Our grandma got a huge pain relief from her lower back pain by replacing her hips earlier this year. She had some back operations previous years but they haven't helped at all. She starts a pilates session next week :)
Maybe I'm too European to understand, where exactly is harassment occurring? He's asking Meta employees questions, doesn't seem to follow them around, and when they walk away or say no, he doesn't exactly force them to stay or anything? Doesn't there have to be some intimidation or humiliation or similar for it to be harassment? Or asking employees what they think of the products they develop and support is the harassment part?
Arguing about whether to call this kind of behavior a harassment or "a bit" of a harassment is in my opinion all besides the point.
This video mainly shows a person approaching other people in public and recording them with these glasses. Which is one of the typical scenarios in which such a glasses are probably going to be used. And that video shows that even the Meta employees themselves generally do not seem to like it very much.
We already have thousands of videos made by way more hostile people, who test the patience of people in public and even get themselves occasionally arrested, and they're very obviously holding cameras and shoving those cameras in people's faces.
I'm not sure how it follows that glasses will encourage more of that behavior.
I don't know if I agree that man-on-the-street pseudo journalistic stuff is one of the "typical scenarios." Any time I see a product like this I think:
1) Can I use it to watch a more immersive movie without bothering people who may be in the next week?
2) Can I use it to make my games more enjoyable, either console or PC?
3) Can I use it to record IPSC/USPSA matches?
4) Can I use it for work?
I don't think these will make more people bother strangers on the street, it's just another way the same people can do that.
That's fine for you, but why on earth do you think every other person out there will only use these for innocuous nerdy reasons? Ask any adult woman you know and there's a good chance she will have at least one story of being stalked or getting really creeped out by someone. Consumer tech that enables creepy behavior will be used in that way by too many people.
I felt a bit uneasy when the employees indicate they're uncomfortable with the filming and he asks them why, while continuing to film. Given how they're blurred out and that their discomfort is kind-of the point w.r.t. the issue he's trying to raise, I don't think this meets the bar that Meta usually adheres to when it comes to taking down videos, but describing it as "a bit" of harassment doesn't sound too wrong to me.
Others are making it wrong doesn't justify another wrong.
In any case: they are different because they are in the face all day long, they are not a device some needs to start using to record;
they are not operated by the user, in the sense that the user does not show any active indication of recording (e.g. they are not holding the camera);
they are similar to regular glasses, making it hard to distinguish;
and they do not clear indicate if they are recording (and don't tell me that the LED is enough)
It's intentionally a camera that doesn't need to be held and it matches the the POV of the wearer. Where has Meta said it's intentionally designed to be hidden?
People who don't know these "Meta glasses" exist (and they shouldn't need to), would have no idea that the thing is even capable of recording.
It's subterfuge and while you could argue that this subterfuge was "unintentional", but imho that's mincing words, and also given that it's Meta, not entirely in good faith.
Can I assume that you have good enough eye sight that you don't need to wear glasses if you choose to? Because as somebody who is absolutely dependent on glasses as a serious aid, it leaves a very bad taste they are literally hiding the recording device in a disability aid.
I first needed glasses in 4th grade. There hasn't been much time I can remember in my life where I haven't required them to function normally. Save for like, walking to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
I don't think making them glasses is "gross". It seems like a natural evolution of cameras to me. Even before Google Glass they were thrown around as an idea in scifi for decades. It's cool to me, but I understand public opinion isn't with me, and I'm fine with that.
Does Meta have a reputation about being honest about what it's doing? This is the company that just lost a $17 billion lawsuit for endangering children.
Asking genuinely: what are you saying? Do they intend to use the cameras for evil, and the physical form enables them beyond how they are currently enabled by iPhones and non-iPhones now?
Behavior like this will one day causing "no glasses beyond this point" rule, which will also hurts people that really need to use glasses.
