Meta has unveiled audio-only smart glasses, with some questioning whether it is a response to the backlash over privacy.

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[–] [S] 31 points 1 month ago* (1 child)

Will the audio-only Facebook glasses wearer ask people around permission to record their conversations?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

That makes the blind pervert glasses just as creepy as Apple's spy watch.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 month ago (6 children)

    Why can’t they just make a HUD to show my phones notifications and GPS? That’s literally all it needs to do. I do not need another data collector.

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  • [–] [S] 15 points 1 month ago

    You assume Facebook - or indeed the whole tech industry - makes products designed to fulfill a buyer's need.

    They don't: they make surveillance products that also happen to have a function that you want enough to buy their surveillance devices.

    GM sells surveillance vehicles because people need to go places.
    Google makes surveillance software because people need a cellphone and a search engine.
    Facebook makes surveillance glasses for perverts who need to record people covertly.

    They all have a target market to sell surveillance shit. Facebook's happen to be consistently the creepiest.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Nobody will buy a camera-free version because the only reason anyone buys these glasses is to be a fucking pervert.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 1 month ago*

    You underestimate the nefarious potential of hidden audio-only recorders. Thieves can loiter in busy locations and record people having an affair to blackmail them, spelling their password on the phone or giving their address to their friend in a bar and ask them to water the plants while they're on vacation next week (indicating that the house will be empty and ripe for burglary next week)...

    There's a reason why it's illegal to record people without their consent.

    The thing with those audio-recording glasses, as with the Apple spy watch, is that the valid uses cases are few and weak (it's mostly people who are too lazy to take notes in a meeting) but the nefarious use cases are much more numerous.

    The important point though is that the devices need to be compelling enough for people to buy them, so the makers can use them as Trojan horses to put their customers and their surroundings under surveillance. And the makers don't care if the usage is legal or ethical, as long as they can get their bugged devices into the hands of their victims.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 month ago
    [+] 4 points 1 month ago (1 child)
  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago

    Because they are build to collect data. Collecting data is the main business of tech companies now. All new tech is developed wtih the primary purpose of collecting data, everything else is an afterthought.

    Which is why all new tech is so unimaginative now.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    I have seen only one legitimate use in the wild:

    There is a gentleman who goes to shelters and tries to rehabilitate traumatized dogs. I think his channel is called “sitting with dogs” or something like that.

    He recently switched to these glasses because it more easily allowed him to record what he was looking at without using his hands. Because excess hand movements could - and sometimes did - spook the dogs. It also allowed him to use both hands to do certain things, which IIRC proved to be safer in some instances.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    Without a camera, they're just very expensive glasses.

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