With smart glasses, Meta holds all the cards but fails to play them well

Except, in recent months, Meta’s been playing its cards all wrong. First there was the NYT report that Meta was looking to roll out facial recognition tech for the glasses while privacy advocates were distracted. Then there was the Wired report that said Meta had silently shipped — but not activated — that tech to existing glasses. Now, there’s a Financial Times report that alleges Meta wants these glasses to record 24/7. Outside these larger beats, Meta has done things like remove the ability to opt out of voice recordings training its AI . Its executives occasionally say tone-deaf things like those who eschew smart glasses will be at a “cognitive disadvantage.” And amid legitimate privacy concerns following bad actors misusing the tech, the company has seeded these glasses to content creators alongside a splashy campaign with Kylie Jenner — one of the most visible but polarizing celebrities.

In a vacuum, a gaffe or two happens. When you screw up this many times, it starts to look like you’re purposefully missing the point.

Ananthakrishnan is skeptical that smart glasses will take off outside specific workplaces, not just because of social stigma, but because societal attitudes toward Big Tech companies and what’s shared online have shifted. Case in point, Meta’s executives have often pointed to the early days of the smartphone in defense of smart glasses. Back then, the public was unsure about these devices, but eventually, everyone figured out what the acceptable social norms ought to be. Ananthakrishnan disagrees.

“Tech companies are not at all looked upon with favor right now. Compounded with the fact that we live in an age of social media, where anything that we say and everything that we do — we could be liable for it. There’s a lot more awareness that there are bad people on the internet who could do really terrible things compared to the smartphone era,” says Ananthakrishnan. She also points out how people feel about individual privacy is different than when you are responsible for others’ privacy.

Take smartwatches. Ananthakrishnan notes that people are willing to risk their own health data privacy because there’s a clear benefit to their goals. However, if there are negative outcomes — for example, your health data getting leaked to your employer — you’re the only one who suffers, and you’re the only victim. With smart glasses, the privacy calculus changes. You’re the person risking others’ privacy, possibly without consent — the perpetrator.

So is it even possible for Meta — or any other smart glasses company — to reassure a skittish public? Or are its recent attempts simply too little, too late?

“There’s not much Meta can do to convince me they genuinely care about user privacy when their whole business model is built on invading it,” says Kendall Schrohe, executive director of the Attention Sphere, one of the advocacy groups affiliated with the anti-Meta glasses ads in DC and New York City. “At the end of the day, there is nothing privacy-preserving about sunglasses with a built-in camera. This is surveillance technology and no amount of tweaking changes that.”

Schrohe says that Meta’s credibility is further undermined by the fact that it, along with other tech companies, reportedly lobbied to weaken state privacy bills .

Barring a dramatic overhaul, it’s going to be hard for Meta and Big Tech at large to change the current narrative. And it’s tempting to think that, perhaps, some tech execs might throw up their hands and give up on pursuing proactive privacy at all. To lean into the surveillance dystopia until external actors, like legislators and private businesses, force their privacy hand.

But the reality is that we’re all watching to see what card Meta — the current leader in this space — plays next. Continuing to run the same strategy all but ensures the company will either hand the mantle to Google or Apple, or tank smart glasses as a whole. If Meta wants even the smallest chance of succeeding, it simply has to do something different.