Meta's CTO says a few bad actors should not shape the debate about its camera glasses
Meta's chief technology officer says the argument about its camera glasses is being shaped by a small group of people misusing them. "I don't want the discourse to be entirely shaped by this kind of relatively small number of bad actors," Andrew Bosworth said during an AMA on his personal Instagram account, reported by Business Insider on September 18.
The charging case for Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2), the line Bosworth was answering questions about. Image: Meta
Bosworth runs Reality Labs as well as Meta's technology organisation, so the glasses and the complaints about them are both his. His case is that ordinary use is the norm: "The majority of people using their glasses are using them in totally normal ways, the way they would use a cell phone camera, but it's a little more convenient, a little bit more hands-free, a little more in the moment."
Meta has been tightening the recording light
Bosworth pointed to the indicator light that comes on while the glasses record, and to an anti-tampering measure that stops the recording if that light is covered. A software update closed a loophole where you could start recording, wait a few seconds, cover the light and carry on filming.
Anyone who had drilled the light out or disabled it for good came off worse. According to the report, those glasses were essentially bricked.
So covering the light now stops the video rather than hiding it, on Meta's account of its own safeguard. What the light cannot do is insist on being seen. It is a small LED on a pair of sunglasses, and it only helps the person across the table if they notice it.
Harassing videos get removed after the fact
On the clips that started the backlash, Bosworth described a content rule rather than a hardware one. "If we find that content, we'll take that content down if it's harassing content," he said. "And if we think that this is a person who is doing this systematically, we'll take the account down."
The same report points back to a review of that moderation over the summer, which found the enforcement uneven, with some clips and accounts pulled and others left alone. Taking a video down also happens after it has been filmed and posted, which is a weaker promise than the one a recording light is meant to make.
Connect is where Meta has to make the case
Bosworth finished with a trail for Meta's developer conference: "I feel good about where we are but we're not stopping, we're going to continue to invest, and we have more to say at Connect coming up." Connect runs September 23 and 24 from Meta's Menlo Park campus, and the keynote starts at 4:00 p.m. PT on September 23.
The backlash lands at an awkward moment for the category. Glasses now take nearly 85% of all XR shipments, so the devices people are arguing about are also the ones the industry is selling.
For now Meta's answer is a light, a software check and a moderation queue, and Bosworth's argument is that the people abusing the glasses are a minority. Connect is where that gets tested against whatever Meta ships next.
