Meta glasses and Flock cameras resurrect privacy fears we've been forced to accept

The Meta glasses and smart eyewear panic is a privacy crisis. People don’t want to be filmed while going about their daily business.

What if someone films them without their knowledge and uses this content to exploit the victim, and or make themselves rich? Outrageous, right?

It is outrageous, but strangely familiar.

Understandably, people are concerned that predators will use “pervert glasses” to record women and children without their consent, upload this content to the internet, and potentially make an easy profit.

However, I feel that the general population, literally anywhere in the world, often forgets about the tech-powered invasion of privacy.

The depths of the digital panopticon

The situation we’re in now is arguably what French philosopher Michel Foucault warned of in his 1975 book Discipline and Punish.

Foucault used Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon as a metaphor for surveillance in the digital age.

The English philosopher and social theorist created an all-seeing, circular prison in which inmates feel they’re constantly being watched, even if they’re not.

By making prisoners feel constantly surveilled, they would behave accordingly, reinforcing a certain type of behavior by default.

Foucault applied this to the digital world that was just beginning to emerge, stating that those within the panopticon functioned as “object(s) of information” and “never subject(s) of communication.”

The parallels between this concept and big tech’s relationship to its consumers are eerily similar.

We are the product

We as users are a consistent and lucrative source of information for big tech companies like Meta and Google.

They feed on our data, ranging from our personal information to browsing history and, more recently, our conversations with their AI models, to streamline products and improve targeted advertising.

And we can’t forget about security cameras, as companies like Flock Safety have monopolized surveillance to fill their pockets and enable certain people (mainly police officers) to behave badly.

The hard truth is that we’re regularly being watched by big tech, not for our own protection, but to keep us as “an object of information.”

And big tech won’t stop and say, “we’re done, this works,” they’re going to perpetually push the boundaries until they face a tidal wave of backlash. Kind of like what Meta is receiving now.

We also can’t stand idly by while big tech iterates its products to become more invasive.

Recently, Meta’s newly published patent reignited fears about facial recognition among the public, as the tech giant equips ordinary users with AI-powered biometrics that are notoriously biased.

Similar to equipping the public with bent sniper rifles.

Outrage acts as a reminder

While I agree that Meta glasses and other perv glasses brands should be tackled head-on, I also see this crisis as a microcosm of a broader issue we’ve become all too comfortable with.

Big tech is watching us all the time. They know what we’re doing whenever we’re online, and the reason for this doesn’t benefit the consumer.

Meta glasses are a personification of big tech’s dominion over us. Whether it’s data centers, algorithms, data-hungry apps, or “security” cameras, we are no longer in control.

We shouldn’t just accept Meta glasses as the norm, but I fear that we’ve sacrificed our privacy.

We get access to their product, they get almost every part of us – this has been accepted as a “fair” trade-off.

So, the next time you’re outraged by someone wearing Meta glasses, remember to be outraged by it all.