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Comment by RobMurray | Hacker News Reader

Can we maybe blame the people who use them irresponsibly instead of blaming the technology? These glasses have been a life changer for so many visually impaired people.

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Sure, we can all agree that crushing puppies is a bad thing, but you should blame the people using the puppy crusher 9000 to crush puppies and not the technology itself. After all, it's made an amazing profit for shareholders!

Sometimes a thing is bad in and of itself. A thing designed specifically and explicitly to do bad things is still bad even if it helps a small number of people.

I don't think that product exists, and I think an ordinary trash compactor would be far more likely to be used instead. Should we blame the people compressing their garbage for all the people crushing puppies?

If there is a repeated, ongoing problem with a lot of people using the devices to crush puppies, the manufacturers would be expected to come up with ways to make this less likely to happen (safety measures etc).

And if that didn’t help, there might be a push to limit access to these machines because clearly a too significant part of the population is unable to use them responsibly.

There isn't such a problem, it is at best an incidental use case that has been blown out of proportion. Such glasses would only be useful for illicit purposes in instances where a person is permitted to look at something, but not to photograph it. In such a case, they can be politely requested to remove the glasses, just the same as you would ask someone pointing a smartphone at you to put it down, even if they were just scrolling instagram. It's a non problem that spiraled into a moral panic.

It is not always immediately obvious when someone is wearing a pair versus normal glasses. Certainly not from any real distance.

Who's taking creep shots from any real distance?

> These glasses have been a life changer for so many visually impaired people.

That's not why they're making them though; that's just insincere cover. If they were intended to be assistive devices, the marketing would be totally different.

The problem is that 99% of people who have them make the rest look bad.

Metas job is to maximize those 1% because that’s where the business value is. Like every other product they’ve done. 17 strikes policy for grooming for the win.

The 1% in this case would be those with vision impairment.

Lol

Agreed, they’re cool tech that some people are using poorly. It doesn’t deserve the flippant ‘pervert glasses’ nickname.

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