Workers report watching Ray-Ban Meta-shot footage of people using the bathroom

Meta accused of "concealing the facts" about smart glass users' privacy.

See full article...

 

[Marlor_AU]

Here, any CCTV camera use needs to be disclosed by prominent signage.

I’m looking forward to a requirement that AR Glasses users also display similar signage. A wearable sandwich board will do the job.

 

[Fred Duck]

The authors said that several people interviewed for the report said they have seen footage shot with Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses that shows people having sex and using the bathroom.

I don't want to know how that's possible. Nobody explain this part of my comment. Please.

In statements shared with the BBC on Wednesday, Meta confirmed that it “sometimes” shares content that users share with the Meta AI generative AI chatbot with contractors to review with “the purpose of improving people’s experience, as many other companies do.”

Do users know that meta do this or do they believe only the rightfully disgusted computer is viewing it?

Let's look more closely at that bit on the end.

with “the purpose of improving people’s experience, as many other companies do.”

Oh, and here I thought it was simply to gather more data. Silly me. I didn't realise it was to "improve people's experience."

Meta’s privacy policy for wearables says that photos and videos taken with its smart glasses are sent to Meta “when you turn on cloud processing on your AI Glasses, interact with the Meta AI service on your AI Glasses, or upload your media to certain services provided by Meta (i.e., Facebook or Instagram). You can change your choices about cloud processing of your Media at any time in Settings.”

Reading that, there's no mention that any humans would see it. After all, "cloud processing" isn't humans; it's magical sky computers. "meta AI service" isn't humans; it's magical land computers. When one uploads media, one doesn't expect it'll be viewed by strangers unless one makes them public.

Bonus (negative) points for making it opt-out.

By that token, meta, I will continue to speak badly of you unless you opt out of the Premium Fred Constantly Speaking Badly About meta Service as a Service. If you wish to opt out, here is the address to post a letter to:
British Airways
Ingrams Drive
Redditch

The privacy policy further mentions "trained reviewers" and "manual" review but it really isn't clear what is being reviewed.

The lawsuit challenges Meta’s slogan for the glasses, “designed for privacy, controlled by you..."

We were surprised anyone would believe that. When meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was contacted for comment*, he had this to say:

They "trust me." Dumb fucks.

By the by,
"Saama is the number one AI-powered clinical analytics cloud platform company delivering actionable business insights for life sciences"
whereas
"Sama is a training data partner trusted by organizations to develop accurate artificial intelligence and machine learning models."

The way you can remember the difference between them is you can't.

The Arsticle mentions both Sama and Saama but Mr. Svenska Dagbladet only refers to Sama.

貴様！

*On a completely different topic.

 

[schnackenpfefferhausen]

Meta: the videos are only shared if AI cloud processing is turned on.
Also Meta: We’re turning AI cloud processing on by default.

Meta is scum.
They know, or should have known, exactly what would happen.

 

[Moodyz]

I suspect the reason big tech firms outsource AI training is not so that workers get great pay and conditions. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest they're looking to save money by reducing the cost of labor (but not reducing the labor itself).

AGI = A Guy in India

 

[exregis]

No surprise. Keep in mind that Zuckerberg started out in college with a Facebook like app whose purpose was to rate the fuckability of Harvard women.

 

[jimmy.j.r]

WHY would ANYONE even want to own such a thing as glasses which record your every breath? I don't get it.

"look at all this content I'm creating!" idk

 

[MilanKraft]

…and no one who has ever paid any attention to Meta/Facebook’s behavior was surprised

Winning Post.

Keep telling everyone you know, folks... delete the damn Facebook / Insta / other accounts. It's the only way we'll ever be free of this despicable, invasive shit. We as a society have to decide to give them (all) the middle finger and do better things with our lives.

Zuckerberg's persistent lack of ethics or fucks given for regular human beings still boggles the mind at times.

