Discord began rolling out a new age-verification system today, sorting users into adult, teen, and unconfirmed groups and restricting teens' access to sensitive content and message requests from strangers. The system replaces a February plan that required ID scans or facial recognition, which Discord dropped after user backlash and a 2025 breach exposed government IDs of 70,000 users verified through a third-party service.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-09-23
Meta tested a feature letting human contractors handle phone calls made on behalf of its Muse AI assistant, rolling it out to half its employees last week. Staff raised privacy concerns about sensitive data reaching call-center workers, and one contractor made a racist remark during a call negotiating an employee's bill. Meta has paused the human concierge feature, apologized to the affected employee, and barred the contractor from further work on its projects.
techspot.com
· 2026-09-23
Meta launched an AI agent called Muse designed to shop on users' behalf across e-commerce sites, and it quickly gained popularity. Amazon has since blocked Muse from accessing its platform, and observers have raised privacy and security concerns about the tool.
wsj.com
· 2026-09-23
Australia's public service minister Katy Gallagher announced the government is exploring a ban on Meta's AI-enabled smart glasses in federal government buildings, citing privacy and security risks tied to their recording capabilities. Officials plan to consult the public service commission and hold a roundtable with major employers like Microsoft and Commonwealth Bank to develop broader AI workplace guidelines.
futurism.com
· 2026-09-20
Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses are increasingly being nicknamed 'perv glasses' due to misuse by people secretly filming others in public, echoing the 'Glasshole' stigma that doomed Google Glass in 2014. The author says this backlash has changed their own stance, now favoring reports that Apple's rumored smart glasses, expected next year, might launch without photo or video recording capability.
9to5mac.com
· 2026-09-18
Polish developer Pawel Szydlowski launched an iPhone app called Zuckoff that uses Bluetooth signals to detect and estimate the distance of Meta's AI smart glasses, which have faced criticism for enabling covert recording. The app has attracted about 5,000 users and interest from EU regulators, while separately Meta is reportedly developing a camera-free version of its glasses and rolling out paid subscription tiers for its social apps to offset heavy losses at its Reality Labs division.
tech.slashdot.org
· 2026-09-17
Meta is reportedly building a camera-less version of its Ray-Ban smart glasses, codenamed Luna, following widespread criticism that the camera-equipped models enabled covert recording and harassment. The new glasses would retain six microphones for voice interaction with Meta's AI assistants but drop the camera entirely, and could debut as soon as next week's Meta Connect conference.
futurism.com
· 2026-09-16
According to The Information, Meta is developing a new smart glasses line called Luna that omits the camera found in its current models. The glasses will reportedly come in two styles, Clubmaster and Burbank, and feature six microphones plus ear-facing speakers for interacting with Meta's AI assistant via a side button. Meta may reveal Luna at its Connect conference on September 23-24, with shipping possibly starting in October.
engadget.com
· 2026-09-16
Apple has unveiled 'Audio Intelligence,' a feature for upcoming Apple Watches that continuously listens to and transcribes nearby conversations, then summarizes them daily. Although Apple has built in some privacy safeguards for the watch wearer, anyone speaking near a person using this feature could be recorded and transcribed without their knowledge or consent.
dallincrump.com
· 2026-09-15
Polish developer Pawel Szydlowski released a free app, ZuckOff, that scans Bluetooth signals to alert users when Ray-Ban Meta, Oakley Meta, or Snap Spectacles smart glasses are nearby. Launched in August, it has been downloaded over 5,000 times on iOS and 1,000 times on Android, built from a database of device fingerprints Szydlowski compiled by purchasing and testing the hardware himself.
wired.com
· 2026-09-15
Multiple Reddit users report that Google Messages is inserting old texts from unrelated conversations into new ones, sometimes attaching them to photos or group chats and in some cases actually delivering them to unintended recipients. The bug spans both Pixel and Samsung devices, occurring regardless of whether RCS is enabled, and follows other recent Messages glitches like broken RCS delivery and duplicated threads. Google has acknowledged at least one report and passed it to its engineering team, but no fix has been announced.
androidauthority.com
· 2026-08-31
As sleep monitoring devices become more widespread and sleep-enhancement technology moves from treating disorders to optimizing rest, employers and institutions are gaining new tools to measure and potentially demand better sleep from workers. A 2016 Dutch Data Protection Authority ruling already found that companies tracking employees' sleep via wearable devices violated privacy law, since such data counts as sensitive health information and consent from employees can't be truly voluntary given workplace power imbalances.
nature.com
· 2026-08-25
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