All things you mentioned can be easily prohibited on photo-sensitive area. Perhaps phone is harder, but it's still easily get prohibited without hurting anything. Glasses so far is a requirement, not that easy to prohibit in an area.
Most people would recognize a gopro, or a security camera, or a phone held in a certain way as something that is recording or likely to be recording.
I don't think most people would recognize the meta glasses as something that could be recording. Especially if you cover or disable the recording LED light that is supposed to come on.
The comment to which you're responding didn't claim the glasses enabled it more than some other device does. And these employees don't work for the companies that make those devices. You can see how your question is irrelevant whataboutism right?
I am just an American, but I live in Portugal and it is legally not allowed to film people in public without their consent (you also can't have a street facing surveillance camera like in the US). Moreover, people take this rule very seriously. If it appears that you are doing so, they will be visibly bothered (I know some kids who have had uncomfortable interactions because they weren't aware).
I don't think blurring faces fully addresses that (though I'm not commenting on legality in Amsterdam).
I can see the argument that this video is in the public interest (hey, I'm Americanese), but it does seem plausible some people would find it a violation of a norm.
I realize the idea that rules exist even if you dislike the people they (momentarily) protect, even if those people have violated them, is a tough pill to swallow.
Right but the debate here is about “my gun is good and your gun is bad” rather than the right of anybody to have gun.
Cameras exist. This is a camera. All cameras have the same problems this one. So why are we debating about this camera vs that camera rather than whether cameras should be allowed.
My perfectly normal camera does not stream shit to Meta servers or any other cloud. It's in fact fully offline. So, no.
Recording is one thing and sharing the same recording with a hostile foreign entity another.
Legally, many places have strict ban on publishing photos/recordings without consent, while photographing itself is generally allowed in public spaces.
This is before even getting into with issues of recordes
d material being used as training material etc, which adds additional ethical and legal issues.
Across most of the world it's pretty difficult to walk around a high traffic area without coming across someone using a smartphone to record their surroundings for FB Live or Instagram, and it's been that way since long before anyone had Meta glasses.
When you hold up a camera to record me, I can clearly tell that you are recording me.
It is socially and in many cases legally forbidden to use cameras in many spaces.
The fact that the use of a camera is obvious is what makes it possible to sanction their inappropriate uses. With this piece of shit, it's not possible to tell at a glance that it is not being used, so we have to always assume that it's recording feature is being used.
The default usecase for it is socially and legally transgressive. That's what makes someone with a smartphone a normal person, while someone with these glasses an asshole.
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If I'm in a store or a coffee shop, and there's someone wearing these glasses in it, I'll do the exact same thing as I would to someone conspicuously filming me with a camera - I'll ask staff to make that person put them away, or throw them out. For the same reason, anyone with them is not welcome in my home, nor any other space I have control over, and any establishment that welcomes people wearing them will not get any business from me.
The premise here is that if someone wants to secretly record you, that it’s not possible or easy with a smartphone or some other kind of easily acquired camera. This unfortunately is completely wrong.
If someone is motivated to secretly or inappropriately film, they will do so with whatever device they have. Having these glasses doesn’t tell you anything more about whether they’re that kind of person than the colour of their shirt.
Whether you will notice is entirely context and situation dependent. In some cases the glasses would be hard to notice, in others the use of a phone would be hard to notice.
So while your perspective that people who want to secretly film stuff should be unwelcome is quite reasonable, the test you apply to detect it is misdirected.
This is true de jure but not de facto and if anyone wants proof just go look up the number of Teslas in portuguese streets and the zero convictions over continuous recording of the public.
> I am just an American, but I live in Portugal and it is legally not allowed to film people in public without their consent
If that's actual law that's a bit surprising. In many EU countries there are journalistic exceptions (which may or may not apply in this specific case depending on local law)
> (you also can't have a street facing surveillance camera like in the US)
And same here. Usually the limit is that if you do it within GDPR household exemption then you cannot have it facing street, but if you do it on GDPR scope then you need to fulfill the GDPR requirements (e.g. posting notice, be ready to answer GDPR requests, perform balancing tests for recording etc.).
