In the early 2000s, then proto-tech bro Mark Zuckerberg created FaceMash, a website used to rank women on a university campus. He later claimed it was a hilarious prank rather than a privacy-obliterating sexist piece of garbage. Fortunately for the world, he soon took it down. Unfortunately for the world, Facebook rose from its ashes.
There was less overt sexism in his fledgling social network. But as it grew to dominate the space, Zuckerberg’s monster stomped any semblance of privacy into the ground. So it should probably come as no surprise that when Meta (the company formerly known as Facebook after an ill-advised dalliance with a metaverse nobody wanted) created smart glasses, the result has turned into a horror show.
It’s unlikely Meta’s marketing team would have chosen the term ‘pervert glasses’ for the company’s AI specs. But that’s what many folks are now calling them. Because it turns out that when the very worst people have access to technology from companies spearheaded by the very worst people, bad things happen. Hence the current relentless stream of stories about sex pests harassing women by recording them with Meta specs and uploading the results to YouTube and TikTok. And, perhaps even more astonishingly, a doctor wearing a pair during a consultation where a woman had to remove her clothes.
Meta is now in full-on damage limitation mode to counter the perception its glasses are primarily aimed at perverts. “No, no, you see, they have a little light that goes PING when recording, so that makes it all fine,” is the kind of thing we hear, which fools no one. Now, Meta is going further, trying to convince the world its glasses are tools for good by donating them to folks with visual impairment. Hmm.
Watch yourself
There’s no denying cameras and augmented reality can be transformative in a good way. Such tools can radically reduce frictions for people with visual impairment. And great accessibility features often end up benefitting far more people than those they were originally designed for. But that’s never been Meta’s main concern.
Enter Apple. A video unearthed from a recent macOS beta was recently blasted around the internet as proof the company was working on AirPods with cameras. Chief Apple rumour parper Mark Gurman then kiboshed the notion these were imminent, saying they’d arrive in 2027. If so, good. Because the backlash to pervert glasses is severe to the point there’s real danger in Apple making something even remotely similar.
There is, however, a solution: don’t be Meta. Specifically, don’t let your gear do things that allow perverts to be perverts. So, sure, allow AirPods with cameras to describe what’s in front of you. But don’t retain footage and audio that someone could do bad things with later. No live streaming or always-on either – AirPod cameras should require very deliberate activation and only ‘look’ long enough to answer a question.
Even if Apple took that approach, you can bet commentators would respond with endless columns about the company being ‘behind’. They’d crow that privacy is getting in the way while the competition blasts clear. And then how would Apple respond? If AI is anything to go by, perhaps not well. Having been ‘behind’ there, Apple is now fully on board giving everyone an endless bullshit machine and photographic edits that literally make stuff up.
With wearables, Apple must stand firm. Everyone’s had their fill of pervert glasses. The last thing we need is Apple unleashing pervert AirPods on the world.
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