Meta has sold more than 7 million Ray-Ban smartglasses worldwide, contributing to a growing trend of wearable technology that is increasingly indistinguishable from regular eyewear. While companies like Meta and Snapchat seek to evolve beyond the smartphone, the rise of these devices has sparked a backlash over privacy and the lack of public consent.
Privacy and Harassment Concerns
Researchers at the University of Sydney analyzed 350 Instagram videos filmed with smartglasses between 2023 and 2026, noting a shift toward point-of-view recording that bystanders find difficult to detect. According to the researchers, approximately 60% of interactions in a subset of those videos were classified as potential harassment, featuring subjects who appeared uneasy or tried to disengage.
Dr. Joanne Gray, one of the researchers, stated that smart glasses provide pickup artists with a tool to exploit women, noting that individuals are often unaware they are being filmed before the footage is uploaded. In 43% of the analyzed videos, women were abused in the post’s comments, with some instances involving the disclosure of personal details.
Market Expansion and Public Response
To bring the technology into the mainstream, Meta partnered with global social media influencers and featured Kylie Jenner in online advertisements to specifically target women. Beyond brand-name devices, knockoffs are available through Temu and Amazon. In Australia, $89 Anko-branded camera glasses sold by Kmart recently sold out.
The popularity of these low-cost alternatives led the activist group GetUp to launch a petition calling for a ban on Anko glasses, which had gathered 21,000 signatures as of Friday. Dr. Fareed Kaviani, a research fellow at Monash University’s Emerging Technologies Research Lab, said that while the glasses represent a democratisation of access to technology, there is a total lack of the ability for people to not only know if they’re being filmed … but there’s an inability to consent to being filmed.
Kaviani added that this changes the dynamics of public space and raises privacy concerns, particularly for children and other vulnerable members of the public.
