Guess what, gang! I’ve got another Privacy Disaster. This is a little different than previous iterations because the technology I’m grumpy about today isn’t exactly new. It’s been kicking around since at least 2021, but only seems to have picked up interest in the last year or so.
But before I dive in, first I’d like to tell you a story. It’s about an odious right-wing politician, the power of neologisms, and shame.
Rick Santorum was a US Congressman from 1991-2007. He’s known for many things, among them being a vehement opponent of abortion, contraception, and in particular, same-sex marriage. He had many cringe takes (even in the late 90s early 2000s), but but perhaps one of the worst was when he likened homosexuality to bestiality and child sexual abuse.
This, understandably, pissed a lot of people off, including the sex advice columnist Dan Savage. But rather than just griping online, Dan did something brilliant: he ran an internet campaign in 2003 that reframed what the term ‘Santorum’ meant in the zeitgeist. Even today, some 23 years later, if you do a search for the name Santorum on Google, these are the first results you’ll see:
Why am I telling you this in 2026? Because I think it’s time to ‘Santorum’ Meta’s spyware glasses.
Meta’s glasses aren’t cool, even though Meta really wants them to be
Remember Google Glass? Google’s early smart glasses came out in 2012, and almost instantly, went from cool new tech to creepy. Privacy concerns abounded. The ethics of wearing Google Glass became a topic of frequent conversation in the news. Within two years, casinos, movie theatres, and bars banned them; wearers were dubbed ‘Glassholes,’ and Google eventually pulled the glasses from the consumer market in 2015.
I’m pretty sure that the marketing and design teams at Meta HQ remember Google Glass, which is why they spent a lot of time over the past few years trying desperately to not create that association with their own spywearables.
First there was the design. Meta worked with EssilorLuxottica, Ray-Ban’s parent company, to carefully design glasses that looked like normal, albeit slightly chunkier Ray-Bans and Oakley sunglasses. The only way you know someone’s got surveillance tech on their face is from the small LED that lights up when the glasses are recording. This was intentional.
Second, Meta has been marketing their glasses as versatile and helpful, downplaying the creep-factor. They tout all the supposedly useful features—live language translation, visual identification for blind people, identification of objects, turn-by-turn directions, and let’s not forget, the glasses’ utility for identifying protestors and immigrants for arrest and deportation. They’ve also been marketing their smart glasses heavily through (and to) social media influencers.
Finally, they’ve even strategized on exactly when to release new, increasingly concerning features, like facial recognition. An internal Meta document was reported to include details on how they would use the current “dynamic political environment“ as a cover to avoid scrutiny by civil society and privacy groups, who they assumed would have their “resources focused on other concerns.” Classy.
I mean, just think about that a minute. Could you imagine Apple waiting for a distraction to release the iPhone, or Converse hoping for a natural disaster before releasing its iconic Chuck Tailor All-Stars? Cool products define the cycle and ride the hype; they don’t try to quietly hide themselves in the chaos.
Do you know who does try to be invisible and fade into the background to avoid being detected?
Voyeurs and sex-pests
Now, Meta’s marketing team might call their spywearables ‘Meta Ray-Bans’, but we need to take a page from the Dan Savage playbook and start calling them what they really are: pervert glasses.
Meta’s glasses: a favorite of the worst people alive
“Billionaires could fund cures for cancer—so why are they funding glasses for perverts instead?”—Everybody Hates Elon
There’s a reason that the “pervert glasses” neologism is taking off. It’s because they’re worn by actual perverts, sex-pests, predators, and assholes. Here are just a few examples:
In March 2026, Wired relayed the story of Joy Hui Lin, a book researcher living in Paris, who discovered that two men who complimented her on her outfit, had secretly been recording the entire interaction without her consent. She only became aware after they had the (decency?) to ask before posting the interaction online.
So-called “pickup artists” and “manosphere” influencers are using the devices to secretly record and harass women and service workers for content and clicks. According to the BBC, these men walk up and flirt with women, only to extort them later when the women ask for the non-consensual videos to be taken down. Another asshole was arrested in Barcelona in May 2025 for secretly recording videos of hundreds of women to promote his ‘seduction course’, which he was selling for 3000 EUR.
Men routinely monetize their sexual encounters with unsuspecting women on bespoke porn sites, Instagram and TikTok.
An anti-LGBTQ+ griefer went to the Naples pride parade in May and filmed people in the bathrooms, for the purpose of exposing “grooming behavior.”
In India, Article14 documented the tale of a trans person who was recorded without their consent by a social media content creator using Meta Ray-Bans, after the creator posted anti-trans abuse and created AI-generated memes of the victim’s likeness.
Meanwhile, an entire cottage industry has sprung up where deplorables sell or share guides on how to to disable or physically remove the only safety feature the glasses have, the LED, with some offering paid “stealth mode” modifications for as little as $60, as reported by 404Media. Even the perverts know Meta’s glasses are sketch, which is why the company is in an endless game of cat-and-mouse with its own users.
In true voyeuristic fashion, Meta also forced others to watch. For example, in February 2026, Swedish press Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten reported that outsourced human contractors, mainly in Kenya, were forced to review captured intimate footage, including nudity, sexual activity, and people using the bathroom—sent for AI quality checks from the glasses’ “Hey Meta” visual-query feature. Meta decided that rather address the problem, they’d kill the messenger instead, terminating the contract with the outsourcing firm.
Meta’s glasses are the 21st century version of the pervert in a trench coat
“I was unsettled. For a moment, I felt as if I were encountering an urban creature, like a rat or raccoon, and I didn’t know how to behave.” —Jason Chun, CNet
Pervert glasses shouldn’t be normalized.
