Meta says safeguards are in place to prevent surreptitious filming, but some UK venues now prohibit them from being worn at all
When Meta used superstar Kylie Jenner to promote its sleek new line of “spy glasses”, the social media company hoped the devices would reach the same broad acceptance that tablets and smartwatches have found before them.
But those plans have hit a snag in the UK, where venues from elite restaurants to popular pub chains have banned the £359 glasses in order to preserve the privacy of customers and staff.
Celebrated restaurateur Jeremy King, owner of London venues including Simpsons in the Strand, Arlington and The Park, said guests should not wear the recording glasses.
He told the Guardian: “I would never knowingly allow any invasion of guest privacy other than with the eyes we were born with.”
I would think theaters would have banned these instantly to prevent movie piracy. The fact that they haven’t really shows how thoughtless they are regarding how piracy actually happens.
Most of the cam copies I’ve seen are trash, I’m pretty sure they’re not worried about cams as much as they are guys with tripods in the projection room (where most of the “good” cam copies come from.)
Even a trash cam produced today is usually miles ahead of what we were getting 15-20 years ago
Yeah, but holding it steady is the key to a decent cam, and sound is never as good.
Spyglasses wouldn’t do it, people move too much.
You are wildly overestimating how much battery life those things have.
They don’t care. Media piracy doesn’t actually hurt them. The people that care about media piracy are basically the patent trolls of the media world who buy up blocks of music and video and collect royalties.
Meta’s “spy glasses”?
Are they talking about pervert glasses?
Too bad this is only in the UK (so far)
While I’m not surprised, I think this is yet another showing that the Jenner’s really will exploit any and all good will they have for money
Was that ever in question?
Kinda funny hearing that from one of the most surveilled countries in the world. Hopefully this grows to be an outright rebuke of all forms of government surveillance they have to endure too.
“…and if someone covers or damages the LED, the camera is disabled.”
How does this work? How reliable is it?
Not very reliable at all since there is a huge second-hand market for removing the LEDs so you can film surreptitiously without being clocked as recording.
It seems like there are people who make good money “fixing” these to disable the LED.
Isn’t the entire POINT of these to record people without their knowledge or consent? If they couldn’t be disabled they wouldn’t be able to sell them.
Good on them for standing up for their clientele.
I expect these restaurants, pubs and theatres to have no CCTV, either, otherwise it’d quite a hypocritical take if they prohibited non-consensual surveillance glasses while keeping non-consensual surveillance cameras. The same way I feel unsafe before someone wearing Duckerberg’s glasses, I also feel unsafe before a surveillance camera whose footage Goddess-knows-who is getting access to (not to mention how most “modern” CCTV feeds their images to AI; wonder why most AI video generators get to generate, e.g., “doorbell camera footage” so easily?).
Also, IMHO, the prohibition on Meta glasses should be targeting the manufacturers (corporations such as Meta, but also Google and other companies developing similar aberrations) instead of just the users. Because, when users are the only ones to blame, society risks missing the forest for the trees, as the corps behind these aberrations would be left unbothered enough for them to work on “thinner frames for smartglasses” which would further pave the way for people like me, who have to wear high-myopia prescription glasses, to be lynched for my thin-framed dumbglasses just because human society would be so blinded by their (understandable) rage that they’d be judging me for the pair of glasses in front of my eyes I got no choice but to wear to live in said society (if I had to remove my prescription glasses in order to be allowed in, I wouldn’t be able to watch your theatre play or getting to read your damn beverage menu, for example).