The dude just never fucking grows up, never grows a pair to do the right thing... ever. He probably thinks he's a man because he reproduced. Truly feel sorry for his kid(s), being raised by this self-absorbed POS and almost certainly a Daddy excuse-making, enabling mother. [Tough to grow into a decent, well-rounded human in that scenario...]

 

[MaHawkma]

Honestly,

If one buys anything from Meta, can you expect anything different?

 

[Random_stranger]

CPB/ICE reportedly bought ads to help track people via their cell phone. Any reason they won't also "opt in" to a live FB data stream from all their glasses? Yeah, I didn't think so.

Meta has been rumored to track words like "riot", "revolt", "uprising", and probably stuff like "no kings", etc - I'm sure the govt will be happy to get full feeds from any cameras picking up words like this.

Meta itself will, I'm sure, gladly hand out glasses to any and all politicians, and will trawl through the data to get a heads-up of any mention of any legislation affecting Meta..

 

[Marlor_AU]

If one buys anything from Meta, can you expect anything different?

The users may expect it. But their partners sharing a bedroom, users of public restrooms and change rooms, and any others that may inhabit the same private spaces don't share that expectation.

The general public certainly can't anticipate that their private activities will be filmed and the data uploaded to Meta. They instead have an expectation that their personal spaces will not be unknowingly surveilled. And that expectation is backed by law.

 

[MedicalGeek]

I'm not sure whether to call dick pics or poop thread.

The first time they auto-capture footage of a minor in the bathroom without the minor's consent, is Meta guilty of creating and possessing CSAM, or is the minor?

The minor of course. Corps can’t be guilty of anything.

 

[vought1221]

Who thought this was a good idea? And from a company that was born from being unscrupulous with people’s personal information?

I can tell you exactly who thought it was a good idea.

most of the people on that particular team came straight out of Meta‘s virtual reality labs, or whatever they call the no-legged humans people there.

One thing that I think people should realize is that the Meta incentive structure tends to sort of trap people. I still have friends who work there, including one person on the team that produced these glasses.

He’s embarrassed by the product.

He also has kids and a wife and a nice house in A good neighborhood in San Jose. If he misses his metrics in A given quarter, the next quarter he could lose his job.

I say that not as an excuse, but as an explanation that everything at Meta flows from the top. It’s one of the reasons they have so many VPs and directors scattered everywhere. If your boss tells you to do a thing and you don’t get it done, you’re gonna lose your lifestyle. And you’ve probably got a good one already if you are at Meta because you make a great living from your employer, Who in turn is raking in money handover fist because nobody can stay off of Instagram.

 

[jonbob_newcastle]

Last century, we had "x-ray glasses" - advertised in all the comics, remember?

Last century (just) there was a Sony camera that had a night vision mode using IR. It turns out that quite a lot of thin fabrics are transparent to IR.

 

[Voix des Airs]

Serious question: How do people think these things work and what happens when you report something created by them as offensive? meta has review the content to determine that.
Come on I know Americans are stereotypically dumb but sheesh

That's not what they're doing. They need labelled training data for their AI. All the AI makers are outsourcing the often traumatizing work of reading/watching conversations/video with AIs and labeling it (i.e describing it in some way) to poor countries. They then keep all of it forever so they can use it to train future versions.

 

[saanaito]

if I see one of these things lying around in a publicly-reachable bathroom, I'm stomping it flat. I don't care if I get sued for damage to personal property.

 

[imikem]

Time for extremely strong, strict, and heavily enforced privacy legislation

I'll go way out on a limb and predict this won't be happening under the current [mal]administration.

 

[Eldorito]

WHY would ANYONE even want to own such a thing as glasses which record your every breath? I don't get it.

I assume the people who go to concerts only to watch half the show through their phone as they record it. It gives them the ability to connect to the world while still being a jerk.

Even though privacy is pretty much already dead, the idea that Meta will have enough data to recreate me as an AI thanks to everyone else recording me is incredibly depressing. I really, really want these glasses to fail hard and no one to ever try it again.

