Live data from Hacker News

Meta in row after workers who saw smart glasses users having sex lose jobs

bbc.com

141–150 of 463 posts

Re: Meta in row after workers who saw smart glasses users having sex lose jobs

#141
> and was a common practice among other companies.

Meta isn’t lying, you should assume other companies are doing it too, Tesla did it with their cameras, and assume others like any company has access to your camera, I would even assume CCTV cameras too. It’s why for anything sensitive, try to use open source stacks, you might lose some of the features, but it’s a needed compromise.

Re: Meta in row after workers who saw smart glasses users having sex lose jobs

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to get the Oakley Meta ones so I can record bike rides easier, should I not be tolerated?

[flagged]

How is a GoPro better than wearing these glasses while cycling?

Re: Meta in row after workers who saw smart glasses users having sex lose jobs

#143

Not sure which is worse here - that Meta are recording video from customers' smart glasses, or that they are firing people who talk about it.

Can I squeeze in the just a teeny tiny bit of… why the hell are you wearing an internet camera on you while naked and/or having sex? … although I really extend that to why are you wearing an internet connected camera that is obviously going to be monitored by Meta.

The Ray-Ban stays ON during sex!

Re: Meta in row after workers who saw smart glasses users having sex lose jobs

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Very, very few users are going to be an interesting or valid use case You then list a mere two categories. Would your argument have been similar in 2008 if told that in ten years, everyone in the economic first world would be carrying multiple cameras including a dedicated "selfie" camera at all times?

I'm not sure I understand the point about a dedicate "selfie" camera, however I think we're conflating "percentage of users" with "varieties of use cases." I think there could be quite a cornucopia of potential use cases, but I think per capita most people will not actually be making use of these. As other commenters have pointed out, I'd be a lot more tolerant if the data were not constantly piped to Meta.

The point about a dedicated selfie camera was that in 2008, few would have considered taking selfies to be a major use case that would drive >90% of teens and adults to have a camera which has no other reasonable purpose. In the age of FaceTime calls, it would seem absurd to question why it's needed, but nothing like that was mainstream in 2008, which would lead to the same argument of "there are very few legitimate reasons to want such a camera (and it will enable creepshots)".

My wider point is that there are already many obvious use cases, and as adoption of cameras which are always on or plausibly always on rises, there will be a lot more, including augmented reality, translation, context hinting, AI agent awareness for assistants and personal security, and at least dozens of others, some of which I am sure no one has started building for, yet.

Meta is probably not the winner in this space (or, I hope not, at least, so we agree there!). However, the idea that people have a right to remember and process what they see and hear in full fidelity is pretty basic, in my opinion.

Re: Meta in row after workers who saw smart glasses users having sex lose jobs

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the reasonable and legitimate uses of smart glasses with cameras in that can record without the subject being aware?

I have 2 kids in single digit ages (1 under 5). I bought meta gen 2 last month and I cannot describe how many sweet moments I have captured. My kid loves to sing while playing with dolls and stops as soon as I flip my phone out to record.

I hope you can appreciate that you're capturing this data for Meta and their contractors and that they have the capability of doing whatever they want with this data. My spouse and I ask everyone taking pictures of our kid to never post them to social media because Meta et. al. create a shadow profile using those pictures, and they can share those photos with contractors and with other people and we don't want a company like that to have my son's data without his 18-year-old self's consent.

Re: Meta in row after workers who saw smart glasses users having sex lose jobs

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Fun" bonus fact: This isn't the first time Sama (the outsourcing company) has had these problems. OpenAI had them classify CSAM, so Sama fired them as a client back in 2022. https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/ We're 4 years on, 3 years since that report broke. Not a single thing has improved about how tech companies operate.

Isn't it more that tech companies are just more high profile and integral to political and social landscape than older companies; but reviewing the current political zeitgeist, they're in lockstep to what some, if not all, would just call fascism?

[dead]

Re: Meta in row after workers who saw smart glasses users having sex lose jobs

#147
post #54

So I've never had a smart speaker in my house (Alexa, Apple, Google). I've just never been comfortable with the idea of having an always-on cloud-connected microphone in my house. Not because I thought these companies would deliberately start listening and recording in my house but because they will likely be careless with that data and it'll open the door for law enforcement to request it. Consider the Google Wi-fi…

That is to say nothing of the new technological use cases that could develop from the already existing technology. They just haven’t been thought of developed yet.

Things like audio scanning your living space using those Alexa smart speakers with ultrasonics to get an image of not only everything in your space, but where you are in that space as well.

That technological use case only came out within the last five or so years, maybe closer to eight. Either way I could see that coming before it became a thing just because ultrasound imaging of your unborn child is a thing ultrasound imaging of the sea floor is a thing so why wouldn’t ultrasound imaging of your living space be a thing by a company who wants to know what you buy.

I never ever ever had Alexa I only ever had a Google home because I got it for free with GPM but I almost never used it because I hated the idea of it always listening.

I already regret Wi-Fi because they figured out now how to look through walls with that.

Re: Meta in row after workers who saw smart glasses users having sex lose jobs

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't think that's fair. Smartglasses have legitimate purposes. I think that's true in principle, but in practice there are going to be two kinds of smart glasses users; extraordinarily annoying kids or you adults acting annoying in public so they can post videos to social media, and then normal people who have no clear sense for how much they're violating the privacy of those around them, and just like cool tech.…

I saw there is at least one company working on offline smart glasses for disabled users. I don’t have such a problem with this, and I wonder if the industry as a whole could be nudged in this direction. Offline glasses seem more ok to me. It makes a lot of sense for actual accessibility devices to be offline-capable. You don’t want to lose your “sight” when you step into a metal building or elevator.

Another bad thing about the privacy invasion glasses is that they’ve added a stigma to these potentially-useful offline ones.

Re: Meta in row after workers who saw smart glasses users having sex lose jobs

#150
post #48

> "We see everything - from living rooms to naked bodies ," one worker reportedly said. > Meta said this was for the purpose of improving the customer experience, and was a common practice among other companies. Am I reading this correctly?! This is probably the weirdest statement I've read on the internet in twenty years.

Meta is a defense contractor. They see the world a little differently from everyone else.
Post reply on HN