It's kind of an interesting catch-22 if that's the right idiom. Places with these laws do generally have a higher rate of property crime when comparing like to like, e.g. urban areas of similar size, to those without it. However that higher crime rate often leads to installation of security cameras covering more private areas.
The original comment doesn't tell the whole story. Street facing surveillance cameras are allowed if they are strictly covering the entrances to the building.
Bending down to stare at a female employee's ass at waist level after he asked her to turn around isn't harassment[1]? Like, up until that point it was almost ribbing but that was quite the turn given it'd be the same issue whether he was wearing smart glasses or not.
Not to mention the sarcastic, insincere tone he adopts after being asked what he's doing, claiming he's "such a huge fan" of the Meta glasses. There is a way to draw attention to privacy and this is a poor way to go about it.
[1] Cambridge Dictionary: 'behavior that annoys or upsets someone'
If what someone has done makes me critique them rather than fully side with them then the goal of what they've produced has already failed. This is not a video I can share with anyone I know and expect their takeaway to be 'fuck Meta'.
People also use smartphones to take upskirt photos without any shutter sound (arguably much easier than this guy physically bending over) but if someone was protesting phone cameras then doing that to people in public for some video wouldn't be some gotcha 'dunk'. At best it'd merely be controversial.
For a high effort pushback of Meta Glasses see the lenticular They Live vandalism of Meta's bus stop ad[1]. It hits the same goal this video author was trying to make, is actually clever and doesn't leave itself open to critique. Didn't require video removal on platforms to get the attention of articles either.
I mean, you are being filmed everywhere you go anyway by flock cameras, police/government cctv, even cctv on business and peoples house/ring doorbells etc. Concent to being filmed in a public place is not really asked anywhere, so I dont see it as a big difference personally.
Try to have the 24/7 cameras at chest level or lower, you'll find people starting to get uncomfortable. You can easily reach those angle with the glasses, and different with smartphone which also can, the glasses can be hard to distinguish.
Ring doorbell cameras are chest high and millions of homes have them. I would bet every time you walk down the street you are captured by loads of them, but because you dont know you dont care.
I've said this out loud several times while reading the comments defending Meta under this post.
It's so interesting to see so many weak or misdirecting justifications. It's almost as if people are here to attempt to control the narrative for financial reasons.
No, I just dont care about being filmed in public.
If I enter a public space I consider that anybody could watch me at any time, therefore I am always careful in public and always consider that walking out of my property is consenting to anybody else seeing me. Cameras are already everywhere.
Personally I dont see a difference between someone watching me on the street or recording me and watching it back. Its just no different to me.
I think the ironic thing in the video, is the employees of the company making the product, abject to the use of the product when it is directed towards them. So why should everyone else be comfortable with it.
But meta employs many thousands of people. Is it fair to say they all work on the meta glasses and/or all think they are a good idea? Just because you work for a company doesnt mean you share its morals.
Poor Tracy in accounts probably doesnt give 2 hoots about meta glasses, shes just an accountant and maybe she doesnt even know they exist. But now shes getting harassed by idiots with cameras as she goes into the office because of something another department on the other side of the country did.
If you were doing it to Zuck himself or following round the head of the smart glasses department then it might be different, but harassing general employees of meta is no better than any other company. These are normal people no matter where they work.
Yes fine, blame and criticise every single person that worked on those glasses. But other teams like accounts, cafeteria, hell event the damn cleaners have nothing to do with it.
I mean to be honest, fuck them all. The whole affair is fruit of the poisoned tree (Zuck). Just because people are making bank working there doesn’t absolve them of responsibility for their choices. Each and every employee made that conscious choice to be a part of it all
To me he crossed a line by asking the woman to turn around and then crouching down to film her butt. That is a really creepy thing to do and a lot of women would find that threatening. Ask a female friend how they would feel if you find that surprising.
