People Are Modding Meta Ray-Bans to Spy On You

Speaker 1 The other words of the year,

Speaker 1 they were just as online. You know, Oxford's was brain rot.
If you can believe it, its first use was in 1854 by Henry David Thoreau. R.I.P., Henry David Thoreau, you would have hated TikTok.

Speaker 1 Wait, Candace, we should probably introduce ourselves. You're so right, Kate.
Hello, listeners. We are the hosts of ICYMI, or rather, in case you missed it, Slate's podcast about internet culture.

Speaker 1 We're extremely online, so you don't have to be. Follow I CYMI now wherever you listen.

Speaker 2 Hello, and welcome to the 404 Media podcast, where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds, both online and IRL.

Speaker 2 404 Media is a journalist-founded company and needs your support to subscribe. Go to 404media.co.

Speaker 2 As well as bonus content every single week, subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to to their best comments. Gain access to that content at 404media.co.

Speaker 2 I'm your host, Joseph, and with me are the 404 Media co-founders Sam Cole. Hello.
Emmanuel Mayberg. Hey.
And Jason Kebler. Hello, hello.
I feel like I've got it down now, where

Speaker 2 when I read that intro, it used to be with the music playing my ears because I need it to get the cadence and the rhythm of the intro.

Speaker 2 Doing it without now for editing reasons, but I feel like I've got it. Okay, that's beautiful.
Thank you. Okay.
Um, no housekeeping this week, so we'll just get straight into the stories.

Speaker 2 The first one is written by me and Jason,

Speaker 2 uh, and the headline is, a $60 mod to Meta's Ray-Bans disables its privacy protecting recording light.

Speaker 2 For those who don't know, I'm sure many people do, there's this little light that appears when you use the Meta Ray-band glasses.

Speaker 2 And the idea is to, of course, warn people that they might be being recorded. Jason,

Speaker 2 I bought a pair of these and sent them to you. Do you have them in front of you? Of course, yes, I do have them.
This is not planned.

Speaker 2 They're right here, if you're watching on YouTube. I mean, they're like a popular product at this point.
So, I mean, I see them in the wild every now and then.

Speaker 2 I don't know if you guys ever see them, but like, I sometimes see influencers wearing them, I feel.

Speaker 2 I don't hang out with many influencers.

Speaker 2 I saw them once. I saw them.

Speaker 2 I had an HVAC guy over

Speaker 2 and he was wearing them. I was like, oh, this is a use case that really makes sense to me because they're crawling in all these tight spaces.

Speaker 2 And I was like, oh, are you using that for work to like, you know, show yourself later what you saw or what product number you see and stuff? And he was like, nah,

Speaker 2 I got these for my birthday and we took them to Disney World. And he was like, they're kind of cool, but they're useless.
Like, I don't really use them.

Speaker 2 So, by influencers, I mean, just like people walking around in LA. It's like, there's, I feel like I'm seeing people filming TikToks like constantly.
Sure, yeah. And when they are filming, probably

Speaker 2 there's this white little light that appears on the side. But again, the point of this article is that there is no light on these ones you have.
Are you able to hit record now to show them?

Speaker 2 Yeah, so there's a button up here on on the right uh arm that takes a picture so i just take a picture i get a little like clicky clacky that tells me and there's no light and then if i hold it like i am now there's like a little noise that um

Speaker 2 says tells me that it's recording but right now i'm recording my screen uh you know when i send you this video you can see how disgusting my desk is and uh all my slacks and and stuff like that uh but we'll do a p We'll do a POV.

Speaker 2 Like, here's Jason recording the podcast. But I am recording right now, and you can't tell, obviously.

Speaker 2 Here's all of our confidential business information.

Speaker 2 Here's all of the inner 404 media. Here you go.
We're live streaming it on meta without the light or whatever.

Speaker 2 Okay, obviously, people on YouTube have seen that. If you're an audio listener, which I believe most of you are,

Speaker 2 I mean, you're not missing much.

Speaker 2 It's just there's no light on the glasses, basically.

Speaker 2 We'll get into the modification, that sort of thing, but I want to hear more about your experience first in that. I mean, I'm looking at them through the camera now.

Speaker 2 They look like completely ordinary glasses, obviously. When you received them in the mail,

Speaker 2 what was that like? Like, did they,

Speaker 2 everything look legit, basically? Yeah, I mean, so I have, like,

Speaker 2 purchased modded hardware before in my life, most notably,

Speaker 2 PlayStation 1 that had a mod chip added to it. And it was like,

Speaker 2 Which let you play pirated games. This was so long ago, so it's outside the statute of limitations.
I was gonna say, yeah

Speaker 2 But basically it's like I don't know my neighbor did that and he soldered like a chip onto the inside of it and you know there was not like the sheen of this is a factory product whereas this it came in the original box

Speaker 2 It was clear that it had been opened because there's like a little pull tab and the pull tab had been taken off but that was literally the only indication that these glasses had been opened in any way.

Speaker 2 Like there is, there's like a sticker that comes with it that

Speaker 2 sealed thing or something.