 

[Raspberry]

So people bought glasses, which disguise a camera which unobtrusively photographs strangers around them, and sends the videos to Meta.
They are now concerned because the camera unobtrusively photographed themselves and sent the videos to Meta.

 

[Godspeec]

wait until you learn what those LLMs know about people…

 

[Fatesrider]

In statements shared with the BBC on Wednesday, Meta confirmed that it “sometimes” shares content that users share with the Meta AI generative AI chatbot with contractors to review with “the purpose of improving people’s experience, as many other companies do.”

Allow me to rephrase that:

In statements shared with the BBC on Wednesday, Meta confirmed that it “liberally” shares content that users share with the Meta AI generative AI chatbot with contractors to review with “the purpose of improving our bottom line, as many other companies do.”

Moreover, that whole "other people do it, too!" bullshit is a fucking lie.

They don't share THAT kind of data with anyone. At least, not without the risk of breaking CASM and privacy laws pretty much everywhere.

I'd hold the designers and company officers who OK'd this directly responsible for damages and for the invasion of privacy that entails.

 

[Pluvia Arenae]

the idea that Meta will have enough data to recreate me as an AI thanks to everyone else recording me is incredibly depressing.

That's impossible. That's just not how generative AI works, and it's not how humans work. This pervasive and increasing surveillance is horrifying, but let's not bring impossible sci-fi scenarios into this.

 

[+Griz]

Meta has been rumored to track words like "riot", "revolt", "uprising", and probably stuff like "no kings", etc - I'm sure the govt will be happy to get full feeds from any cameras picking up words like this.

supposedly if you show an ISIS flag to a glasshole who's recording, they get autobanned

also some lady on the NYC subway broke someone's meta glasses and no one else saw anything or cared at all
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/imagine-being-based-guy-says-143000399.html

 

[Pluvia Arenae]

This work is conducted in secure, access-controlled facilities. Personal devices are not permitted on production floors, and all team members undergo background checks and receive ongoing training in data protection, confidentiality, and responsible AI practices. Our teams receive living wages and full benefits, and have access to comprehensive wellness resources and on-site support.

Uh huh. Let's decode this.

"Secure, access-controlled" means the only people allowed in are employees, and we're going to pretend, for the context of this statement, that none of our employees would ever abuse this access.

"Not permitted" means "please don't."

"Background checks" means "no heinous criminal record with the national Kenya Police Service? Great, when can you start?"

"Ongoing training in data protection, confidentiality, and responsible AI practices" means "watch this half-hour compliance video every three or six months and sign this form so that if you do anything wrong with the access we're giving you, we can say it's not our fault."

"Living wages" means, at best, living wages for Kenya, a developing country which by many measures is poorer than about three quarters of all the world's countries, and in which a quarter of the population lives on less than $2.15 per day. And that's assuming it's actually a living wage, which is vague and therefore easy for a company to make BS statements about.

 

[norton_I]

What is the use case for these glasses? What problems do they solve that makes someone want to have them? And why the fuck are there human eyes on footage that these glasses record?

I can answer the last one. It's because AI is not as good as they are pretending, and so they have workers in "low wage countries" reviewing and tagging feeds while pretending it's AI. You would be embarrassed to pay someone in Kenya $1/hour to sort through all your photos and organize them. Big tech companies have no shame.

 

[hassmaschine79]

You wouldn't punch a guy in the face wearing (meta) glasses, would ya?

 

[theotherjim]

Meta is disgusting.

Well, yes, back in the day, but they've long since transcended that to outright evil

 

[macosandlinux]

Who thought this was a good idea? And from a company that was born from being unscrupulous with people’s personal information?

And I am not all all surprised it's outsourced to African/Asian contractors that have no adequate counseling for this kind of worker abuse and just see the low-low cost it allows Meta to say it's 'reviewed by humans'.

 

[Sconsi4nya]

You can change your choices about cloud processing of your Media at any time in Settings.” So bleeping what. Like we trust you to actually abide by that. How can a user actually tell if those features are inactive?

