I mean, otherwise countries couldn’t use security cameras
But I'm a bit confused by the article because it describes things that seem really unlikely given how the glasses work. They shine a bright light whenever recording. Are people really going into bathrooms, having sex, sharing rooms with people undressed while this light is on? Or is this deliberate tampering, malfunctioning, or Meta capturing footage without activating the light (hard to believe even Meta would do this intentionally).
I feel like this article is either a bombshell, or totally confused.
Hahahahahahahaha
ZUCK: yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard
ZUCK: just ask
ZUCK: i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns
FRIEND: what!? how’d you manage that one?
ZUCK: people just submitted it
ZUCK: i don’t know why
ZUCK: they “trust me”
ZUCK: dumb fucks
Actual quote, BTW [1].
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/09/20/the-face-of-fa...
Show us how Meta is a moral player in society.
All I can see are lots of evil behaviors.
Well, they don't, but this is a particularly damning statement and it's age is more of a feature than a flaw because it shows a long history of anti-social disdain for humanity.
It is perhaps not, and perhaps a bit disingenuous to claim so in good faith, as if it exceeds your abilities to search for the list of facebook scandals in the decades following and see that the behavior is often consistent with this quote. Even if you choose to ignore all that, it's also not very reasonable to expect troves of juicier quotes after all the C-suites, lawyers, and HR departments showed up locked everything down with corporate speak. I'm sure if facebook were to be so kind as to leak the messages and audio of zuck's internal comms since people would be able to have many other juicy quotes to work with.
It is often referenced because it's the best quote that represents the trailblazing era of preying on users' undying thirst for convenience in order to package their provate data as a product.
I wish this article (or Meta) were a bit clearer about the specific connection between the device settings and use and when humans get access to the images.
My settings are:
- [OFF] "Share additional data" - Share data about your Meta devices to help improve Meta products.
- [OFF] "Cloud media" - Allow your photos and videos to be sent to Meta's cloud for processing and temporary storage.
I'm not sure whether my settings would prevent my media from being used as described in the article.
Also, it's not clear which data is being used for training:
- random photos / videos taken
- only use of "Meta AI" (e.g., "Hey Meta, can you translate this sign")
As much as I've liked my Meta Ray Ban's I'm going to need clarity here before I continue using them.
TBH, if it were only use of Meta AI, I'd "get it" but probably turn that feature off (I barely use it as-is).
Is it because younger people don't care about privacy anymore?
[OFF] "Share data about your Meta devices to help improve Meta products." doesn't preclude sharing data for other purposes.
[OFF] "Allow your photos and videos to be sent to Meta's cloud for processing and temporary storage." doesn't preclude sending them to Meta's cloud for permanent storage.
I turned the AI off and used them as headphones and taking videos while biking. After a couple rides, I couldn’t bring myself to put them on because people started to recognize them and I realized I didn’t want to be associated with them (people are right to assume Meta has access to what they see).
Meta Ray Bans, if kept simple, could have been a great product. They ruined them.
Just continues to prove that if you solve a bit of inconvenience for them, people will let you exploit them and their families.
It's certainly possible that it's something much more surprising / sinister, but there is a fairly logical combination of settings that I could see a company could argue lets them use the data for training.
I'm also very certain that few users with these settings would expect the images to be shown to actual people, so I'm not defending Meta.
I know some of the criticism of Meta: many people don't like the way their products are optimized for engagement. I've heard about their weird AI bots interacting on their platform as if they were people. And I know people of all political stripes have had complaints about content moderation and their algorithm.
But all of that is within the bounds of the law and their terms of service.
None of it would remotely approach something like: bypassing the well-advertised features in the glasses that show when the camera is in use and secretly recording things to train AI. It's hard to imagine any company's lawyers approving something like that. (this sounds like what many commenters believe is happening)
FWIW, I suspect this is the relevant section of the Privacy policy:
> "When you use the Meta AI service on your AI Glasses (if available for your device), we use your information, like Media and audio recordings of your voice to provide the service."
from: https://www.meta.com/legal/privacy-policy/
if so, "to provide the service" is doing a lot of work
Two examples that are top of mind…
They exploited browser vulnerabilities not unlike malware to track users’ behavior across the web: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/06/protect-yourself-metas...
They bought a “privacy” VPN app and used it to harvest data, then abused Apple’s enterprise app deployments to continue to ship the app after it was banned from the app store: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/jury-finds-meta-...
I think it's anything but logical, if users (like yourself) have no idea what those settings are, as evident from your previous post.
Meta aims to introduce facial recognition to its smart glasses while its biggest critics are distracted, according to a report from The New York Times. In an internal document reviewed by The Times, Meta says it will launch the feature “during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns.”
I worked at a midsize financial company before and whenever there was something even approaching a legal or ethical grey area, we'd pick up the phone and say come to my office to talk, and then you'd close the door.
We weren't doing anything nearly as nefarious as Meta, yet everyone was always aware that email and phone conversations were recorded and archived.
But still nefarious. Thats kinda messed up, to be honest.
Do you believe these companies and individuals will ever see consequences for putting this in writing? I don't think they will, and I assume they believe the same based on their actions. Why waste time being "moral" when you don't lose anything for being immoral and stand to gain something if your gamble wins?
I mean, there's a whole philosophical outlook about being a good person and some people just want to do without needing enforcement, but those people also dont tend to become one of the largest corporations on the planet.
I'd rather we normalize that than adversarial fashion.. but that's probably what you were looking for.
Look, the previous commenter has legitimate question how can we do it for real. Not just speed run to the gates of afterlife after touching the wrong person.
It just takes one unlucky time where the other person doesn’t subscribe to the idea of proportional response or has military training with muscle memory that takes over.