Speaker 2 It's a seal, that's a sticker that is like in the bridge of the nose and the glasses don't work until you remove that.

Speaker 2 That was still on there, which I thought was kind of notable.

Speaker 2 You know, the glasses were very clean.

Speaker 2 Like there was no indication that they had been altered or touched in any way, shape or form and they work perfectly fine like

Speaker 2 you know they come in a Ray-Bans case which like this is the glasses case if you're on YouTube and it's also the charger and they were in that like there there was no real indication that these had been modded in any way shape or form

Speaker 2 and like the the app didn't notice there there's like a meta ai app that you have to download and like you have to pair it with your phone and you have to pair it with the app and there's like no indication of any sort that that anything had happened to these glasses yeah do you want to swap places for a second maybe you want to ask me some questions because i i came across this originally and then um

Speaker 2 again you handled more the practical part i did more the sort of reporting part yeah so um i mean how did you originally find them Yeah, so I got an email, I believe, from a 404 media reader, which, as we've said many times, is where a ton of our tips come from.

Speaker 2 And I think they said something like: Their brother was watching YouTube and they got this weird advert for these modified meta Ray-Bans for some reasons.

Speaker 2 They went back and they found the link and they sent it to me. And it was basically just a YouTube video where this person was, first of all, advertising this modification, but he was also like

Speaker 2 basically doxing his customers where he would say, Oh, this is Susan's

Speaker 2 pair of glasses. This is Dave's pair of glasses or whatever.

Speaker 2 And he was saying, I'm going to ship this out, blah, blah, blah. You ordered this variation, that sort of thing.
And I don't know, that was interesting for a number of reasons.

Speaker 2 First, that it's on YouTube. So it's almost like a content moderation thing there, ever so slightly.

Speaker 2 Secondly, the fact that this modification is happening at all, and that apparently works.

Speaker 2 Of course, we bought it to verify, but that was very, very interesting to me that somebody could disable the light light in this for a very popular product and then film people without them knowing.

Speaker 2 And then, thirdly,

Speaker 2 doxing your customers is pretty strange as well.

Speaker 2 But that's how we came across it. And, you know, we bought a pair and then sent them to you.
Yeah. Yeah.
And they came pretty quickly.

Speaker 2 Another sort of notable thing is that

Speaker 2 like the way that the glasses work are you record or take photos and then within the meta AI app, there's like a glasses tab, and then you import the videos and photos into that app, and they go onto your camera roll.

Speaker 2 And there were maybe like eight or 10 photos and videos that were already on the device.

Speaker 2 And those photos and videos were of the guy modifying them, which was super interesting. And you were able to like glean a little bit of information from it.

Speaker 2 But like that gave us a little bit of insight into how he was doing it. Like, he clearly opened up the

Speaker 2 glasses. Like, you can hear power tools going, and it's like in a workshop of some sort.
Do you want to talk like a little bit more about that?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's like, well, it's not a busy workshop, but it maybe it's just the guy in there or something. And obviously, this is a very limited view.

Speaker 2 And I remember Sam was editing the article and like I open it with a description of this person's in their workshop, and they're modifying these glasses.

Speaker 2 But it was such so strange because it was, it wasn't from his point of view, it was from the point of view of the glasses, which have a camera in, which he was working on on his workbench.

Speaker 2 So it was almost like second person

Speaker 2 perspective. And Sam had to help me find a way to communicate that to readers, basically.
It was pretty all over the place. But yeah, he's in there.

Speaker 2 He's tinkering with some compressed air, something that seems to have the glasses clamped in place as well but i then also emailed him as well and just asked him like what are you actually doing here i wasn't really expecting him to you know provide details but he's basically puncturing the led light i think um

Speaker 2 or the sensor uh i'm a little i'm a little bit unclear on that i think it's the light but he's basically using a drill to puncture that so that obviously when you try to turn the light on it doesn't turn on and i saw maybe he was also like disconnecting a wire like in like the wire that powers the led or something i think that's what you saw on reddit i think that's what you saw that was like a theory that i saw but yeah yeah it's unclear it's unclear yeah yeah and i mean to to that point i yeah i find this and i start writing that you go away and you find like oh People have been talking about this for years.

Speaker 2 And I feel like we knew that, but obviously this was the piece and the time to include it in. But people on Reddit have been complaining, basically, why do I have this light on my meta-ray-bands?

Speaker 2 I want to film people without them knowing. I have legitimate cases.
Like, I want to film, I'm a lawyer, and I want to film people signing documents or something.

Speaker 2 Okay, whatever. And then some people were just there, like, I want to film hot girls without them knowing.

Speaker 2 It's one of the top, like when you type into Google and it auto-completes your question,

Speaker 2 it's one of the first things that auto-completes do is: how do I hide or disable the LED light?

Speaker 2 And there's that, there's the Reddit discussions, which are very common.

Speaker 2 And then also,

Speaker 2 Meta has addressed this, but I think another indication of how much people want to record people without the LED light turning on is the number of products on Amazon that advertise the ability to do this.

