Nothing is private in Meta’s field of vision

By Larry Persily

If you want a pair of smartglasses that will record every burp, blemish and blush of whoever is sitting across from you — while it also remembers their names — Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and his techies at Meta see the world the same as you. They see privacy to be dismissed and eating habits to be recorded.

Maybe it will improve table manners, though probably not. They see money to be made, which is their true vision.

The company’s audio- and video-recording devices wrapped around a wearer’s nose and ears have attracted unflattering attention — the moral, ethical, philosophical and legal kind, which are not recorded by the electronic devices in front of your eyes.

As ironic as it is, some people have taken to social media to complain about being filmed for social media without their knowledge.

But what did Meta expect from poking its corporate nose into the lives of people who just happen to be in eyesight and earshot of their smartglasses.

It all sounds pretty dumb to me.

Obviously, I don’t share Zuckerberg’s vision of the metaverse but I know glasses — I have been wearing them for 70 years, if you don’t count my two-month failed experiment with hard contact lenses 50 years ago. They crispified in an apartment fire in college and I happily took the insurance, bought a new bed, clothes and food and went back to my old glasses.

Unwilling to resist change as I do, Meta is actively promoting its high-tech glasses, repeatedly repeating that the market extends far beyond what the eye can see: There are almost 2 billion people in the world with prescription eyeglasses. 

The company sold more than 9 million pairs of its glasses the past two years, which means there are still 1.9 billion potential customers out there. At $300 to $500 a pair, that can be a profitable vision.

Meta execs are looking to reach that audience by wearing the glasses at public events, while also teaming up with celebrities for publicity. Some company employees wore them in a California courtroom earlier this year where Zuckerberg was testifying, until the judge looked down her nose and told them they could see just fine without the electronic recording device on their face.

Last month, the New York state court system sent out a memo, prohibiting anyone in their courthouses from wearing the glasses.

Aside from courtrooms, Meta sees the future clearly and believes everyone else should see it the same way.

“We’re at this moment now where everyone had flip phones and then smartphones came out, and it felt pretty clear that in five years or whatever, all of the flip phones were going to be smartphones, and that’s basically how I feel about glasses today,” Zuckerberg said in a recent interview with Complex, an online news site.

That may be, but a phone tucked away can’t record images and voices the same as a pair of eyeglasses looking you in the eye. Privacy advocates don’t see the world the same as Zuckerberg, which is partly why the multibillionaire was in that California courtroom earlier this year to defend Meta against a lawsuit over its allegedly addictive role in social media’s harm to children.

I accept that Mr. Meta sees the world through rose-tinted lenses. I just wish he would get his eyes checked. Or maybe he needs new glasses.

• Larry Persily is the publisher of the Wrangell Sentinel, which first published this column.