There is no thinking or musing whether they just want to slap you or I don’t know what. You don’t know your attacker and their intentions.
This is the real world. I don’t know why you would think this is some kind of stupid game to go around and slap people. It will cause problems.
I gave parent the term "adversarial fashion" as an answer to their query, they should look that up.
Feels great to say it. Would feel great to do it. Morally defensible to anyone that knows anything about privacy if the person isn’t low-vision or something. In reality, a terrifically stupid idea.
Even I, average looking girl, walk with a knife everywhere and I am trained how to use it to kill, it’s muscle memory. In US, a lot of people stroll around with guns.
I can guarantee you that if you ever end up getting sucker punched by an adult male, you will at best get dazed and not know what's going on, and at worst knocked out cold. The knife is giving you a false illusion of safety. It would only ever be really effective if you were the attacker that pulled out the knife on a victim with the intention to inflict harm. The first to strike usually comes out on top.
I think even the political activists will be extremely divided on this one. You have privacy on one hand, accessibility and a genuinely life-changing technology on the other.
This is all children talk here. Seriously people stop being so edgy on the internet and what you wouldn’t do. Use your god damn brain
Do you guys ever like, go outside?
Plenty of places this would be the most interesting call of the day for a police force and you'd have 5 squad cars show up.
Other places won't even bother responding to the call. Your mileage will greatly vary.
Honestly I’d love to hear from someone who actually owns one of these things how doing this is any different than using the glasses.
Now to find a way to make 1550nm lidar glasses to burn out any cameras pointed directly at your face
If you are in the US, and hopefully in a state that is open to blocking this sort of thing, be very vocal and persistent with your state reps about the issue. Get others to join. I am curious if this will be legal within the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act or a couple other states with similar laws
- Or -
Walk around with a vlogger camera that has a large microphone. If anyone takes issue, say "I'm the 5th person here walking around recording everyone today. The others are using a spy camera in their glasses."
- Or -
Borrow a pair of them when in public at a restaurant and loudly say, "Oh my god! These AI smart glasses really do remove everyone's clothing, even on the children!" be ready to run.
_________________
Only do these things if you typically rock the boat regardless. i.e. often try and fail to get fired or arrested.
Would that work ?
Seems benign enough that its not going to earn you a visit to the judge, but should disable most electronics, no?
Yep. Once a couple of nerds got rich, it's what that segment pointed their money finders at. Advertising / marketing went with them.
It was a much nicer place for everyone when it was just the nerds who "had love for the game" :(
Every day I understand more and more that I have something really priceless and rare, complete luxury of choice, and 99% of people don't. (as with all things, it has its downside: nothing matters!)
I refused to get "stuck" in my hometown, which motivated me from college dropout to FAANG. Once I got there, it was novel to me that even rich people get "stuck" due to inability to imagine losing status, and also responsiblities that come with obvious, healthy, lifestyle choices (i.e. marriage and kids)
Take all the people who get and got laid off. Their life goes on.
> responsiblities that come with obvious, healthy, lifestyle choices (i.e. marriage and kids)
99.9999% of people in the world who are married with kids, don't work at Meta.
"They have a choice" is of course literally true. It's also not very interesting? Everyone always has a choice in the tautological sense. The question the parent raised was how do people live with it, and the answer is: the same way people live with all kinds of things. Incrementally, surrounded by context that makes it feel normal, with stakes that feel high relative to their baseline, not yours.
Your 99.9999% stat kind of makes my point for me. Those people also didn't get a $400k offer from Meta. The trap isn't marriage+kids, it's young + don't know better + land there + marriage + kids+a lifestyle calibrated to a specific income, plus the identity that comes with it. The golden handcuffs thing is a cliché because it's real.
None of this is a defense of working on things you find unconscionable. It's just that "they could simply choose not to" has never once in history been a sufficient explanation of human behavior.
> I have something really priceless and rare, complete luxury of choice, and 99% of people don't
People working at Meta are almost without exception, people who have more luxury of choice than nearly anyone on the planet. It's very important to keep repeating this, and not say the direct opposite as you did. You can make your point without doing so.
I mean, they don’t. There isn’t a single decent person who has ever worked at Meta, and that started long before this nonsense. The entire company is about the social destruction of its users. Everything anyone there works on drives towards that goal.
Please don't respond with how you think people justify, I want to hear the actual reasons. I'm tired of speculative responses to questions like these.
Please do share if you've had to deal with similar situations too. And feel free to respond with green accounts.
I legitimately want to understand why this happens. Not why from management, why from engineers.
Most people are just trying to get through their day and not worry about ethical questions.
I'd say that's terrible, but I'm not confident I'd be a better person if my livelihood depended on doing that sort of work, though I hope I'd be better.
Who has been distracted from Facebook’s shenanigans? Who are they talking about? Is it me? Because I can tell you I have certainly not been distracted on that front. Am I supposed to feel guilty? Am I supposed to hold somebody accountable who should’ve been paying attention?
I do actually understand why it’s done, but I just find it very grating and if your goal is to actually raise awareness, shaming people is generally not the way to go about it.
Also the classic “we can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time” thing
It isn't really "rhetoric", they're talking like they believe this actually happens, this is strategy.
And I tend to agree with them that things like attention and political capital are ultimately finite resources.
I've found that the "we can do two things" and "we can walk and chew bubblegum" line of argument to be simplistic and just wrong (and pretty incredibly patronizing). I think the world works exactly the way Meta thinks that it does here.
It might blow up and turn into a Streisand effect, but more often than not this kind of strategy works.
Much like how people think they can multitask and talk on the phone and drive at the same time and every scientific measure of it shows that they really can't.
It's painfully obvious to me society cannot do two things at once. You focus on one shared goal as a culture or everything falls apart very rapidly - as we are seeing today. It's why a common external "enemy" (e.g competitor, nation state, culture, whatever) has historically been so important.