Speaker 2 You can buy stickers or covers for the LED light.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I mean, to their credit, Meta has made it so if you cover the light, it will not record. But the existence of the product shows that people want to do this very badly.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I don't know if those covers always work. Like, maybe they do in some cases, maybe they don't in others.

Speaker 2 But this one definitely works because he punctured the LED and then we got the glasses and we verified it. Right.
Yeah. And

Speaker 2 that was like a response to this article was like, oh, you can just put black nail polish or like electrical tape or something like that. And as far as we know, that doesn't work.

Speaker 2 It may have used to have worked, but Meta pushed a patch, I believe, or firmware update that disables the camera if it detects that the light is covered.

Speaker 2 But yeah, this works.

Speaker 2 And then I guess like I would just also say that this

Speaker 2 problem is one that is like of time immemorial.

Speaker 2 It's like there's been a long history of people posting creep shots to the internet, like surreptitious upskirt photos and like photos of women taken without their knowledge in public.

Speaker 2 And like, that's one of the

Speaker 2 like, I believe there are some countries that have laws. I think Japan has a law where like

Speaker 2 cameras have to make a noise when you take a picture. And, you know, obviously like iPhones do that, but you can disable it in the United States.

Speaker 2 But I think if you have the sound on it, like, makes a clicking noise. Yeah.
I have a, I have an English friend who, for some reason, she got an iPhone from Japan. So

Speaker 2 whenever she takes a photo, the camera shutter makes a noise. And it's like, can you silence that? That's like really annoying.
And she's like, no, I can't.

Speaker 2 It's mandated in there to stop upskirting photos from Japan. I'm like, oh, okay, cool.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 don't take photos of me either

Speaker 2 um

Speaker 2 but yeah you you're right that

Speaker 2 it's it's very similar in that well maybe i'll save these thoughts for when emmanuel talks about the difference between a phone and a pair of glasses but yeah it is very much the same issue where people have recording devices and they want to do it surreptitiously basically yeah Yeah, I feel they're definitely different.

Speaker 2 I'm just saying that like other pieces of technology have had this issue before and the solve has usually been like, it has to make a noise.

Speaker 2 And I don't know how much that's like actually fixed anything, but

Speaker 2 it's like a similar, similar sort of issue. Um,

Speaker 2 so I mean, I guess we can talk a little bit about the abuses, but Emmanuel just wrote about one of the abuses. So, should we save that for the second half of the show?

Speaker 2 Yeah, how about we'll take a break here? And then when we come back,

Speaker 2 we'll ask Emmanuel about

Speaker 2 his own story about metabray bands and how they are actually being used in pretty weird, horrible situations. We'll be right back after this.

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Speaker 2 All right, and we are back. Jason, did you want

Speaker 2 you were in a flow? Did you want to do this one as well or should I take it? He's putting on his glasses.

Speaker 2 Let me put my glasses on so I can see the screen.

Speaker 2 I was just trying to flow it back to you.

Speaker 2 You had a nice run of show in our little documents, which

Speaker 2 I'm recording right now with these glasses.

Speaker 2 I'll start though.

Speaker 2 Metas, Ray-Ban glasses, users, film and harass massage parlor workers. This is a story by Emmanuel.
This is something that you were working on in the background for quite some time.

Speaker 2 Like I feel like you found this

Speaker 2 on Instagram and then

Speaker 2 documented it for like quite some time. Do you want to describe what's going on here?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I feel like I've said this maybe three weeks in a row now, but I found this like most horrible things on the internet was just served to me via the Instagram Reels algorithm.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the videos show first-person perspective, guy walking into massage parlor,

Speaker 2 talking to the front desk or to one of the people working in the back, and

Speaker 2 dropping increasingly more obvious hints that he's not just there for a normal massage, he's looking for sex work. So

Speaker 2 one of the first things they say is, I want a massage, but I only have 15 minutes, which I've come to learn is code for, like, I'm here for a happy ending, I want a hand job, or something like that.

Speaker 2 A lot of the workers at these places, English is not their first language.

Speaker 2 I think most people probably come in and point at the menu and say, I want a 60-minute massage, 90-minute massage. So they don't always understand.

Speaker 2 And then they become increasingly

Speaker 2 more obvious and rude in a lot of cases. And

Speaker 2 they're like, hey, I'm here for a hand job.

Speaker 2 I want a tuggie. Tuggy is a word that a lot of these accounts use.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 in some cases,

Speaker 2 I would say maybe most of the cases, the workers either laugh it off,

Speaker 2 totally are confused, and just think that they're going in for a normal massage.

Speaker 2 But there is

Speaker 2 some cases where the person understands

Speaker 2 what

Speaker 2 the person who is recording the video is asking for, and then they kind of get into more details about like, what is the specific sex act that they want? How much are they willing to pay for it?

Speaker 2 And so on.