You don’t understand the difference between recording things in good faith vs recording things because you want a reaction you can exploit for personal gains.
Hahahaha, "recording things in good faith." What an insane statement to make to paint this guy in a bad light. Should people also be concerned about walking in good faith, or eating their lunch in good faith? Meta created these creep glasses so people could do exactly what this guy is doing: film people in public (without them knowing). There is no "bad faith" when you're just literally doing what the product is for.
They have been around for a while. At some point it just became trendy to hate on them, but people are completely oblivious to the fact that you are more easily recorded secretly with smartphones. In fact, most viral content you see where someone is being recorded without their consent is from a smartphone, I have yet to see any such content filmed with actual smart glasses.
The camera is useful for many things besides recording video, but now we can’t have nice things because people think everyone with glasses is trying to creep on them.
1. You’ve inferred that the reason the glasses exist is to enable people to harass other people. That’s a very odd conclusion.
2. Where’s the without them knowing? Meta literally designed the hardware so that you do know that you’re being filmed, unlike almost every other camera on the market.
3. You haven’t managed to separate the decisions and accountability of an individual from the tool that they use to execute those decisions. This is a strange way to look at the world. It places inherent moral values into inanimate objects.
1. Whether what he did is considered "harassment" is debatable.
2. Because it looks like an everyday object and not a camera? If you design a necklace or hat that films people but displays a small light (which can easily be covered up), the vast majority of people will not know they are being filmed.
3. He went up to people in public and asked them questions. Filming their bodies and asking them to turn around was weird and inappropriate but demonstrates the point he is trying to make, which is that this is inherently a bad product that films people with a camera but it doesn't look like a camera, which people naturally find deceptive and creepy, and they don't want to be around it.
Right but if they stand near you and film you with a phone without directly interacting with you, it’s extremely difficult to notice that you’re being filmed.
If someone stands in front of you and interacts with you, firstly the camera in these glasses is not hidden and the glasses themselves are quite distinctive, and secondly, a light comes on exactly where you would be looking as you interact - next to their eyes.
On those two points, I’d argue that they’re exactly the same as phones or other cameras when it comes to being able to secretly record.
They’re nothing like glasses from spy novels, they’re extremely noticeable.
I would not call that "extremely noticeable". Perhaps it is extremely noticeable if you are familiar that a company makes normal looking glasses with cameras built in. But if you aren't, you might just assume that is some stylistic part of the glasses and not a tiny lens.
I've heard of journalism before, yes. So? Since when is this harassment?
Can't believe we have corporate bootlickers on HN of all places, I thought we still cared a tiny sliver about privacy? It all went away when we all gave away our private data to the AI companies, or what's the deal?
> Can't believe we have corporate bootlickers on HN of all places,
There are a very large contingent on HN who are against restrictions on corporate activities because they envision themselves as potential beneficiaries of a low regulation environment. Many of them also apparently view criticism itself as a restriction.
Meta is butt raping our privacy 24/7 but god forbid some dude ask 3 questions to its employees, I'll never understand people bootlicking megacorps like these.
Fuck meta and fuck every single of their employee, you can't keep building hell and complain when people hit back
> let's not pretend this is not all also possible with other devices
Let's not pretend being able to beat someone with a rock and shoot them with a M61 Vulcan at 6k rounds per minute are the same thing just because they involve projectiles.
This kind of hyperbole is nonsense. It’s a camera, being compared to other cameras. If your point doesn’t stand without dubious analogy then it’s not a very good point.
The fact is that if you stood outside any company office, with a highly visible camera crew, and then asked people who were passing by whether they worked at that company, most of them would probably feel quite apprehensive.
They would also be apprehensive if there was no camera at all.
So what exactly is the point that is being made in this video? People are apprehensive when put into situations with other people where their intentions are not clear and there are signs that the intentions might be malicious. Very informative…
> I'm looking forward to Meta taking down all videos where someone is a bit harassed. Internet will be a much nicer place!