The shared goal can be complex in nature, which requires many disciplines to come together to achieve it via a series of many parallel activities that might look like they are all doing something random, but it's all in the service of that singular shared goal.
This holds true from my experience at the national level all the way down to small organizations.
On September 11th 2001 a UK government department's press chief told their subordinates it was a "good day to bury bad news".
The idea is pretty simple - you might be obligated to announce something that you know will be poorly received, like poor train performance figures, but you can decide the exact day you announce it, like on a day when thousands have died in a terror attack. What would otherwise be front-page news is relegated to a few paragraphs on page 14.
Facebook proposes a similar strategy: Get the feature ready to go, wait until there's some much bigger news story, and deploy it that day.
> “We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,” according to the document from Meta’s Reality Labs, which works on hardware including smart glasses.
Is that a good enough explanation to reduce your feelings of being personally targeted?
I just don't see a world where that doesn't happen with Meta glasses.
To record a video on your phone you need to hold your phone up pointed at the other person, usually not in the same way you would normally use a phone. If you see someone holding his phone steady at face level and pointing at something without making finger movements, you know he is filming. If someone is pointing his phone down towards the ground and scrolling around with his thumb, you know he is probably not.
To record from a pair of smart glasses you just need to look at someone, as you would normally look at any other thing. Yes there will be an LED on, but the person being recorded probably couldn't see it if it is in a bright, busy environment and you are more than a few steps away, plus there will be aftermarket modifications to disable the LED. In short, there is no way you can reliably tell if someone's smart glasses are filming you. You have to assume that worst.
So with that noted, when people make false claims of high levels of voter fraud, to justify government intervention that disenfranchises people, that falls into the fascism bucket.
And anyone that stays in favor of those actions despite these explanations gets to be in the same bucket.
Whether modern American fascism should actually get the word "Nazi", I'm not very fussed about. It doesn't make a person automatically right or wrong.
And listen, I'm all for requiring IDs if we make sure 99.999% of people have an ID first.
But actual decisions must be made based on the actual situation. We're not even to 99% right now.
As to why people have a problem with demanding ID for voting, its because its not coupled with a requirement for the government to ensure every citizen has ID free of charge. Then you get shit like the current admin ordering places to stop providing identification services https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/nonprofit-libraries-or...
and it seems like the intent is to make sure that certain types of people cant vote. Not an intent to make sure only the people with the right to vote can vote.
If you combine a claim for voter ID along with an increase in spending to make sure every valid voter gets one free of charge, then I'd believe you were not being malicious and were actually concerned with voting integrity.
I dont think youd ever do that, so get fucked. Rescinded if you are willing to claim otherwise.
Statements like this show that you are living in a bubble with little connection to people outside your immediate social circle. LOTS of people don't have government ID of any kind, much less one that proves citizenship (basically birth certificate or passport). About half of Americans don't have a passport. Do you carry around your birth certificate with you?
You should really get out of your comfortable suburban bubble, turn off Fox News, and talk to actual poor people. Your misinformation about basic facts is leading you to support dumb policies.
> To pretend every single thing in society is so important to be gated by ID, except voting, is insanity.
But yet you're willing to disenfranchise millions of Americans of their constitutional right to vote, in order to stop the crisis of in-person voter fraud that doesn't exist. That it is conflict with the ideals of this country.
Meanwhile, I bet you're totally fine with Trump's plan to illegally federalize voting, because the Constitution means literally nothing to you
No, I would call you a Nazi for promoting the idea that Jews are organized to replace and outbreed gentiles (as says Musk), for denying the validity of any election that your party loses (as has Trump), for unilaterally seizing powers constitutionally held by the legislature (as has Trump), for using your elected office power to enrich yourself and your friends (as had Trump), for denying that American citizens of different ethnicities are "real Americans" (as has Trump), for attacking non-partisan institutions because they're politically inconvenient (as has Trump).
Popularity is no defense . Nazi opinions were popular in the 1930s, and now they're popular again. They are still Nazi opinions.
You can check voter ID all day, I don't care. This administration has crossed many red lines.
> I believe Musk
Generally, spreading lies rooted in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion about Jewish conspiracies to displace gentiles is not what I would consider "pro-Jew" behavior. Regarding Musk specifically, I have seen no evidence of any kind that he is "pro" anything other than his own self interest. Like Trump, he is a man without principles, religious or otherwise.
> The most anti-Jew people I encounter are hardcore leftists and atheists
What specifically did they do to make you think that? Did they criticize Israel?
EDIT: how fitting that besides coming to HN to defend a fascist billionaire, you are also promoting a crypto scam. That tells me everything about your ethics and political alignment.
That's true, and I never said otherwise.
Many Jews criticize Israel as well. Are they antisemites?
As I already said, protesting Israel (in particular, the policies of its government) does not make a person anti-Jew, any more than criticizing American policy makes w person anti-American.
You conflate ethnic hate with principled opposition to particular unjust policies. Just like Trump, your orange god, you think that anyone who disagrees with you must be driven by irrational rage, rather than principles.
I have no idea where you get the idea of "free money." The government invests in science, business, and developments that help the country; and decisions involving that investment should not be colored by adherence to the current administration's political agenda. I'm not concerned about the careers of the affected individuals, as unjust as that is; I'm concerned about the damage to the country, to our relationship with our allies, and to our standing in the world. Instead we get this: Businesses that flatter Trump get to have acquisitions, and those that don't get their contracts cancelled. The new "political correctness" is towing the line for Trumpian misinformation.
I'm also not just talking about investments, but employment. Think about the jobs of federal employees for daring to have an opinion that contradicts Dear Leader.