Speaker 2 I should note that it's not entirely clear in the videos that they ever go through with it. A lot of the times,

Speaker 2 if the worker suggests that they go through with it,

Speaker 2 the person recording the video says, okay, I'm just going to go out and get some cash outside of the cash machine and I'll be back. And that and then the video ends and there's no follow-up.

Speaker 2 So that to me seems like they kind of just want to make a provocative video uh and and and and go viral on instagram which they definitely do the i found many accounts that do this the the biggest one i saw had over 600 000 followers millions of views on every video um

Speaker 2 this is happening all over instagram all over tick tock it's like a bona fide trend

Speaker 2 and if you're wondering why would you do this

Speaker 2 I found that several of these accounts, what they do is from their profiles, they link out to pay-per-view sites where they sell videos, which they pitch as like the full uncensored version of what happens after,

Speaker 2 you know, he comes back with the cash. That's what they say it is.
That's what they say it is, but

Speaker 2 I've looked at the videos and it's very clearly just random videos pulled probably from tube sites that have nothing to do uh with with the with the video recorder recorded at the at the massage parlor so

Speaker 2 to sum that up i mean it's basically a grift like that last piece you said it's it's a harassment campaign crossed with a grift that's being carried out via meta ray-band glasses and i mean just in case it wasn't obvious i think it was but these are first-person perspective videos because they are being filmed by the glasses obviously.

Speaker 2 They're then uploaded to Instagram where you see it through a recommendation algorithm or Reels and that sort of thing. People view them.
They go, oh, my God, this is outrageous.

Speaker 2 Or they find it salacious or something like that. And then the Instagram user

Speaker 2 directs them to a site where they can

Speaker 2 buy potentially more of the videos, that sort of thing.

Speaker 2 Just to clarify, how did you first see it? Like, did you search out something or did you literally just randomly get served one of these videos on Instagram one day?

Speaker 2 I just, it was just served to me like because it is popular.

Speaker 2 I got served a video that already had like 1.5 million views and it was just served to me as it was served to other people because it is viral, right?

Speaker 2 It's a self-reinforcing thing where people stumble on the video. It is provocative, right? It's like a shocking video.

Speaker 2 And yeah, it was, I wasn't, I wasn't looking for it. I didn't know it existed until it was served to me.
And, you know, again, the way that this works is I'm sending it to you guys.

Speaker 2 I'm clicking on the profile. I'm very clearly engaging with the videos.
And then it serves me more accounts that are doing this. Yeah.
When you sent it to us in Slack to show us, it was nuts. I was.

Speaker 2 I was really taken aback.

Speaker 2 It sucks. Like

Speaker 2 we report many upsetting things. In the last few months, we've reported several upsetting things that have happened with meta glasses.
Obviously,

Speaker 2 seeing that

Speaker 2 ICE and Border Patrol agents are wearing them during these raids is just, you know, it's like this is one of the worst things that is happening in this country at the moment, and that's disgusting.

Speaker 2 Whatever.

Speaker 2 I don't want to talk about which is worse. It's not a competition, but this is so, like, these are such upsetting videos because they're so mean-spirited, right? It's like you have these guys

Speaker 2 who are trying to make a few bucks, exploiting these women who barely speak English, who don't really understand what's going on. It is very clear that they don't know that they're being recorded.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 what is happening to them, what is being done to them for laughs and for a few bucks is so

Speaker 2 awfully dangerous for them.

Speaker 2 I talked to

Speaker 2 Swan Vancouver, which is an organization that Sam introduced me to that advocates for people who work at massage parlors and sex workers, which to be clear, not like, I'm not saying every person

Speaker 2 in these videos is a sex worker. Some are, right? But it's like, whether they are or not, it's extremely dangerous for them to be exposed in these videos.

Speaker 2 And many times, it's either the person says where they're recording it, or you can see where they're recording it because they're filming themselves coming in, and you can see the sign of the establishment.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it's like they might be undocumented, or if they're sex workers,

Speaker 2 you know, there was this awful incident where this shooter targeted a bunch of massage parlors in 2021,

Speaker 2 which he later said was because of his sexual addiction, right? So it's just like a very marginalized group of people, one of the most marginalized groups of people in the country.

Speaker 2 And these guys are just like harassing them and exposing them

Speaker 2 for laughs. And it's just extremely cruel.
And also, it's like

Speaker 2 it's interesting because if you scroll back, it's not as if they woke up one day and said, Oh, I have an idea. Let's just buy the meta glasses and start recording massage parlors.

Speaker 2 It's they got the meta glasses. First, they made a bunch of videos where they just go into a best buy and either they start screaming or they try to go in the back or they harass workers at the store.

Speaker 2 Like the idea was, I'm going to buy these glasses. It makes it easy to record people without them knowing.

Speaker 2 And I'm going to do wild, awful shit and post it to Instagram and go viral that way because it's like a a very provocative video.

Speaker 2 And then eventually they realized that these massage parlor videos were hitting the algorithm the right way. And then they shifted to making those exclusively.
Right.

