‘People were giving me dirty looks': the backlash against Meta smartglasses

Influencers describe negative reactions to their use of what are widely becoming known as ‘pervert glasses’. Amid the buzz of the Tour de France finale, Oliver Hooson filmed himself whipping up a delicious-looking flat white for a fellow cycling enthusiast. But after posting the footage on social media, the comments that soon rolled in were a real shock. “PERV,” read one. “Out here pushing creep glasses,” said another. His mistake? Documenting the moment with Meta’s “spy glasses”. Despite being marketed as the latest must-have gadget, Meta’s smartglasses, which can record video footage while being worn, have faced a vicious backlash, particularly relating to concerns about surveillance. There are widespread fears about the glasses being used to film people, especially women, without their consent, and the resultant footage being posted on social media. This has earned them the label of “pervert glasses”, and content creators, no matter how they are used, have faced a flood of negative comments for deploying them. Things reached a peak this summer when Kylie Jenner collaborated with Meta to launch a pair, leading to a flurry of influencers showing off their trendy, Kardashian-approved goggles. Some content creators have been forced to apologise for plugging the specs. Rida Tharana, a content creator with 1.6 million followers on Instagram, “took accountability” for taking part in a Meta campaign to promote the glasses, criticising men who misuse them to “record and harass women”. Self-described pickup artists have used the glasses to film themselves trying to chat up women in public without their knowledge, sometimes making disparaging, misogynistic comments afterwards. Hooson says that, while some of the comments left on his video were “savage”, he is fully in support of their message. “It definitely caught me off guard. It was a real ignorant move,” he says, adding that he hates that the glasses are being used against “women mainly being filmed against their knowledge”. After posting the video, Hooson, who shares his passion for home design and cycling to his 224,000 Instagram followers, says he lost a “good 50 to 100” followers. He called the term “pervert glasses” a “defence mechanism” to dissuade people from using them. “If everybody gets round that they are pervert glasses, which evidently they have, then it’s a really easy way of limiting sales and the usage of them,” he says. “People do not need any more of their privacy stripped away. I’m fully in support of that.” His interest in the glasses, which he received at a PR event, was far more innocent. “I saw [chefs at] high-end restaurants filming themselves with the glasses on, showing off their process. It was stupid, poetic and beautiful to watch. I wanted to have a play about and show people the things that I enjoy doing,” he says, adding that it is very hard to capture a point of view (POV) angle otherwise. “It was intended as a simple way of capturing a human POV of my morning coffee routine or my fast cycling descents. I think that’s vastly different from somebody going into the centre of Soho and asking somebody a divisive question and clipping them up for views without their knowledge,” he says. But, for now, it’s not worth using the glasses. “Would I rather just not have that little fun point-of-view shot for the greater good? Yes, I would definitely get rid of them,” he says.