I'll confess that I like my Meta Ray Ban glasses: I love using them to listen to podcasts at the pool/beach, while riding my bike, and it's cool to snap a quick picture of my kids without pulling out my phone.
I wish this article (or Meta) were a bit clearer about the specific connection between the device settings and use and when humans get access to the images.
My settings are:
- [OFF] "Share additional data" - Share data about your Meta devices to help improve Meta products.
- [OFF] "Cloud media" - Allow your photos and videos to be sent to Meta's cloud for processing and temporary storage.
I'm not sure whether my settings would prevent my media from being used as described in the article.
Also, it's not clear which data is being used for training:
- random photos / videos taken
- only use of "Meta AI" (e.g., "Hey Meta, can you translate this sign")
As much as I've liked my Meta Ray Ban's I'm going to need clarity here before I continue using them.
TBH, if it were only use of Meta AI, I'd "get it" but probably turn that feature off (I barely use it as-is).
Those settings are IMO likely not doing what you think they are. Or might be doing strictly, precisely what they say they are.
[OFF] "Share data about your Meta devices to help improve Meta products." doesn't preclude sharing data for other purposes.
[OFF] "Allow your photos and videos to be sent to Meta's cloud for processing and temporary storage." doesn't preclude sending them to Meta's cloud for permanent storage.
Last year they pushed out an update stating if any “Meta AI” is left on, they can access image data for training,
I turned the AI off and used them as headphones and taking videos while biking. After a couple rides, I couldn’t bring myself to put them on because people started to recognize them and I realized I didn’t want to be associated with them (people are right to assume Meta has access to what they see).
Meta Ray Bans, if kept simple, could have been a great product. They ruined them.
A simple on/off toggle isn't going to prevent them from using your data. If your data is in their server then it's going to be used one way or another. Whether in an anonymous way or shipped to where there are no privacy laws.
I think the most likely case is: this company is labeling images from meta AI use from people who opted-in to share their data with Meta.
It's certainly possible that it's something much more surprising / sinister, but there is a fairly logical combination of settings that I could see a company could argue lets them use the data for training.
I'm also very certain that few users with these settings would expect the images to be shown to actual people, so I'm not defending Meta.
I know some of the criticism of Meta: many people don't like the way their products are optimized for engagement. I've heard about their weird AI bots interacting on their platform as if they were people. And I know people of all political stripes have had complaints about content moderation and their algorithm.
But all of that is within the bounds of the law and their terms of service.
None of it would remotely approach something like: bypassing the well-advertised features in the glasses that show when the camera is in use and secretly recording things to train AI. It's hard to imagine any company's lawyers approving something like that. (this sounds like what many commenters believe is happening)
FWIW, I suspect this is the relevant section of the Privacy policy:
> "When you use the Meta AI service on your AI Glasses (if available for your device), we use your information, like Media and audio recordings of your voice to provide the service."
Meta has consistently and repeatedly shown an absolute lack of respect for user privacy for basically as long as they’ve existed as a company. I’m honestly not certain there’s anything fully out of the question as far as things they might do, regardless of what their policies might say.
They bought a “privacy” VPN app and used it to harvest data, then abused Apple’s enterprise app deployments to continue to ship the app after it was banned from the app store: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo
You might enjoy these conveniences now, but this is just the pre-enshitification stage. Soon enough, to take advantage of those features you will have advertisements integrated into your view, and your data will be scraped for whatever its worth to Meta.
I haven't closely followed distributed protocols like this in years so might just be just behind the times, but I can't recall ever seeing "Pro Censorship" as a badge on a technology.
Seems to fit with real-world trends that confuse and frustrate me. I'm not saying we need a censorship-proof world, just that I find this quite jarring. I suspect I might be missing some context.
I love playing with my mirrorless camera and lenses, but I'm becoming more and more convinced that it's a risky proposition "investing" in a bunch of expensive camera gear (which traditionally holds it's value better than most gadgets) when computational methods will soon evaporate the advantages of bigger sensors / faster glass.
You might look at youtube red, which is included with the google music streaming service. Will let you download videos to your mobile device for offline viewing. Combined with your youtube "to watch" list, it works pretty well. Unfortunately doesn't support an "add on desktop -> auto download mobile" workflow.
You're misreading. Everyone they hire is intended to be a leader, and being right is one of the qualities they care about in employees. Not "management is usually right, so trust them".
This happened to a lot of people in the Valley after the dot com bust. They exercised their options, triggering a tax liability, and then the shares tanked, leaving them with no money to pay off the liability. They could only deduct $3000/year. Lots of people were in a lot of trouble, but I remember hearing that finally the IRS made a change so that this wouldn't affect you anymore.
You should be able to deduct the loss, but I'm not sure how that plays with the tax owed, since the loss is a capital loss and you're paying tax on an object of specific value (not a capital gain). It might not simply cancel out.
I wish this article (or Meta) were a bit clearer about the specific connection between the device settings and use and when humans get access to the images.
My settings are:
- [OFF] "Share additional data" - Share data about your Meta devices to help improve Meta products.
- [OFF] "Cloud media" - Allow your photos and videos to be sent to Meta's cloud for processing and temporary storage.
I'm not sure whether my settings would prevent my media from being used as described in the article.
Also, it's not clear which data is being used for training:
- random photos / videos taken
- only use of "Meta AI" (e.g., "Hey Meta, can you translate this sign")
As much as I've liked my Meta Ray Ban's I'm going to need clarity here before I continue using them.
TBH, if it were only use of Meta AI, I'd "get it" but probably turn that feature off (I barely use it as-is).
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