Speaker 2 I'll come back to the metaglasses thing in a second, but Sam, I was just wondering, like based on what Emmanuel just said there, you know,

Speaker 2 targeting,

Speaker 2 you know, vulnerable groups

Speaker 2 specifically, I'm just wondering what you make of it. Because, yeah, when Emmanuel sent it to Slack,

Speaker 2 I think it took everyone about.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, I don't really have a ton to add to what Emmanuel said. Like, that pretty much captures it.
But

Speaker 3 yeah, it sucks.

Speaker 3 It's very much something that, you know, raids happen all the time of massage parlors. Like, cops will go in posing as someone who wants to get a happy ending.

Speaker 3 massage and then arrests the whole entire place and it ruins lives. Like it destroys whole entire families.

Speaker 3 You know, that's often like the breadwinner of the family is working in a massage parlor.

Speaker 3 You know, whether or not they're, again, whether or not they're actually doing any kind of illegal sex work in the place, it can be really dangerous and really scary because they're in there just looking for and they're just trying to upturn the place.

Speaker 3 So having this kind of thing on social media feels like

Speaker 3 I don't know, like an extension of that, just like more mocking of someone in a pretty precarious situation.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, we don't want to assume too much about what they are actually doing in these parlors, but

Speaker 3 it's they're like, he's trying to like entrap them into something that they're obviously not there to do initially. Like they're not advertising it when he walks in.

Speaker 3 He's trying to talk them into doing something that they don't want to do, which is so fucked up.

Speaker 3 It reminds me of like, I think Emmanuel wrote about like the live streaming of Kensington.

Speaker 3 and it's just it's like this kind of like

Speaker 3 rubbernecking with via technology of people who are in bad situations or like the like the bum fight videos that were really popular for a long time um it's just

Speaker 3 sad and like pathetic it's more it's like i feel like loser behavior could be an entire beat on 404 media

Speaker 3 it basically is yeah and it's just it's fucking loser behavior not to mention that he's stealing people's content from probably stealing it from like leaked OnlyFans or ripping it off of tube sites and then reselling it.

Speaker 3 It's just like, get a job. I don't know.
Like, get a life.

Speaker 2 I think that's also like, it's worth mentioning that, like, universally, these are Asian-owned massage parlors, and like the comments are like horrendously racist, like, universally so. Um,

Speaker 2 and it's like, of course, these women's faces are in it. Like, it's just the whole thing is like extremely gross for like many, many, many different reasons yeah um

Speaker 2 before i get to the meta stuff jason

Speaker 2 well i was just gonna say so so like a few things one um

Speaker 2 this this will lead into what emmanuel is gonna talk about now but like if you go on instagram or tick tock and search the meta ray bands or like meta glasses or meta ai glasses hashtags it's like This is the main thing that people are using these for, at least that

Speaker 2 is surfacing on these platforms. Not the massage parlor tuggies, although these are like very

Speaker 2 viral, but it's like

Speaker 2 kind of universally what you see there is like people who don't know that they're being filmed and like

Speaker 2 pranksters, for lack of a better term, just like jackasses, like doing stupid shit in public. It's like, I could imagine actually

Speaker 2 some useful uses of these glasses, glasses, and almost all of them have to do with like cooking videos and like DIY videos at home. It is like useful to have a POV perspective as a video.

Speaker 2 Kenji, who we all adore, Kenji,

Speaker 2 the food vlogger who sticks POV videos with a GoPro, like perfect for him. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, like there, there are reasons why it would be like nice to have a camera where my eye is, but like everything that I can think of is like almost universally like I'm filming something I'm doing by myself in my own house.

Speaker 2 Um,

Speaker 2 and then the, the other thing is just like, there was another viral video that I saw the other day that was like on a campus and it was just a guy harassing women like on campus, like hitting on them, basically.

Speaker 2 People like pick up artist lines? Like pick up artist lines, yes. And then he would like post it.

Speaker 2 And then like, you know, people would find out who the woman was and then they would bother her on Instagram or on TikTok.

Speaker 2 And then, I mean, I saw the woman like responded in one of these cases or like made a video herself. And she's like, I was drunk when this video was filmed, first of all.

Speaker 2 Second of all, like, I had no idea that I was being filmed. And so, I mean, that raises the question of like, are they using modded versions of these glasses? Or

Speaker 2 alternatively, and then I'll throw it back to Emmanuel. It's like Meta put a light on these glasses and then said to the world, like, that's what we're doing.
You figure out what this means.

Speaker 2 Like, it is kind of like fucked up that you put a technology into the world and they're like, here's what we're doing for privacy. Like we're putting a light on it.

Speaker 2 And then it's like up to random people

Speaker 2 like on the street to know that and to understand that.

Speaker 2 And then also like, there's obviously tons of power dynamics when it's like a pickup artist like approaching a drunk college student and like hitting on her. Like she's already being filmed.

Speaker 2 And then there's like, it's just a tricky situation. And that plays out in some of these massage parlor videos where the women are like, get out.
And then, you know,

Speaker 2 it's like, it becomes a whole thing. And it's like fucked up.

