Ruling comes as part of second phase of landmark trial that found social media company enabled harm against users
A New Mexico court has ordered Meta, the parent company of Facebook, to pay $567m into a fund aimed at redressing adverse mental health impacts from the social media giant’s platforms.
The Thursday ruling comes as a part of the second phase of a landmark trial the social media giant lost in March. At the time, a jury found that the company knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms, and imposed the maximum penalty: a $375m fine.
'Most people don’t want pervert glasses that can film us without our consent,' said a spokesperson from activist group Everyone Hates Elon. The group has launched a series of guerilla adverts deriding non-consensual filming by the glasses as well as an email campaign encouraging people to legally object to being filmed by Meta glasses under general data protection regulations, which over 20,000 people have signed.
Rights groups have warned that the glasses threaten the right to privacy, while countries such as Germany are reportedly considering a ban.
And while Meta’s safety guidelines say smart glasses should not be used for 'harassment, infringing on privacy rights, or capturing sensitive information', women have taken to social media to share their stories of being filmed by men without their consent.
Watch as Guardian columnist and Opinion editor Kirsty Major dives into why fears of surveillance and 'creepy men' mean Meta can never convince her to love the glasses – and read more about the glasses via the link in the bio
Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses are quickly earning a far less flattering nickname: “pervert glasses.”
A new investigation has exposed how highly personal videos captured by users — including people undressing or using the bathroom — are being sent to contractors in Kenya for AI training, often without the subjects’ knowledge. The revelations have sparked widespread outrage online, with many accusing the devices of turning everyday wearers into unwitting voyeurs and reigniting deep concerns about privacy in the age of always-on AI surveillance.
Automated systems designed to blur faces often failed, the contractors claimed, effectively giving them a front row seat of somebody’s most intimate moments.
“I don’t think they know, because if they knew they wouldn’t be recording,” one contractor said.
Many have quickly embraced a term for the devices that’s presumably sending Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg into paroxysms of fury: “pervert glasses.”
“Glad people are settling on the term ‘pervert glasses,’” another agreed. “Bonus points if you also say it while posting a picture of Mark Zuckerberg or call them Mark Zuckerberg’s pervert glasses.”
“Not a fan of Mark Zuckerberg’s pervert glasses,” wrote yet another. “I would prefer technology to make it more difficult to skeez, creep or perv on the world. I would like tech to protect me from creeps, not smooth the runway for them.”
The threat of simple smart glasses being used for surveillance isn’t some dystopian vision of a far future. Researchers have already shown that Meta’s smart glasses can be used to instantly reveal the identities of strangers in public — tech that Meta has reportedly been working on itself.
All told, smart glasses are a product category rife with uncomfortable connotations, especially when worn in the presence of others who may not know they may be recorded.
MacDailyNews Take: Unless their goal was to trash their reputation as quickly as possible, we bet Ray-Ban is rethinking its poor decision to tie up with an outfit like Meta.
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The experimental app, internally called “Arena,” would be independent of Facebook and Instagram. It could compete for attention with Polymarket and Kalshi, the biggest prediction markets.
The app would be independent of Meta's other social media offerings, although sources told the NYT that those social sites could direct users to engagement with the app.
Many elites are constructing underground bunkers in anticipation of a coming global catastrophe, possibly including thermonuclear war or an asteroid impact. Notable figures like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are involved, raising conspiracy theories about a coming Earth extinction event. What is it that they fear? Final judgment from God?
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