> If a government feels that they don't contribute positively to the society,
That's a disingenuous argument. No one believes that the Trump administration is making decisions about who to support based on what is good for the country. Paramount's acquisition of WBD will be allowed for no other reason than because it helps Trump. Universities are targeted not because they are doing bad work but because they are seen as popular among the opposition. The government is defunding research not because it isn't contributing positively, but because it contradicts the government's a priori talking points. The damage done to society as a result of the defunding is, for them, just collateral damage.
> That does not mean every voice that is enabled is a "Nazi"
I never said that every voice on the right is a Nazi, just that Nazis are among those voices. And that's enough for me: if the government is supporting any Nazis and racists, as they evidently are, that's too many. And if your argument is "Hey, not all of us are literal Nazis", then you are not doing anything to advance your position.
So you ll start rejecting any argument that you supported before, as soon as a "Nazi" agrees with it?
I'll fight against any position that supports dehumanizing people for their ethnicity, that sets political ideology on a pedestal and uses it as a tool to attack science, institutions, and justice. As should you.
It seems like you're upset by my use of the word Nazi. You should instead focus on the ideas that I'm arguing against.
Ok, but that is not what you said.
>I never said that every voice on the right is a Nazi, just that Nazis are among those voices. And that's enough for me
I feel like you're trying to deploy some clever rhetorical trick, but you aren't quite smart enough to pull it off.
Then again, there may be some selection bias at play…
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/nyregion/nyc-nightlife-no...
You can keep your phone here but the cameras are taped off. Of course that can easily be undone but it avoids the "oh sorry I forgot it wasn't allowed" excuse.
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.
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.
> https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/meta-takes-around-3-sta...
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.
If you think about it, the "dork" position was the one that was most normal, it's the status-quo. The people wanting to record in lockerooms and what not is not the status-quo. They win because most people are short-sighted, or even secretly love hurting themselves.
This isn't true. Most everyone hates the fact they are being surveilled, but it is pervasive and people only can deal with so many complications in life.
Avoiding surveillance is not a decision or action, it is 1000 decisions and actions. Endless decisions and actions.
But I believe you, that there may be many who don’t care.
Can you elaborate on this?
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".
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.
[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.
And that's why I don't talk to Siri to drive my car.
Or maybe not. Tablets are impressively portable and the screen is probably good enough.
you can still take the glasses off. i dont own glasses but do use vr and the shift between putting on/taking off a headset feels more intentional than the glance at a phone. feels less addictive to me. maybe lightweight glasses and dark patterns will "fix" that eventually
I was just in a datacenter deploying a bunch of infrastructure while coordinating with remote network operations and sysadmin teams. It was damn annoying having to constantly check my phone for new slack messages, or deal with Siri reading back messages in it's incompetent manner. I missed quite a few time sensitive messages like "move that fiber from port A to port B" due to noise or getting busy with another task and kept folks waiting for longer than needed.
In limited circumstances having a wearable "HUD" interface would be quite nice. Especially if it had great screen quality and I could do things like see a port mapping/network diagram/blueprints/whatever while doing the actual work. Would save considerable time vs. having to look down at a laptop or phone screen and lose my place in the physical wire loom or whatnot. Having an integrated crash cart (e.g. via wireless dongles) would be even more exciting.
That's just one recent task that comes to mind.
There are plenty of real world hands-on jobs where this would be quite helpful. So long as it's not connected to meta or the cloud or anything other than a local device or work network.
For a more general use-case I have what amounts to minor facial blindness/forgetfulness of names. I need to study your face for a long time over many interactions to actually remember you. Something as simple as wearing glasses vs. not can mean I will not recognize someone I've spent months interacting with multiple times a week.
I've long wished I had some way to implant something in my brain that would give the equivalent of video game name avatars superimposed over someone's head. For totally non-nefarious reasons, just names of folks I previously have met pulled from my contacts list. Obviously this is unlikely to ever be a socially acceptable thing due to recording and other potential abuses - but I have thought this for at least 25 years now - before the privacy concerns became obvious. Wishful thinking, but I can imagine myriad of uses for such technology if it didn't enable such a wide-spread number of potential abuses.
Ironically that's exactly what the Quest solved with SLAM, it really is plug and play, otherwise I would not have bought one... and it sucks that Meta now owns it, but it really is still the best "just works" VR.
I also don't think VR has much potential to solve real world problems for enough people, but it doesn't have to because it's pretty good entertainment as a gaming device (albeit still fairly niche).
Great glasses would solve a problem, I could take my stupid phone out of my hand.
And glasses will get replaced by contacts, which get replaced with brainwave tech.
And do what? For calls you've long been able to use a wireless headset. Otherwise most tasks involve frequent user input. Do you really want to be constantly waving your hands around in the air in front of your face? That sounds tiring at best.
There isn't really a counter to that because most people will buy these things to watch movies on the airplane or the train, and they won't see the yoke until it's too late.
The tail wags the dog. Wearing glasses may become inherently cool if all the cool people in your insta feeds are wearing them.
When these types of glasses are virtually indistinguishable from regular sunglasses, and a critical mass of cool people wear them all the time, the reluctance from the rest of us will melt away.
I hope I'm wrong. Really.
I’ve seen stories of people banned from gyms for taking selfies in the locker room as people were walking by.
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
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
The last two items on your list (person, drone) likely constitute stalking outside of specific limited situations.
> Implement some form of right to forget
The passive voice here is deceptive. When rephrased as the right to make others forget it suddenly seems quite nefarious (at least to me).
My last two bullets intentionally walked the line on stalking and spoke to some of the arguments law enforcement have attempted to use to nefariously surveil the public without a warrant [0].
I also have a difficult time jamming 'right to forget' through the first amendment protections in the United States but it does provide some protection/agency to individuals to protect their identity.
