I know some of the criticism of Meta: many people don't like the way their products are optimized for engagement. I've heard about their weird AI bots interacting on their platform as if they were people. And I know people of all political stripes have had complaints about content moderation and their algorithm.
But all of that is within the bounds of the law and their terms of service.
None of it would remotely approach something like: bypassing the well-advertised features in the glasses that show when the camera is in use and secretly recording things to train AI. It's hard to imagine any company's lawyers approving something like that. (this sounds like what many commenters believe is happening)
FWIW, I suspect this is the relevant section of the Privacy policy:
> "When you use the Meta AI service on your AI Glasses (if available for your device), we use your information, like Media and audio recordings of your voice to provide the service."
Meta has consistently and repeatedly shown an absolute lack of respect for user privacy for basically as long as they’ve existed as a company. I’m honestly not certain there’s anything fully out of the question as far as things they might do, regardless of what their policies might say.
They bought a “privacy” VPN app and used it to harvest data, then abused Apple’s enterprise app deployments to continue to ship the app after it was banned from the app store: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo
You missed the cases where the facebook app ran a local webserver on your smartphone which the facebook ad trackers would send data to to be able to track you across all websites, breaking GDPR laws and circumventing browser third-party cookie controls?
Perhaps I'm ignorant.
I know some of the criticism of Meta: many people don't like the way their products are optimized for engagement. I've heard about their weird AI bots interacting on their platform as if they were people. And I know people of all political stripes have had complaints about content moderation and their algorithm.
But all of that is within the bounds of the law and their terms of service.
None of it would remotely approach something like: bypassing the well-advertised features in the glasses that show when the camera is in use and secretly recording things to train AI. It's hard to imagine any company's lawyers approving something like that. (this sounds like what many commenters believe is happening)
FWIW, I suspect this is the relevant section of the Privacy policy:
> "When you use the Meta AI service on your AI Glasses (if available for your device), we use your information, like Media and audio recordings of your voice to provide the service."
from: https://www.meta.com/legal/privacy-policy/
if so, "to provide the service" is doing a lot of work
Meta has consistently and repeatedly shown an absolute lack of respect for user privacy for basically as long as they’ve existed as a company. I’m honestly not certain there’s anything fully out of the question as far as things they might do, regardless of what their policies might say.
Two examples that are top of mind…
They exploited browser vulnerabilities not unlike malware to track users’ behavior across the web: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/06/protect-yourself-metas...
They bought a “privacy” VPN app and used it to harvest data, then abused Apple’s enterprise app deployments to continue to ship the app after it was banned from the app store: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo
I'm not an expert on all of Meta's historical criminal activity, but just going back a few months:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/jury-finds-meta-...
Optimized for engagement? I guess heroin is "optimized for engagement" too.
You missed the cases where the facebook app ran a local webserver on your smartphone which the facebook ad trackers would send data to to be able to track you across all websites, breaking GDPR laws and circumventing browser third-party cookie controls?
Please disclose your affiliations
Hah, not meta or anything related