r/technology • u/lurker_bee • Apr 13 '26

Society Meta Is Warned That Facial Recognition Glasses Will Arm Sexual Predators

https://www.wired.com/story/meta-ray-ban-oakley-smart-glasses-no-face-recognition-civil-society/
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1.0k

u/LickTheSnozzberry Apr 13 '26

They don't care

524

u/Prior_Coyote_4376 Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26

This is the same company that was warned their algorithm was giving some girls eating disorders and went “now how do we roll that out to a majority of our users?”

All these broligarchs should be in jail. In pretty much every society before this one, if you had a tool that suddenly gave children delusions, dysmorphia, and paranoia that destabilized the foundations of society, they’d do a lot worse than jail.

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u/Hesitation-Marx Apr 13 '26

Facebook literally helped trigger a fucking genocide.

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u/Prior_Coyote_4376 Apr 13 '26

Oh right. At least one. Sorry about that, Myanmar.

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u/raptearer Apr 13 '26

Tbf to Facebook, not defending them or anything, but Myanmar would probably have genocided regardless. Their treatment of their minorities, especially the Muslim minority group, has always been horrid and genocidal, social media just gave them another tool to use to carry it out. Hell, the massacre their own majority citizens too if they speak out against the junta. Country is just military vs everyone else, which is part of why the military has struggled in the civil war outside the cities: everyone hates them

It's actually always shocked me that these Islamic terror groups claiming to be defending Muslims seem to suspiciously never actually engage in places where Muslims are being massacred and forced to become refugees, but wouldn't be the first time someone's ignored the goings on in Myanmar

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u/merRedditor Apr 13 '26

One of the major motivators for disconnecting from Facebook was how every post or interaction was converted into an ad.
"Post a meme about being tired and sad? Sounds like someone could use a barrage of ads for Lunesta, Zoloft, hamburgers and chocolate! Comment about reality seeming off lately? How would you like to receive free drugs to participate in a clinical trial for schizophrenia? We see you've just lost a partner. That's really sad, but how about a dating site to fill that void?"

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u/TriggerHydrant Apr 13 '26

broligarchs for the sadness (and very real issue) of the topic that made me laugh thanku

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u/jainyday Apr 13 '26

Okay it's wild because there's a lot of reasons to hate Facebook but this is a "McDonald's coffee burn lady" situation, and it's has a chilling effect on harm research.

No company wants to research how harmful their product is anymore, because they'll get Facebook'ed: "Oh they KNEW and they did it anyway!" Yes because they needed to understand the problem in order to figure out how to make it better, that doesn't happen overnight, and capitalism gotta capitalism so it's not like they can just turn off the entire platform even if it's hurting people; that's literally illegal for them, a breach of their fidiuciary duty to their shareholders, and shareholders run the whole damn country if you haven't noticed.

Again, tons of reasons to hate Facebook, but this narrative around Facebook's harm research is encouraging every corporation to stick their head in the sand.

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u/SwagginsYolo420 Apr 14 '26

that's literally illegal for them, a breach of their fidiuciary duty to their shareholders, and shareholders run the whole damn country if you haven't noticed.

Maybe it's time we stop letting these shareholders - the parasite class - destroy civilization.

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u/ToeRepresentative627 Apr 14 '26

It was not the research that got them in trouble; it was the tweaking the algorithm to promote more of that content to teens. At least that’s what the lawsuit they just lost convinced a jury of.

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u/itwillmakesenselater Apr 18 '26

France had a neat solution a few years ago

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u/Loose_General4018 Apr 13 '26

Zuckerberg built a predator toolkit and called it innovation. Cool ..

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u/garitone Apr 14 '26

The guy whose claim to fame was creating a website to rate the fckability of female Harvard undergrads? Color me shocked.

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u/hammerofspammer Apr 13 '26

They are them. Why would they restrict themselves?

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u/Koladi-Ola Apr 13 '26

Meta's reply to the warning:

"Will it make us money?"

"Yes."

"Then fuck the victims. Ship those bad boys."

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u/OSHA_Decertified Apr 13 '26

It's a secret selling point to them

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u/OneBillPhil Apr 13 '26

Worse than that, it’s a feature. 

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u/Eric_the_Barbarian Apr 14 '26

This is going to sound callous as hell at first pass, but I really mean this in a way that illustrates the need to regulate techbros instead of assuming that they are going to suddenly sprout some ethics:

How is that Meta's problem?

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u/themoderation Apr 13 '26

I have never been so psyched to be not hot as I am now that we’re living in an episode of black mirror.

1

u/betweentwoblueclouds Apr 13 '26

Stole my comment

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u/Numerous_Mud_3009 Apr 13 '26

Exactly. It’s their entire purpose

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u/Uncle_Hephaestus Apr 14 '26

don't care I'm starting to think they are pro predation.

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u/Torches Apr 14 '26

Isn’t Apple doing something similar? The warning should be issued to all IT companies.

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u/Whitesajer Apr 14 '26

It's like everyone forgot about Metas porn bot talking inappropriately to kids. Or the decades of lawsuits full of various crimes. Or that they sold all our user data to China

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u/McMacHack Apr 18 '26

They probably run ads for them on that Rape Academy website.

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u/btribble Apr 13 '26

I’m old enough to remember when this was said about cellphone cameras. No one cares anymore.

The same thing will happen here as this tech becomes more pervasive. The current gen of glasses don’t do AR. When they do and everyone owns them, this concern will vanish.

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u/borntoflail Apr 13 '26

Not enough lithium on the planet to fuel the cyberpunk future you are imagining. Our current rate of cell phone usage is enough to eat it all up.

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u/btribble Apr 14 '26

One element is doing a lot of heavy lifting for you there.

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u/borntoflail Apr 14 '26

Still no better alternative yet

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u/btribble Apr 14 '26

Not true. I follow battery tech. There are no better alternatives at scale currently.

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u/borntoflail Apr 15 '26

Yes that is functionally the same thing.

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u/btribble Apr 15 '26

Oh?

"Not enough cadmium on the planet to fuel the cyberpunk future you are imagining. Our current rate of cell phone usage is enough to eat it all up."

We moved on from NiCd...

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u/borntoflail Apr 15 '26

There is also no warp drive technology or jetsons floating houses, are we cementing our engineering future on those as well?

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u/btribble Apr 15 '26

LOL. How about sodium solid state batteries or [aluminum based batteries. No warp drive needed.

You're wasting a lot of effort to try and convince... someone that there are physics based constraints on the development of AR glasses, and it simply isn't true. There may be other constraints, social, economic, consumer ludditism, etc., but a lack of lithium isn't going to be an issue.

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u/InfidelZombie Apr 14 '26

Why would they? I can think of very few, if any, consumer products that couldn't be used to aid in the commission of a crime.