And even if they are, the settings will revert to the default “share my data far and wide” with every app update.

Then they’ll add a toggle for “in perpetuity, no takebacks” that mysteriously can never be turned off. “So weird! We’ll totally look into that” they’ll say as they mis-file the bug report on an old receipt by an open window.

 

[macosandlinux]

I suspect the reason big tech firms outsource AI training is not so that workers get great pay and conditions. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest they're looking to save money by reducing the cost of labor (but not reducing the labor itself).

Yes and yes. These outsourced hellholes are just that, shoving people in front of screens for the least money possible (what does this Kenyan staff make in a month, $500?), so they can say/have humans watching over it. Same as the FB moderation, where it came to light that in some countries/languages they had (bet still have) just a handful of people patrolling tens of millions of users. Just a farce.

 

[macosandlinux]

Put Zuckerberg in that Kenyan office for a week.

Bad idea, he will just got out and hunt/shoot wildlife. A stuffed elephant for his mansion.

 

[macosandlinux]

There is a great Black Mirror episode from many years ago in which people have implants that let them record and rewatch anything they have seen (and no big, ugly glasses required). Of course, it goes badly for some people. Jodie Whittaker is in it.

Watch Strange Days by Bigelow, too.

 

[macosandlinux]

Here, any CCTV camera use needs to be disclosed by prominent signage.

I’m looking forward to a requirement that AR Glasses users also display similar signage. A wearable sandwich board will do the job.

They got that cool dot that shows you it's recording. What a relief /s

 

[123username]

Not long now until meta runs its own "find your lost dog" commercials for these glasses..
We are all going to be running around with ring door bell -like devices of our faces...

I'm sure meta could easily triangulate someone's location and then get live footage...
Oh our data shows that there are some users at an anti ice, no kings march...
Cool! Let's get some intel!

 

[VividVerism]

That's impossible. That's just not how generative AI works, and it's not how humans work. This pervasive and increasing surveillance is horrifying, but let's not bring impossible sci-fi scenarios into this.

I'm pretty sure they're referring to this: https://www.npr.org/2024/07/18/nx-s1-5040583/china-ai-artificial-intelligence-dead-avatars

 

[zogus]

Is it just me, or is Meta by far the most gratuitously evil member of the so-called GAFAM?

 

[Pluvia Arenae]

I'm pretty sure they're referring to this: https://www.npr.org/2024/07/18/nx-s1-5040583/china-ai-artificial-intelligence-dead-avatars

Maybe, but claiming they can recreate someone and actually recreating someone in any meaningful way are two very different things. The latter is impossible. The former is just lying, by claiming they can do the impossible.

 

[ComradeMatis]

At what point do consumers take responsibility for buying this crap right from the outset? They bought a device from Meta knowing full well what Meta's reputation is and yet are now complaining their privacy is violated? these people remind me of the South Park "world wide privacy tour" post their whole life online then act surprised when they claim their privacy is violated. Yes, what Meta does is bad but at some point consumers have to start thinking before jumping on the next social media bandwagon only to then act surprised that their personal details are sold to the highest bidder.

Edit: It appears that Meta has bots out downvoting anyone critical of Meta. Imagine so petty that you spend time and money to downvote people critical of your business.

 

[GrytPipe]

To all glassholes now and in the future, write this down: if i catch you using this crap on me or in my vicinity, i'll rip that crap off your head, destroy it and then come after you. You won't have a face to put anything on anymore.

 

[jimmy.j.r]

if I see one of these things lying around in a publicly-reachable bathroom, I'm stomping it flat. I don't care if I get sued for damage to personal property.

Do it you won’t

 

[Hezio]

I'm not sure whether to call dick pics or poop thread.

The first time they auto-capture footage of a minor in the bathroom without the minor's consent, is Meta guilty of creating and possessing CSAM, or is the minor?

Even if Meta did, they'll probably face the same consequences that others in the Epstein files have.