Speaker 2 But anyways, it's just like there, if you click around on the hash, Meta Ray-Ban hashtag on Instagram or TikTok, like you'll see lots of like really shitty things. Because it seems like, and this,

Speaker 2 it seems like if you upload a video from the glasses, it automatically gets tagged. as filmed by Meta Ray Band, something like that.

Speaker 2 And that's how you knew these massage parlor videos were from Ray-Bans, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, so it's not actually clear to me how they're getting tagged, but there is an official tag, not like a hashtag, but like a watermark or like something that appears under the title of the username that says film with meta glasses with like their branding.

Speaker 2 That appeared on most of the videos, but I was also able, these the main account that I was following that was doing this, it was two guys and sometimes they would look at each other and you could see that they were wearing the glasses.

Speaker 2 Sometimes they would walk in to a massage place and they would catch themselves in the mirror and you can see that they were wearing the glasses and you can see that the light was on and that didn't really make any difference.

Speaker 2 It's not like in any of the videos that I saw, somebody said like, hey, are you recording or stop recording me? It just seemed like, here's a weird guy with weird glasses. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 It's not, not at all clear that they know that they're being filmed. Right.
So like,

Speaker 2 do they not know what the light is, or they and they're puzzled by it? They don't know what the light is, and they sort of disregard it.

Speaker 2 They do know what the light is, and they don't feel socially comfortable to ask, Are you filming?

Speaker 2 or like you could like what Jason's point was, they've put this technology in the world, but it's not like everybody is aware what this light means exactly.

Speaker 2 You know, like we don't, we're not all owners of the glasses, right? Um, so what happened when you asked Method for comment? Yeah, so

Speaker 2 like, let's get into that

Speaker 2 part of it i am writing a blog i'm going to file it live to to our slack just so uh jason and sam could see i already sent it to you the headline i have in the google doc which i know is incorrect is headline for a manual piece lamau question mark because i didn't know what the headline was going to be so yeah we'll go with that but i think the headline is going to be like let's see uh what did i put down here what is the difference between glasses and a phone a helpful guide for meta pr

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the reason I wrote that is in all of these stories that we talked about, the mod,

Speaker 2 the ice raids, this massage parlor video,

Speaker 2 the case that

Speaker 2 Joe covered. It's a few months ago now, where somebody added like facial recognition to the glasses.

Speaker 2 Every single time we reach out to Meta and ask for comment, their response is,

Speaker 2 what is like, would you write this story if it was filmed with an iPhone?

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 usually, we don't even respond to that. Like, we don't even respect

Speaker 2 the argument enough to engage with it. In the case of the massage partners, I was like, yes, unequivocally, yes.
Like, I would cover

Speaker 2 a viral account that was going into massage parts and harassing people with an iPhone. But the argument that they're trying to make is

Speaker 2 the glasses have a camera, the iPhone has a camera, you can record people with both devices, and if anything,

Speaker 2 the meta glasses have more respect to people's privacy because there's this LED light, right, which the iPhone doesn't have.

Speaker 2 And there are two very obvious flaws with that argument. The first is: if I'm walking down the street, and I want to film something,

Speaker 2 I have to reach into my pocket, open the camera app, start recording, and hold my phone up to record someone this awkward gesture that we have all come to recognize and see all the time, right?

Speaker 2 Like, how many videos have you seen online of two people yelling at each other, holding their iPhones up, recording each other? You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Like, how many times have you walked down the street, somebody filming a fight, filming an argument, filming a car accident, whatever? They're just like a clear visual indicator.

Speaker 2 It's one of the defining gestures of like the century is like a person holding up their iPhone to record someone. And we all

Speaker 2 for it's signaled very clearly. You have to make a gesture to do it.
There's no light, but it's like if you're using a camera, you have to pull out the camera, right?

Speaker 2 It's like that, that is the recording light. you know if you're holding a camera with a giant lens you know that you're being filmed and just to add on that i i feel that even when

Speaker 2 iphones and smartphones came out initially you know the first time people are getting their iphone 3g or whatever and someone's holding it like this directly in someone's face it's unambiguous like

Speaker 2 what are you doing even if you don't know you're being recorded you're like what are you doing to me right but if you did ask the question hey are you recording me it's almost a rhetorical facetious question because obviously you're recording me get the fuck out of my face but that is not the case with the glasses is what i'm getting because they're on there by default there is no gesture like the entire even if you look at the

Speaker 2 the the value proposition from a totally innocuous perspective it's that the camera is already out and looking at the thing that you're looking at and all you have to do is tap it and boom you're recording like that is that is the the point of the camera in the glasses so that's one part of it the other part of it which we've all alluded to,

Speaker 2 unless Jason takes issue with it because he lives influencer land, is like, nobody knows what the fuck these are. Okay.
It's like nobody knows what these weird, stupid glasses are.

Speaker 2 The iPhone is one, if not the most widely adopted electronic or gadget in the world, and it's been around for almost 20 years. It's like the smart devices are common in like rural parts of

Speaker 2 Africa. You know what I mean? It's just like places where there's no computers, people have smartphones.