Well, I’m looking forward of Meta going down. Now that would benefit the Internet.
After that, I think the fact that these glasses are allowed in the first place creates a problem that Meta as a platform cannot fix, because Meta is just one of the many many places where videos can be posted.
The argumentative method of rather than saying and doing what you believe and instead doing and saying what you are opposed to, is always weak and usually a great way to shoot yourself in the foot.
That being said. I agree 100% with making Meta Employees feel uncomfortable with their own products.
Asking someone to turn around isn't making them turn around. And he asked multiple men and just one woman in the video. In any case - among real life Meta glasses users, who do you think is going to be perved on more - men, or women?
If you judge this video without any kind of context, then yes he is a weirdo harassing strangers who are just trying to go about their day. The point is that these glasses enable this weird behavior, and the people he's filming are (ostensibly) part of that system.
That was totally unacceptable behavior. I support the choice to take down a video depicting blatant sexual harassment of its employees. I also support launching meta into the sun.
It's harassment when you're doing something slightly inconvenient in a way which doesn't benefit big business or the super rich.
It's fine if you're doing it to benefit them, then you can go much further, you can kill small children with your tractors (as is attempted in The Netherlands) or to murder coast guards or migrant (via drowning or fire) as happens in the UK.
Everyone keeps saying he is dutch but he was speaking a different language in the video thanks to automatic youtube dubbing. I was quite confused because not everything was even dubbed correctly. Also its an auto dubbing through AI. Didn't realize it got automatically selected. So annoying.
Realized too late into the video that I had to switch to original track
He's speaking Dutch and speaking English with a very very heavy west-Netherlands accent. Quite a lot of the Meta employees there can't speak Dutch which is why he switches to English.
I think I should have worded my comment differently. I did not mean the guy does not speak dutch, the video was not playing in dutch because of that shitty auto dubbing of youtube.
Yes exactly. But YouTube selected some AI translation voice over which I did not realize first. So I was quite confused. Once I selected the original audio it was obvious that he is dutch.
I absolutely hate that YouTube is doing that; I'm Dutch/English so obviously fluent in both languages yet YouTube randomly decides to give me this horrific AI dub for some Dutch videos.
They've broken Android too, you can't even set it up with multiple languages. I use three daily - Dutch / English / American - and also a bit of German / French / Spanish / Italian here and there. Plus of course Latin because on my English side I'm a pretentious prick :-)
I have learnt programming watching my mom code in foxpro (using el editor) in the early 90s. I would sometimes correct her missing parantheses haha. She made all UI out of box drawing characters, unbelievable amount of work compared to today.
Yeah just today it told me in a snarky way that my CPU (7940HX) doesn't exist and that I must have misread it and it's either 7945HX or 7940HS. Yes, AMD (re-)branding CPU models makes things difficult but I thought we are past AI models making such egregious mistakes
Hungarian doesn't have that many letters with diacritic (only 9: á, é, í, ó, ú, ö , ü, ő and ű), they use digraphs (cs, sz,. ..) for some sounds. Maybe they meant Czech (15: á, é, í, ó, ú, ů, ý, č, š, ž, ř, ď, ť, ň, ě)? or Slovak (18: á, é, í, ó, ú, ý, ŕ, ĺ, č, š, ž, dž, ď, ť, ň, ľ, ô, ä)
English generally does not use formal sound change notation because the sound is already within the word when it is spoken, written or whatever.
My mother (born and died: Devon, England, UK, 1942-1997) could make herself sound almost incomprehensible to me, one of her own sons by speaking in the Devonian of her childhood.
Language is constantly moving and changing. You will almost certainly have your parents whining that you speak in ... tongues. When I say you ... I mean you!
Yeah the 300 already felt like a splurge - it's the max. 96 was less than 200 I felt kinda stupid not just going with that. Imagine 96 of anything now for less than 200
“Put to death men and women, children and infants…”