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This New Meta “Advertisement” Is Absolutely Brutal

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Why This Matters

This article highlights the growing concerns over privacy and ethical issues surrounding Meta’s smart glasses, especially as activists use provocative advertising to criticize their invasive capabilities. The intense backlash underscores the importance for the tech industry to prioritize user consent and privacy in wearable technology. Consumers and regulators are increasingly scrutinizing how these devices impact personal privacy and societal values.

Key Takeaways

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Last week, we came across a cleverly subversive advertisement for Meta’s controversial smart glasses, which overlaid socialite Kylie Jenner’s face with one of the terrifying bug-eyed monsters from John Carpenter’s “They Live” and a bold type caption that reads “We’re always watching” when viewed from a specific angle.

The billboard, created by activist group Everyone Hates Elon, called attention to how Meta’s camera-adorned and AI-enabled spectacles have quickly turned into a privacy-invading nightmare. The optics of the problem is so bad that Meta is now trying to ban “manfluencers” and juvenile pranksters who use the glasses to record members of the public without their consent.

The public backlash has become so strong, even those who bought a pair of the “pervert glasses” are choosing to leave them at home.

Now, the activist group has come up with its next — and even more brutal — stunt. A new “advertisement” adorning a bus station in London, not far from Meta’s King’s Cross office, shows late sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein wearing a pair of the specs while getting his picture taken for the New York sex offender registry.

“Glasses for people who don’t do consent,” the caption reads.

It’s a clear reference to the late criminal’s sex trafficking operation, which recruited dozens of girls, many underage. Grisly documents details how his victims were convinced to go to his beachfront mansion and even bring friends. According to some of their depositions, they were coerced into taking off their clothes without their consent.

Epstein has also been accused of secretly filming one of his victims. Witnesses also claim he kept “sex tapes” involving prominent people.

Email correspondences from 2014 also detail how the sex criminal directed his aide to install hidden video cameras across his home in Palm Beach, Florida, including one installed inside a Kleenex box.

While Epstein died in 2019, years before roughly two years before Meta launched the first generation of its smart glasses, the billboard sends a grim message.

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