Comment by lynx97
12 hours ago
Blind user here. Reality is, we are so disadvantaged in this world that we will gladly accept any tool that is useful. Almost nobody would ever read the TOS. Its a bit like with cars... Sure, there are some urban exceptions, but truth is, if you ask someone to give up their car, they will laugh you out the door.
I'm sorry that you are in this predicament. Many rely on these tools. When something finally works, few are going to walk away because of a long terms of service most of us will never read. That doesn't mean you don't care about privacy though, it just means you are forced into a tradeoff.
With AI glasses like the ones Meta is pushing, the device is not just helping you. It is recording. Photos and videos can be sent back to company servers. Reports show that human reviewers can see very private footage users never meant to share. That includes sensitive personal moments. The device is basically an always-on camera tied to a giant data company.
If you depend on that device to understand the world, that makes you more vulnerable, not less. If ads, errors, or AI hallucinations start shaping what you hear about your surroundings, that affects your only channel of perception. If your daily life is constantly captured and stored, that affects your autonomy.
So yes, many of us will still use the tech. But that is exactly why pushing for strong, clear privacy terms now matters. Accessibility should not mean giving up control over your own life.
Sure, every interaction in society is a tradeoff... However, I must destroy your dreams. Being disabled almost always means surrendering control over your own life to others. Or, better phrased, constantly fighting to keep control from being taken away from you by external, mostly well meaning, forces. But I get it, really. No need to ELI5. I hope the "you" in your explanation was rethorical... because if it wasn't, I definitely feel talked down to. I read the article we are commenting. I am well aware about the problem of hallucination, especially when image LLMs get used to describe the world. I have even done my own empirical tests to get a feel of the extent of the problem. All my comment was trying to say is, that when it comes to assistive technologies which actually provide value, idiology and privacy concerns pretty much go out the window very very fast, much faster then the average HN reader might assume. That is why Meta glasses are very popular amongst the visually impaired. Or do you seriously suggest they (we) are all so naiv as to not know what kind of deal we just struck with the devil?
Full disclosure: I don't own Meta glasses (yet), but I know some users and observe rollout amongst assistive technology resellers.