[0] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/warrantless-pol...
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.
Apparently they sold 7 million of these. So I think a whole lot of people don't care about this aspect.
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.
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.
Think about the practical aspect of it. I have to point my phone at you to record you. It's really quite conspicuous. It's also mildly inconvenient for me so I won't be doing it the vast majority of the time.
Whereas the glasses point wherever you're looking, are expected to be recording constantly, and are expected to do things with the data involving third parties. It's the same as a VR headset except in that case the expectation is that the footage is neither sent anywhere nor even retained, merely presented live to the user as if he were looking at you (and his face is already point in your direction).
Just FYI, they do heavily market this towards RX glasses wearers. So, you wouldn't quite be able to just as simply ask someone to take off their glasses and no longer be able to see.
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.
The times I do I see folks wearing them the normie reaction is typically “oh cool” and not some libertarian allergic reaction to technology.
> screeching
> libertarian allergic reaction to technology
Said libertarian allergic reaction isn’t a bad thing, nor should it be implied I meant it as such.
Sounds like yall done a lot of assuming.
Doorbell cameras are also typically pointed toward public streets, where again, there is no expectation of privacy. Even then, many people have been removing Ring cameras after they were shown to automatically upload video without user's knowledge.
Yet.
That said I'm not sure how much of that is merely department policy versus local law.
Body cam - used to protect the police and people being policed in a potentially hot conflict. Recording is scoped to these specific interactions that rarely occur for most people.
Doorbell cam - highly controversial. See response to dog-finding superbowl ad.
Body cam wore on face - Mass surveillance in potentially every conceivable social context. Data owned by Meta, a company known for building a profile on people that don't even use their products.
And that didn’t raise an uproar of suspicion even as one character went door to door asking if he could look at his neighbors recordings.
People are comfortable with the idea of being recorded, so long as accessing many recordings is a drawn out and manual process.
They’re controversial on hacker news but I don’t think people in the “real world” care all that much.
How that connects to the meta glasses is certainly up for debate —- the doorbells provide a lot of value to the user (know who is at the door remotely!), the glasses are more of a mixed bag.
Once people realize, they begin to reject. This is why I mentioned the superbowl ad and it shouldn't be waved away as an outlier.
I think the difference is that these cameras are relatively concealed, and can be used to record every interaction, even in pretty intimate/private settings. Yes you could do this with a cell phone but it would be pretty obvious your recording if you're trying to get more than just the audio of an interaction.
Not sure how it is where you live, but doorbell cameras are commonly criticized where I live. With many people claiming they don't feel comfortable walking around anymore knowing that the entire neighborhood is filming them.
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.
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-poli...
100% percent of prosecutors’ offices in jurisdictions with body cameras have used officer testimony as evidence to prosecute civilians. Meanwhile I suspect the use of officer testimony is even more lopsided in favor of cops.
I'd suggest browsing body cam footage on youtube for a bit. If you see the sort of stuff being prosecuted it might not bother you.
If it hasn't reduced police use of force or misconduct (I find this claim questionable) I think that's unfortunate but regardless it's important to implement systems that document that to the greatest extent possible. If we do that today then maybe it can be reduced tomorrow.
And the biggest fix there is you need to not let them control it.
People are more okay with cameras in public areas and less okay if it's in intimate, social, private situations, inside apartments, individual offices etc.
A face camera has no light or warnings (you just put tape over the small light), and is operated by a pervert.
There's very little sense to me in searching for meaning in any of this. It just is, people are that way. There are no lines and boundaries based on anything but just whims.
The creepiness concern is real, but I think people misplace where the actual surveillance happens. The most consequential stores of personal data aren’t ad networks they’re things like banks, hospitals, insurers, and telecoms. These institutions hold information about your health, finances, movements, and relationships, indexed and searchable by employees you’ve never met, governed by policies you’ve never read.
Realistically, there’s very little an individual can do to completely opt out.
My take is: if the main outcomes are that I get shown ads for things I don’t need and my facecomputer knows the difference between a fork and a spoon… I… I can live with that.
Yes, but it's possible, at the cost of some minor inconvenience, to greatly limit data collected about you.
Communicate over private channels (Signal, own XMPP servers, NOT Whatsapp), pay in cash or crypto, runs free software on all your devices, and deny Internet access to devices across the board (this includes all TVs/monitors, all "smart" devices, cars, and other appliances).
The real issue is that (as these glasses exemplify), it is difficult to prevent others to intentionally or unintentionally provide data to surveillance companies. This happens when you walk in front of a Ring camera, when someone uploads a selfie to Facebook and you happen to be in the background, and in countless other situations.
One that bothers me a lot are all the apps that want people to share your contacts to find your friends. This is a quick way for them to get all the contact information, which may also include birthdays and other more sensitive details.
Even if I were to never make a Facebook account, I could almost guarantee they still have my name, address, phone number, DOB, and maybe more.
No. When your record a video on your phone, it is not being reviewed annotators. Generally companies only pay to get labeling done on data that is being used to train (or evaluate) ML models.
If you're blind, it's of course understandable but that's pretty much it in terms of cases in which I would consider the glasses acceptable to wear in public.
It’s possible that even if all your friends/family would stay far away, they could still end up in your proximity.
> Hey Meta, is it safe to cross the street
> You are absolutely correct to check whether it's safe to cross before crossing! (emoji). Let me check for you(emoji)
> ...10% ...40% ...80% ...100% DONE. (made up progress bar)
> It is perfectly safe to cross right now! (emoji)
> Thanks Meta! (user dies)
It actually looks like it added AI functionality, so not every question goes out to a live helper, but they still do have that option.
Something like the Meta glasses could mean a lot less reliance on app that reach out to actual people, or looking for the phone all the time, for day-to-day help with things like this.
