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Comment by hn_submit | Hacker News Reader

These patents are completely worthless. These glasses will never become socially acceptable and certainly not when they're coming from Meta, a known privacy thrasher/intruder/molester/rapist/violator.

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Ten years ago people would have said the same about a lot of the surveillance tech we have today: TVs that sell your viewing data, always on microphones that listen to everything in your house to send to big tech so you can easily set a timer, doorbells that record your neighbors house and upload everything to the police 24/7, etc

I think the difference is people being comfortable with giving away their own data for convenience, vs. someone recording them without their permission (who they can immediately confront, unlike Flock and the like).

You will confront, they will record the confrontation and post it online to farm clicks. Few people will sue, there will be a slap on a wrist and voila, its normalized.

Now people will not confront because they would only provide content and see themselves in new viral video.

Not so long ago this was also the thought about mobile phones, now everyone is walking around with them so they can film/pic anyone all the time while 'faking' to be doing something else. If there is any convenience for people to be had, they will go for it. I think the convenience part over phones is just not there (yet). The experience is just not yet anything worthwhile / good / smooth so it's just lame, cringy and clunky, outside of filming. Maybe someone will make something that works, maybe it will be something completely different.

But if it gets a smartphone moment, no-one will talk about the privacy and the cameras anymore and that's why they keep trying.

There is a reason why they are partnering with Rayban; meta has no brand name it can use. Which is pretty wild, because every other big tech company has _some_ kind of brand a non trivial number of people — paying money — who would say something like: "I really need/want to use it every day because it is useful to me, my work would be severely hampered without it"(or some syntactical variation of that sentence with varying amounts of affection towards the brand)

Unfortunately, they don’t have to be very successful to have an impact. Even just their introduction to the marketplace normalizes the concept, just a bit. Google Glass failed and so have other camera-equipped glasses, but notice that they keep popping up. Look how many companies have made them, and for how many years. Collectively, it’s moved the needle. I know someone who uses them regularly, mostly for recording rollercoaster rides, but that’s still plenty for a surveillance company.

Facial recognition is becoming common enough that it’s no longer very surprising if you’re in a crowded public space. Malls argue they need it to catch thieves, airports argue they need it to catch terrorists, and so on and so forth.

Privacy is like Humpty Dumpty, except he’s being poked to death.

saw an ad today for some ear pieces that look like audio speakers but theyre actually cameras as well, so it seems manufacturers realise glasses will annoy people but arent giving up.

All they have to do is create a new child company with the same tech (new name new trust) and give the glasses away for free if capturing the data is more valuable than the hardware sales. People don't have the time or energy to research every single company and product they want to buy so corporations (and politicians) take advantage of this.

Things have become normalized which just a decade ago would have been thought to never be socially acceptable. Frame it differently, make things convenient and offer something "for free" and everybody around you will forget their concerns, if they ever had any.

As much as I want this to be true, tech not being socially acceptable has not been much of a barrier in the past. At least not in the US.

At best adoption is delayed a while until the marketing department figures out a strategy that is more palatable.

Never understimate people's ability to not care.

They may not need to be, as some are discrete. I am concerned because I wear tinted glasses a lot for completely different reasons.

Google Glass comes to mind

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