Meta Glasses and the Glamorization of Surveillance

Call me old fashioned, but I rather liked it when my every movement wasn’t being documented.

Maybe that’s a little extreme. After all, I grew when the Internet was hitting it big. By the time I was born people were already shoving cameras in others’ faces 24/7. The dawn of the influencer was just upon us, and it would only be a matter of time before recording strangers was considered typical. 

So, as I’ve grown older, I’ve become accustomed to these sorts of things. I know to move out of the way when I see someone raise their phone. If I see someone taking a video I avert my head and keep my words quiet. I do my best not to draw too much attention to myself in public as well, not because that’s the polite thing to do, but because I worry I’ll become the next TikTok laughing stock if I embarrass myself just a little.

It used to be easy to avoid these occurances, even with nearly everyone having a camera in their pocket at all times. But what happens when you can’t even tell when someone’s recording?

Meta glasses have been around for a bit now, and although the media is trying to make them seem trendy and harmless the mere thought of them makes my skin crawl. With the drop of the Ray-Ban Meta’s, my nerves are just about fried.

They look like normal sunglasses, stylish sure, but just sunglasses. If you put a pair of Meta glasses beside a pair of normal ones, I probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. And only part of that is because I don’t know my way around luxury sunglasses.

If you’ve been online in the past month, you may have seen the Kylie Jenner partnership with Meta for their new glasses drop. Although some may say the change in partnership helped bring down the price, the glasses still cost a staggering $299 – $399 if you want Kylie’s. 

Although I could go on and on about how we shouldn’t tailor our financial decisions to celebrities, that’s not the main issue.

The problem is the surveillance of it all. 

Meta’s glasses have an AI built into them – which is a sentence I never thought I’d write. The glasses are meant to capture photos and video, allows you to listen to music, and even takes calls. All of this is already strange. You can do all of these on your phone, something you probably already have if you’re dishing out the money for a pair of Meta glasses. Do we really need another piece of technology on us at all times?

But the AI assistant built into them put a sour taste in my mouth. With the voice control function it would seem these glasses need to be aware at all times in order to work properly. All you need to do is say “Hey Meta” and they jump to life.

Perhaps I’m overthinking it, but we had the exact same conversation when Siri and Alexa were made, so why rollover now? 

At the very least, with Alexa it was simply in our homes, private spaces. With Siri, the function can be disabled, and a lot of the time our phones are in our pockets where they can’t see the outside world. Meta glasses though? Since they’re right on our face they’re scanning the world around us constantly.

And that is dangerous.

We already live in a world where we’re being watched more than ever before, why are we making that even worse for ourselves? You may believe that you’re the only one who can see the footage for your glasses, but think again. Since the glasses require a mobile app to function, any footage you have is automatically uploaded to the app. You’re not in full control after all. Sure, you can opt out, but how many people will? How many people will even know that’s an option?

Then comes the issue of privacy. Since Meta glasses look just like any other, nobody really knows if they’re being recorded or not. This can make it extremely easy for those wishing to snoop on others, or gain footage for personal use, to get recordings of nonconsenting individuals. 

Think of it like this: would you want to be walking around if you knew there was someone with a big camera beside you, film always rolling, and you had no idea what they were going to do with it?

That would probably put you on edge; you’d likely ask them to stop recording you. 

That’s the reality with products like Meta glasses, but they’re far harder to spot. Rather than nifty tools or fun little gags, they’re products that can be used for real harm, products that can make the populace uneasy. 

Before you purchase these glasses, or any like them for that matter, think a little longer.

Do you think it’s trendy to be constantly watched? Is it glamorous to record the unconsenting? If you answered yes to those questions, you’re falling into the corporate trap, and it may just be too late to crawl out.