I care about the innocent people whose privacy is invaded by people who buy these glasses.
Absolutely crazy that a Meta employee saying not to buy them. Everyone should know this right now.
Vote with your dollars people.
I missed Facebook for about a day, and after that I barely even thought about it. In 2021 I bought an Oculus Quest 2, which at the time required a Facebook account so I made a throwaway one, but other than that I haven't been on Facebook (and I haven't even touched my Quest 2 in three years).
Point being, it's really not hard to get off Facebook and to ditch Meta products. More people should delete it.
I still spend too much arguing on HN but not as much as I was on Facebook and the audience here is generally more educated and so the arguments aren't as mind-numbing.
As another poster mentioned, it can in fact be more difficult. Almost all of my social clubs/groups over the years migrated away from websites/forums to FaceBook. I could give up an account, at the cost of losing effectively my entire social calendar.
I have a generic account with no real user data, but they still get all my content from the social groups so they still win I suppose.
My point ultimately I guess is that I have chosen the ability to continue to have a strong social life over my zuck hating principles.
- they have the opportunity to save the video feed at any time - they are probably storing some kind of metadata of the feed, maybe some kind of analysis output - someone could hypothetically watch it
I thought it was dangerous because I thought they could do what they're doing, but I didn't think that right now they actually were and so overtly
The data required is small. Each embedding might be 1/2 kB per face.
> power budget
To process a video for biometric feature extraction, it might take 0.5% to 2% of the total power used to record a video. Video uses a lot of power (compression, screen, etc)
Assuming you've got a modern device (e.g. with Apple Neutral Engine). Disclosure: Googled info (Gemini).
"Embedding"? This is what the article says:
"In some videos you can see someone going to the toilet, or getting undressed. I don’t think they know, because if they knew they wouldn’t be recording."
You're saying they're watching "embedding"s here?
https://github.com/hagezi/dns-blocklists?tab=readme-ov-file#...
Among others, blocks Meta/Facebook/Google/Apple trackers and ads. Every router on the planet should run this.
Maybe this changed since I set mine up, but I felt so damn informed I was getting tired of tapping I understand.
No one will read it, but even if you do, most of the time the FOMO or sunk cost fallacy effect will make you go on anyway. And then it is a free pass for them.
Yesterday I saw a Instagram reel of a guy asking "what am I looking at" while between his girlfriend's legs. Congrats, some Indian guy saw her too.
The core piece of information that is missing or unclear is whether this collection happens also when not actively and knowingly sending data to the cloud.
The glasses let me record videos locally, can Facebook see any frames of them? This is the question that needs to be answered. Everything is else is nonsense like "omg Amazon hears what I tell Alexa"
So the world can label them as Hentai glasses and move on
Tbh the only thing I really use the glasses for are listening to music or talking on the phone - so basically how you'd use airpods. I don't use airpods because I had an ear injury that prevents me from using them on my left ear, so these glasses were kinda nice for that. I really wish they didn't have a camera though because I do always feel compelled to remove them if I interact with people.
I also have to add that the quality is mediocre. They're a month old and the case has problems charging sometimes, and one of the screws is always coming loose at a hinge no matter how often I retighten that side.
Workers annotating data for AI might see sensitive content captured by smart glasses. But the leap from that to “we see everything” and framing it like some dystopian panopticon mirrors the early Google Glass panic, where the concerns often outran what the device actually could do.
Legitimate concerns shouldn’t be dismissed, but neither should they be inflated to create a new “Glass-forked-into-Big-Brother” narrative unless the evidence genuinely supports that level of risk ...
I don't agree that responsibility to comply with Swedish law is on the wearer. This should motivate prosecutors to immediately order raids to secure any data relating to the processing of the data.
I also think the Swedish camera surveillance law is also applicable and there's a deceptive element since the cameras are disguised as glasses.
> “The algorithms sometimes miss. Especially in difficult lighting conditions, certain faces and bodies become visible”.
Right, “difficult lighting conditions,” not sure when we’d run into those in situations where we might be concerned with privacy. A 97% success rate looks good on paper.
EDIT: Wait, is this when you use the "ask Meta" feature? I do expect that to send all the clips to a server for an LLM to process, it's not done on-device. It's not clear to me whether it's that or just all videos/photos you record with the glasses.
That's my default assumption.
For many more reasons than pervert behaviour, I agree that this kind of tool cannot coexist with healthy society. "Glassholes" was a delightful portmanteau, but I suspect normalising a term like "pedo glasses" will probably put people off them way sooner and faster. At the very least it identifies the product and not the person as the problem.
And you're still forced to carry a smartphone anyway with these glasses since they require internet connection.
Is this fashion, or something I'm not aware of ? They look horrendous to me.
>since they require internet connection.
Only the AI features require internet. You can technically take pictures and video without carrying around your phone, but realistically people are going to carry there phone with them.
Stop thinking like an end user and think like a Meta shareholder.
Meta don't own smartphone hardware or operating systems. Apple and Android locked that market up. But if they can create a new market and own that, then imagine all the data they can harvest!
> The workers in Kenya say that it feels uncomfortable to go to work. They tell us about deeply private video clips, which appear to come straight out of Western homes, from people who use the glasses in their everyday lives.
I asked 2 cops in a patrol car if I could install cameras on my own and how I should go about it. They said they don't mind them. Officially it's illegal unless you have a permit, but it's so widespread and the law is so unenforced that it's practically 99.99% legal.
I can point a few cameras to the street and record everything 24/7. When I'm on a bus I'm being recorded by a few cameras. On most bus/tram/subway stops there are cameras. In stores and public buildings there are cameras. Most cars have cameras for insurance or general safety concerns. Self-driving cars would have to have cameras, as well as delivery robots.