Speaker 2 It's a very well-understood device globally, and people have them, and they know that they have cameras, and they know how that works. People have no idea what these glasses are.

Speaker 2 And that's why I think when you walk into a massage parlor

Speaker 2 with the light on, people don't know what it is. And then again, there's like this power dynamic where it's like somebody just walked into your store with a light in their glasses.

Speaker 2 You don't feel comfortable immediately questioning what they are or how they're dressed or what's in their face.

Speaker 2 It's a completely the idea that a camera and a phone that someone is holding up and a camera that is embedded in your glasses are the same thing. It's like, it's nonsensical.

Speaker 2 Like I can imagine 20 years from now, if these become massively popular, you know, and everybody has them and everybody's talking about it and everybody's reporting, then it's like, yeah, maybe that's the case.

Speaker 2 And if that's the case, maybe in that future, we're not writing those stories. But that is 100% not what is happening now.
We are writing these stories so people know what is happening.

Speaker 2 You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 So people know that it's like, if they're at a party and somebody's hitting on them very aggressively and there's a light in his glasses, it's like, hey, he might be posting you to the internet.

Speaker 2 If you work at a massage parlor and somebody's walking in and propositioning you for sex, it's like, that is really dangerous and you should know about it. And that's the reason we write the stories.

Speaker 2 And I find their line of argument so insulting to people's intelligence. It's just like, it's, it's, it's not, it's, it's, it's laughable.
It's a, it's a laughable argument.

Speaker 2 It makes me super mad that this is the strategy that they picked to deal with what is,

Speaker 2 I hope, internally is like a massive PR crisis, you know, because it's like the only reason that these glasses make the news is when somebody does something awful, you know?

Speaker 2 This is to say nothing of the fact that they're being used by cops, like which we have talked about before.

Speaker 2 It's like the people who are like interested in this are like annoying influencers and law enforcement and like a so and your HVAC guy.

Speaker 2 Not to put that guy on the spot. I'm sure he did a great job.

Speaker 2 I mean, the other thing I'll say, though, is like glass holes became a thing with Google Glass, which you do mention in your piece.

Speaker 2 And like we kind of shunned glass holes. Some people were banned from wearing like Google Glass in bars and things like that.

Speaker 2 And I guess I'd say like if you were wearing a Vision Pro, for example, it's like this gigantic thing that you strap on your face. But with these,

Speaker 2 like you can identify them, of course, and they do have the light on. But these are wayfarers.

Speaker 2 Like they're designed, they are designed to look exactly like other historic, iconic glasses, sunglasses, regular glasses. Like they have an Oakley version as well.

Speaker 2 It's like they're trying to blend in in a way that I think

Speaker 2 maybe the technology would not have allowed with Google Glass because it was like bulky and weird.

Speaker 2 But I think that there's something to that as well, where it's like you can kind of of wear these and like be sort of camouflaged.

Speaker 2 Whereas like if you strap a GoPro to your head, like people will know that you have a GoPro strapped to your head. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And you bring up the GoPro example specifically, which is great, because I can't remember if I brought it up or whether Meta PR brought it up.

Speaker 2 But when I did that first one about the students marrying the Ray-Ban glasses with facial recognition tech to docs people, the argument came up in our emails like, well, would you cover this if it was a GoPro on somebody's face?

Speaker 2 And it's like,

Speaker 2 probably,

Speaker 2 but that's not surreptitious. It's very obvious if someone has a fucking GoPro on their forehead and they're walking around.
The entire point of these glasses is that they are supposed to look normal.

Speaker 2 It's like Facebook wants its, it wants to have its cake and eat it too.

Speaker 2 It wants it to be an exceptional, interesting technology, but it also wants it to be completely normal and blended into the background. It's like, you can't have that.

Speaker 2 It is an exceptional technology in that it's not normal. It's not normal to have a camera on your face the entire time.
And they're trying to have both, you know? In the

Speaker 2 recent presentation about this latest model of the meta glasses, all Mark Zuckerberg talks about is that for 10 years, they worked to miniaturize the technology in order to make it seamless.

Speaker 2 It is literally the point of the device is to make it like a seamless computer. interface that sits on your face.
And that's what people have been talking about with AR forever.

Speaker 2 Like if you listen to Palmer Lucky back when he was working at Facebook and he was working on VR and AR, that's again, all he talked about is like, we need to shrink the technology to make it small enough that it fits into your glasses that you're not even thinking about it.

Speaker 2 And like, obviously that has an appeal. Like if we're in some future where I have like a brain computer interface and I can just Google things seamlessly and so on, I mean, that's cool, I guess.

Speaker 2 But again, in reality, when we see how people are using it, they're using it to harass and abuse people. That's

Speaker 2 that is cool, but I think that's an important point that you made because it's like, one,

Speaker 2 Google Blast had like an AR display. And so that, there was an aspect to it where it was like,

Speaker 2 you're talking to me, but like, what are you actually looking at? And like, are you looking up information about me? Like, what is going on?