Pervert glasses should be mocked, and the people who wear them, ostracized. Pervert glasses aren’t cool, even if Meta is trying really hard to manifest coolness.
Meta’s smart glasses are being worn by the worst people alive, and that association-by-proximity should be the narrative that defines them, not Kylie Jenner or Meta’s marketing department. We need to keep reinforcing that Meta can’t be trusted, and that this is just the next logical step of their decades-long effort to violate consent, invade user privacy, and collect as much data as they can about all of us. The only thing that’s changed is that Meta is now starting to outsource the data harvesting to perverts and influencers.
We need to view these smart glasses for what they are: the 21st century version of the pervert’s trench coat.
Just like trench coats, Meta’s glasses blend in by looking ordinary and non-descript. They also can be worn for completely legitimate, innocent purposes. And yet, both allow the worst people alive to achieve the same ends: concealing the wearer’s intent to expose themselves to unwilling and un-consenting strangers.
Sure, it’s true that not everyone who wears smart glasses is a voyeur or sex pest. But enough of the people who do make the association salient. And smart glasses differ from pervert trench coats in one key way: they violate victims not just once, but many times over, because Meta is also using all the data it collects on victims to train its fucking AI. From TechCrunch:
Whether that’s training its AI on your images, enabling AI features using your personal content unless you opt out, or exploring ways to continuously record or use biometric facial recognition, Meta’s vision of the future seems to always depend on collecting more of your personal data.
Meta is irredeemable, but we might be able to shift the narrative if we start to shame harder.
Also, Meta isn’t the only purveyor of pervert specs: companies like Snap, Xreal, and Google, are also selling creep glasses to the public. And most people outside of the influencer or privacy bubbles have no idea. We need to go back to the Google Glass approach, by calling out the creeps, banning the glasses from public and private spaces, and enforcing legislation to hold people accountable. We also need to raise awareness, and collectively remind everyone that these are not cool.
Walk away. We can’t wait for Meta and other providers to make their products suck less. We need to hit their bottom line. The easiest is to disengage and shun wearers whenever possible.1 That means if the creepy sex-pest/PUA/vlogger comes up to you and tries to rizz for clicks, ask if them if they’re wearing the glasses (if it’s not obvious), and walk. the fuck. away.
Raise awareness. We teach kids about ‘stranger danger’ and encourage women to be aware of their surroundings. It’s time we do the same for smart glasses. Nobody likes creepy guys. Let’s make sure people learn how to spot them.
Report and demonetize the Influencers. Part of the reason that these “content creators” and social media influencers keep acting like Zuck’s data mules, is the attention and revenue they receive for being creeps in public. Creating this non-consensual harassment fodder gets clicks. The best way to counter this is by denying them the attention they crave. If you see a voyeur video, report it. Stop engaging with their slop.
Be loud when you can: When you’re in public, and it’s safe to do so, call out the perverts. Think of it like yelling ‘fire!’ or intimidating a bear. First ask them calmly if they’re wearing Meta’s pervert glasses. If they confirm (or it’s obvious from the LED), get louder. Ask them why they’re filming people without their consent. If they’re at the playground filming kids, tell other parents that a creepy guy is filming their children. If you’re at a conference or professional event, and someone is filming with their Ray-Bans, call them out in front of their colleagues, and shame them publicly in front of their friends for not getting consent first. If you’re at work, make it an HR issue whenever you can. I recognize that not everyone is comfortable or able to do this, but if you feel emboldened, public shaming really does work.
This wouldn’t be a Carey post if I didn’t also mention that law enforcement and regulators need to leverage civil and criminal “peeping tom”, harassment, and invasion of privacy statutes against direct perpetrators. We’ve already seen one example with the Barcelona case I mentioned above. But regulators also must go after the providers themselves, through laws like Illinois’ BIPA and the EU GDPR.
As a bloc, Europe should also seriously consider leveraging the EU AI Act’s ban on prohibited AI Systems to block Meta from selling its pervert glasses. For example, Meta’s glasses and “NameTag” feature (which the company has since removed, at least for now), use Meta’s AI to “create or expand” Meta’s facial recognition databases through the “untargeted scraping of facial images.”
If Meta or other smart glasses providers (re)incorporate facial recognition and market their products to law enforcement for targeting immigrants and protestors, this may constitute unacceptable ‘real-time’ remote biometric identification in public spaces. Keeping smart glasses out of the market (in Europe and other jurisdictions with robust privacy laws like Japan and Brazil, is an excellent way to stop the problem before it starts. I recognize this is a bit uncharted, but it’s worth considering, given that the Omnibus has already passed.
In closing, we need to keep reminding people that wearing these glasses isn’t cool; it gross. And that buying anything from Mark Zuckerberg, who will never be cool, no matter how hard he tries, is kind of like buying a pervert trench coat.
Or, even more apt: the frothy mixture of lubricant and fecal matter that is the occasional byproduct of anal sex.
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I’m mindful in the US at least, that this is not advisable when it comes to law enforcement/ICE who have a shoot-first-justify-later approach to conflict management
I adore the way you write, lady: so smart, yet easily digestible. Real life action plans are a bonus!
I‘ve been thinking for a while that the organic solution to avoid this pervert issue while also leveraging genuine use cases of having a smart FOV overlay would be bringing back the monocle.
Want to use my AI assistant to analyse the thing I’m looking at right now? Let me take my smart monocle (available in retro, scifi and steampunk designs), squeeze my eyes for a moment and learn something new, then put it back in my pocket
Thank me later for this idea