If we accept this shitty reality, why shouldn't I wear a camera and a mic, too?
Smart glasses record in private settings and the biggest point of contention is that they "stealth" record. If someone recorded you with their phone, you'd immediately notice whereas it's hardly noticeable with smart glasses. Worse, people at Facebook are able to visualize scenes from people's home unbeknownst to them.
A cultural convention that lets people make honest mistakes, but turn it off when someone says "hey, you're recording" seems like a good solution. Just need to make it easily visible and obvious to others - you can run around in public with a big news camera on your shoulder or a tripod and you usually won't get hassled. It's just the idea of being covertly recorded, even while in public, that gets creepy.
This is why paparazzi exist and how they operate. It's the dirty, dingy cost of having a free press, freedom of travel, freedom to hold public officials accountable, subject to the same laws you are; you can't waffle or restrict or grant exceptions, because those inevitably, invariably get abused by those in power.
That's just nonsense. Your feeds seem to be polluted by what you are seeking out, as I've never seen a video on any service that shows humiliation of anyone.
I watch a lot of 1st ammendment audit videos, and that is never about humiliation, though many people end up looking very ignorant of the laws concerning recording in public which is in the 1st ammendment.
https://japandaily.jp/why-you-cant-turn-off-the-camera-shutt...
In private settings, as with public, you are typically free to leave a setting where people are recording.
The law has no specifications for what type of device can do the recording, pr for how long a recording can be.
Have you been alive for the past decade?
That image always felt dystopian to me
-Mark Zuckerberg, 2004
https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/22/facebook-says-it-fixed-a-b...
Supposedly it was a bug, but with Facebook, who knows.
The sooner we collectively stop trusting them (and maybe even actively campaign to have the U.S. government meaningfully regulate them), the better.
Personally, I would like to see the company stop existing and its executive board destitute.
This is hugely concerning. We need more details. Why are the glasses recording when not being worn? Is the light on when it's recording?
Are the Meta employees able to turn on the streaming without people knowing? Are these videos only when someone says "Hey Meta..."? Are the Meta employees looking at every "Hey Meta..." video where someone asks AI a question?
These glasses are considered a luxury item and are worn by executives in office environments. They are worn by people in family situations. Someone could be a confidential or private moment and randomly ask AI a question; one of the primary purposes of the glasses. Are all of these being seen by Meta employees?
It would be a surveillance and privacy dystopian nightmare.
“I saw a video where a man puts the glasses on the bedside table and leaves the room.”
“Shortly afterwards his wife comes in and changes her clothes”, one of them says.
To be illegal, it would either have to be focused on the genitals or of sexual content. Nudity is not automatically sexual.
> Please don't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or exclamation points, or saying how great an article is. It's implicit in submitting something that you think it's important.
> If the title includes the name of the site, please take it out, because the site name will be displayed after the link.
> If the title contains a gratuitous number or number + adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."
> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.
The literal URL slug is
> metas-ai-smart-glasses-and-data-privacy-concerns-workers-say-we-see-everything
The page title is
> Meta’s AI Smart Glasses and Data Privacy Concerns: Workers Say “We See Everything”
The new title goes against the guidelines by editorializing. I've never seen HN do this before, what's going on here?
I've changed it again to match the article's original title, removing the clickbait part.
The one containing "hidden" is the one you apparently changed it to originally - I don't think GP can, nor has any reason to - so you initially changed it to.. clickbait?
It seems a serious reach to call "see everything" clickbait.
> First-ever in-utero stem cell therapy for fetal spina bifida repair is safe, study finds
Currently 9th on the front page, is "is safe" also clickbait, since surely it's not 100.0% safe, just like with "see everything" it's surely not every single frame?
The large number of replies this renaming got in a short timeframe is because it's not in line with what we're used to when it comes to title changes on HN.
OK I've looked in the logs and here's what happened.
The originally submitted title was: The workers behind Meta’s smart glasses can see everything.
That title was created by the submitter; it's not the original title and it's not a verbatim line of text from anywhere in the article.
It's also, arguably, clickbait, which I gather is why another moderator changed it to: A hidden workforce behind Meta’s new smart glasses.
Their intention was to make the title less baity and be closer to a verbatim line from the article (a line in the subheading is "Behind Meta’s new smart glasses lies a hidden workforce").
That's what triggered all the complaints.
I then changed it to a title that is a verbatim string from the HTML title, with the baity part at the end removed. That is bog standard title editing of the kind I've done every day for the several years I've been doing this job.
> First-ever in-utero stem cell therapy for fetal spina bifida repair is safe, study finds
"Is safe" is not an absolutist claim, but even since your comment was submitted, another moderator has – correctly – changed "first-ever" to "first", because "first-ever" is absolutist and baity.
> The large number of replies this renaming got in a short timeframe is because it's not in line with what we're used to when it comes to title changes on HN.
What I've described above is what HN moderators do several times each day. I think the reaction to this one is because it's a topic that inherently gets people riled up (understandably), and people's riled-up-ness will spill over to any perception that we're "suppressing" the story. But we're not suppressing the story; it is still at top spot, and it will stay on the front page for several hours and everyone will have every chance to read it and discuss it.
The title we've arrived at now is the one that's most consistent with the guidelines.
It’s just a hot topic. The A hidden workforce one was way off, which is why people might have got that impression. I don’t think this was intentional, but I can understand where the backlash is coming from :)
No it's not. Otherwise you wouldn't ever need to prepend it with "truly" or "completely". Indeed, most adjectives aren't absolute, which why ones that are (e.g., unique) are noteworthy for being such.
We are getting into the weeds though aren't we?
>The large number of replies this renaming got in a short timeframe is because it's not in line with what we're used to when it comes to title changes on HN.