Speaker 2 These don't have an AR display at the moment, although I believe. No, that's the thing.
That's the plan.

Speaker 2 And it's like Mark Zuckerberg has talked about it being like a super intelligence on your face, as you said. And so it is like designed and it already has like AI capabilities.

Speaker 2 Like you can talk to meta AI through it and stuff. And so, I mean, another thing to think about is like

Speaker 2 AirPods and like earbud, earbuds and stuff like that. Like you go around life and it's like if you're talking to someone who has an like AirPod in, you're like, huh, that's weird.

Speaker 2 They're like kind of rude, but they're probably listening to music. But they could very well just be like

Speaker 2 getting talking points from an AI buddy and you have like no idea what's going on and like that is like the

Speaker 2 that is like the plan here is

Speaker 2 this is gonna be like an AI assistant on your face and then when you're interacting with someone like this like are you interacting with them are they recording you like are they getting like talking points from an AI like are they facial recognizing you like what is going on and I think that that is like another way that this differs a little bit from a phone And the last thing that I'll say on this is that like

Speaker 2 I feel like when you pull out your phone or camera or whatever,

Speaker 2 it in most cases, unless you have like a strap of some sort, it like takes your hands out of the equation. It's like you're using your hands for something.

Speaker 2 And I think this where it's like strapped to your face and you still have total use of your hands, it's like, it doesn't have like the disabling effect of

Speaker 2 like, oh, I'm doing, this is what i'm doing like what i'm doing is i am filming you with my i'm using my hands and i'm filming you or i'm taking a picture whereas here it's like you can start filming and you can continue filming and you can do whatever the fuck you want with your hands you can go punch someone and watch them like through pov and your glasses and i think that that is like an actual like difference i think that that is like a that's kind of like why cops are interested in it and like all that is that

Speaker 2 it's like a

Speaker 2 it's like can film you while you are doing something, whereas with a phone, it's like you are filming, that's the thing that you're doing, you're not doing like another thing on top of that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, does that make any sense? Yeah, yeah, totally. Um, with the AirPods one, I think there's just always a societal shift whenever there's a new piece of technology.

Speaker 2 Like when AirPods first came out, like that was weird to people, right? Or wireless earbuds in general, people didn't really understand that.

Speaker 2 I don't know if this was a myth or not, but we're like when jogging became popular in the 21st, in the 20th century, cops would stop joggers and be like, What are you doing?

Speaker 2 You're running away from something. No, no, I'm on a jog.
I can't. That's just something I read on the internet.
I know it's burrowed into my head, but it reminds me of that. And yeah, same with,

Speaker 2 I don't know,

Speaker 2 contactless systems in cars or the AirPods or something like that. There's going to be a societal shift.

Speaker 2 I think the last question is: do you think there's going to be a point where I can go outside wearing my PlayStation virtual reality headset and I'll be socially accepted.

Speaker 2 You could do it now if you want to be cool.

Speaker 2 No, I think I'll get punched in the face. I socially accept you.
I feel attacked this entire conversation, though, because I'm wearing them.

Speaker 2 I did.

Speaker 2 There was a good bit when Emmanuel said those stupid piece of shit glasses, and Jason just like slowly just says, Yes.

Speaker 2 I said this on BTB. We don't have to get into it, but I do wonder how long the Ray-Ban brand could have put up with this.
Right. It just seems like a disaster.
It's clearly meta. It's clear.

Speaker 2 I mean, I'm speculating, but to me, it's clear. The deal is Meta handles the PR.

Speaker 2 For sure. I mean, they threw us to Meta several times.
Right. Ray-Ban doesn't want anything to do with it.
When a journalist comes knocking, Meta has to handle it.

Speaker 2 And I imagine that's why they're so particular about it. I mean, I do wonder, though, like, I think it's made Ray-Bans incredibly uncool, as you said in your behind the blog.
And,

Speaker 2 you know, Wayfarers have been traditionally considered just like these timeless sunglasses or whatever. But I do wonder if it's been a net positive or negative for Ray-Bans, which is like

Speaker 2 sucks to say because I think that these are so shitty and stupid. But like

Speaker 2 people are buying them.

Speaker 2 There like is a, you know, kind of like, oh, look at this crazy technology aspect to it for like this really old brand etc like I don't know if any of you have like any thoughts on whether

Speaker 2 like how this is going for Ray-Bans I

Speaker 2 can only guess but like

Speaker 2 I don't know I feel like people are buying these

Speaker 2 yeah but maybe not

Speaker 2 TBD I think TBD on how

Speaker 2 how it shakes out I don't see them I've I've seen literally one from Sean the HVAC guy shout out the airman where when they begin now? Whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay.
I don't think it's in the sound.

Speaker 2 They sold 2 million pairs according to The Verge as of February,

Speaker 2 which I don't know. I don't know if that's a lot or not.
Sounds like a lot, but yeah. I don't know how much they're projecting.

Speaker 2 All right. We'll leave that there.
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