all sorts of horrors and nonsense, unrelated to and many times much worse than privacy violations, because (I think) they are normalized on social media, which is controlled editorially by Zuckerberg, Musk, Ellison, etc. I'm not saying we're doomed. I'm saying nobody else will save us. We have to make it happen.