Perception management because overt censorship wasn't possible. It has too many eyes right now, but in a few hours the story will likely drop off the front page like a rock.
It's actually an improvement: In early 2025, a ridiculous amount of legitimate stories ended up flagged or mysteriously disappearing off the front page.
The current climate however has a lot more pissed off people, and that makes censorship harder.
Parent and another comment reacting to this change have also been (artificially, I must assume) sunk from top to below gems like ’Too funny that the subcontractor working for meta is “sama”’.
What's going on?
If they think this surveillance tech is going to push the company forward, it means leadership is even more disconnected from reality than the Amazon people who greenlit the superbowl ad. It means the company is dying. Huzzah!
Original HN title - The workers behind Meta’s smart glasses can see everything
Editorialized HN title v1, 7 hours after post - A hidden workforce behind Meta’s new smart glasses
Editorialized HN title v2 - Meta’s AI smart glasses and data privacy concerns
I find v2 title okay-ish: it’s derived from the page title, and you can see what it’s about (as compared to v1). It doesn’t capture the degree of what Meta can see, though.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/labe...
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/28/us/trump-minnesota-protes...
Or do you think that those cameras are less secure because the leadership is not good with their people?
I'm not sure I follow the criticism here.
What's the material concern to tracking that glasses add?
To that point, the difference between geolocation and video tracking and analysis (like Flock) seems pretty obvious to me.
It's invasively panopticon.
Get it out of your system now, these double-standards won't be funny when Taiwan is blockaded.
Edit: no, seriously, you having some personal axe to grind is no excuse for directing it at me or my comments. This is a sign of a person having a skewed perspective.
dang, could you check what went wrong here? The new title doesn’t represent the article at all. (edit: sent an email, too)
sandbach, if you still have access to editing, maybe you could change it back?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/22/mark-zuck...
The manufacturer might access it, Apple states they don't, Google and Samsung I'm not sure. A bad actor with 0days might too.
It does seem harder to tape the phone camera since the in/out motion into your pocket I imagine would remove the tape.
For the front camera that's a lot more difficult. You could probably modify one of those flexible screen protectors to black out the camera, but it'd be very inconvenient to take off.
Maybe there is some niche android phone that offers physical shutters, similar to the ones on Lenovo laptop webcams
This product cannot be allowed to exist in the type of world I want to live in.
The power structure wants these to succeed in the market for so many horrific reasons and it will require some serious societal muscle to reject them.
How about if their glasses either...
1. Can not take pics or videos but its camera is just for AI vision?
or
2. All pics and videos taken through Apple's smart glasses the pics/vids of anyone not in your network (Apple already automatically list faces & sometimes names in your network under "People & Pets," and has done so for years & they are the privacy company) show as anonymous/randomized faces.
I own two pairs of Meta Glasses since 10/2023 and find them very useful to capture or record my own life experiences only. Tho I share hate for them because Meta makes trashy non-durable smart glasses that quickly become dumb glasses. A software update killed my 1st pair in March 2025 and then my next pair couldn't handle water splashes in June 2025.
A) they believe in the idea
and / or
B) how much money there is to be made having people wear them.
Smart wearables as a general category of hardware have an awful rate of success, and hardware is much more expensive to get into than software. So, there's got to be a lot of money in the data consumers will be producing.
That's the part that scares me much more so than the random perverts using them in public for unsavory candid photos.
You might say they reframed the issue.
Meta have been desperately searching for “the next big walled garden” for like a decade.
The prize is clear: whatever the next big mass-consumer hardware device is with an app store attached will leech hundreds of billions in fees and enjoy absolute control over everyone building on it.
Sadly the disabled have no choice but to accept the status quo, and facbook gets to virtue signal while holding humanity back another cycle by not selling us an open platform that would actually help people at scale not just now but forever.
Larry Page on Robert Scoble’s Google Glass stunt: ‘I really didn’t appreciate the shower photo’:
https://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4333656/larry-page-teases...
Scoble: an utterly tone deaf response to harassment allegations:
https://onemanandhisblog.com/2017/10/scoble-utterly-tone-dea...
>The Verge‘s Adi Robertson sums it us thus:
>>But his latest defense puts forward an absurd definition of sexual harassment and effectively accuses women of reporting it to fit in with the cool crowd, while claiming he’s writing in “a spirit of healing.” There’s even a tasteless plug for his latest business venture. It’s one of the most disappointing responses we’ve seen to a sexual harassment complaint, which, after the past few weeks, is a fairly remarkable achievement.
https://soundcloud.com/scobleizer/why-google-glass-will-be-a...
>"So you want one, huh?" -Robert Scoble
Is anyone at meta going to be bald accountable?
An absolute privacy nightmare especially in places like Switzerland or Germany where recording people (subject focus) even in public is not permitted without consent but you have tourists now showing up everywhere wearing these.
The LED is barely visible during the day and some have modified their glasses to disable/remove it.
They haven't yet. Don't see why now.
That's the prime example of a law that can't be enforced and thus shouldn't exist. You go in town, you can be recorded inadvertantly, as long as it's not some creep stalking you, I say it's fine.
If you post a video online of someone's worst day which you decided to film for entertainment, they can legally go after you.
different companies 'launder' it differently: with voice, it was done by "accidental" voice assistant activations. i guess with glasses, maybe there will be less window dressing this time. after all, it is clearly pitched to see what you see, at all times of the day.
similar controversy happened with the various roomba products, although arguably that was a combination of data harvesting + lazy engineering.
The root cause is that meta didn’t want to pay the fair market value for those videos and just stole them from its users by burying it in TOS.
If they were honest about their intentions most people would say no or demand payment for providing something of value.
Really it should just be in the UI. Click Upload this and get 10c/minute or whatever for the video. Choose what you upload. That'd be closer in effect to using social media.