Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri has had it with the surge of obnoxious “harassing” videos shot using Meta’s ‘pervert glasses’ that are flooding the social media platform – causing the executive to ban the content.
“If you’re posting content that is taking advantage of people and harassing them, like a lot of these pickup line kind of videos that we’ve heard of and seen, then we’re going to take the content down,” Mosseri said in response to a question on his Instagram stories last week.
“We don’t want people to be surreptitiously taking videos of other people and harassing them and then posting them on our platform. So we’re trying to fight that every way we can.”
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta – which owns Instagram – released its so-called smart glasses last fall which can record video and celebrities like Kylie Jenner have jumped on board to promote them – generating swift backlash online from people describing them as “dystopian.”
Users quickly began hacking or covering up the tiny light that signals when the glasses are recording in order to surreptitiously film people, earning them the moniker “pervert glasses.”
The latest Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) glasses start at $379 and users have been creepily filming women and their pickup attempts as well as pranks on service workers like cashiers or fast food workers. The glasses have also been used to film often older people’s reactions to obnoxious pranks like pretending to steal money from them.
The pickup videos follow a familiar script — a compliment, a pickup line, a push for a name or number — with the footage later blasted across TikTok and Instagram for views, often without the subject ever realizing she was on camera.
As Mosseri notes, the pranks often verge on harassment or are simply insufferable – like putting fart spray into a candle at Walmart and then asking employees to smell it; or pretending to speak limited English and provoking workers until they get kicked out or the police get called.
In one instance, the Meta glasses were used to film a man hitting on a woman in a London shopping center without her knowledge and the video racked up 40,000 views after it was posted to social media. When she contacted the man to request that he take down the post, he explained he would only do so as a “paid service.”
Instagram deactivated two accounts, each with more than a million followers, that produced pickup artist-type content using the glasses, according to Business Insider.
More than 70 civil liberties and advocacy groups have slammed the glasses, warning they could go from creepy to outright dangerous if new features are rolled out – which Meta has said it wants to do.
Meta has said it wants to supercharge the glasses with even more AI capabilities like language translation, facial recognition, the ability to tell you where you put your keys and how much you tip.
In July, Meta filed a patent for a AI-powered “apparatus” that would be capable of tracking the user’s emotional state – right down to their sighs and laughter and what time of day they take medication.
“This creepy patent appears to be part of Meta’s grand plans to monitor every aspect of our lives in order to profit off of ads targeted to users’ emotional vulnerabilities,” said online safety advocate Fairplay executive director Josh Golin, whose organization has repeatedly blasted Meta for pursuing invasive technologies.
Some bystanders are fighting back against the content creators using the glasses. Last year, for instance, footage captured an exchange where a man was confronted by a passer-by while secretly filming women on the street in San Diego.
“I’ve been waiting for this,” says the local man as he tries to snatch the glasses away. “You guys are creeping on those girls over here, that’s you right?