Comment by jimbo456
2 hours ago
We need to move beyond just banning these glasses - all smart glasses of all kinds - to breaking up these companies. Undo the acquisitions of Insta and Whatsapp - I don't care that will be expensive, thats a shareholders problem.
We should together stop calling devices which film in dressing / locker rooms smart.
These devices record video & sound track serve Ads and do Data fusion
What if you took a cam corder to a locker room? People would be upset, that is not allowed. That would not be nice. This is not nice either
Much like a cell phone, nobody would even really care if you brought a camcorder down so long as you aren't operating it (which is very obvious).
What makes these things gross is that it's not obvious when someone is recording.
Which Meta Glasses try to counter by making it obvious when someone is recording with the recording light; arguably more obvious than cell phones.
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I agree we should do something in this instance, but with the speed of which things are changing? Eventually, this tech is going to be undetectable.
"Oh no that's sci-fi and decades away", I really don't think so. I think neuralink, and competitors too, will next move on to reading the visual cortex. They already have plans to push data to the visual cortex, to enable the blind to "see", reading in healthy people seems quite doable.
I expect something like this to happen before 2030.
Regardless, I agree for now? Yes. But the future? I don't see it as blockable forever.
There are two ways we decide how severe the punishment for broken laws is. One is to enable just punishment. The other is deterrent. This may fall into "deterrent is the bigger part of the sentence", where people posting private information receive years in jail as a result.
There is a little bit of a conversation about this here:
https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/other-autre/cndii-cdncii...
And the above certainly covers Meta glasses too.
I think it won't be long before it's the posting of non-consensual imagery that is so criminal, that few will do so. For years in Quebec, sharing of images captured in public isn't really legit. You control "images of yourself", regardless of where they are taken, public places or not:
https://educaloi.qc.ca/en/capsules/your-right-to-control-pho...
And they're so worried about problems with image sharing, they've almost automated the process to deal with it:
https://www.quebec.ca/en/justice-and-civil-status/support-vi...
So this is already being criminalized in a lot of places.
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I don't like it but it's totally normal, especially for youth, to have their cell phones out in locker rooms. Targeting only glasses with this concern is largely out of touch with current behavior.
That isn't normal and it's actively enforced against in gyms and pools where I live.
Glasses are passively recording. Recording with a phone is active (for the most part). You need to take it out and point it at what you are recording...
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What does this have to do with WhatsApp?
Also as much as you might like to punish investors (most of whom just have it in their 401k) because you don't like people with money, there are legal protections and the government can't just do something like that without an actual reason.
WhatsApp is definitely part of Meta's distribution and reach strategy. So it's very relevant.
I don't think OP is trying to punish investors. I think they are saying the overall damage of letting these companies continue the current trend will be worse than the cost of unwinding it now.
I'm an advocate of reformed legislation to enable this.
Why shouldn't we punish investors? This is the risk when you invest in these types of companies where regulation is nonexistent. It's not the job of the government to make sure rich shareholders stay green.
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I know that shareholders just want monopolies and free money and don't want to compete for it, but we should make them. Like we did before Ronald Reagan and Robert Bork shot the kneecaps out of our antitrust law. It's not about punishing shareholders, it's about making them earn their keep. It's just good business.
Also as much as you might like to punish investors (most of whom just have it in their 401k) because you don't like people with money, there are legal protections and the government can't just do something like that without an actual reason.
As much as you might like to defend the wealthy because the only thing you care about is money, regardless of the human cost, doesn't mean that we can't use the law and the government to limit the harm being done to humans.
I know what you are going to say. "Fuck people! I only worship money!" but I think you need to look beyond just the financial aspects of this situation.
I think the point is, it's been a good system, but it's out of control. It's not that people don't like people having money, it's people don't like the status quo of watching society and the world be destroyed by generating share holder value alone. We need a better system. Not saying that is communism or whatever, but the monopolies and corruption are off the charts.
> I don't care that will be expensive, thats a shareholders problem.
"I have no empathy for the two-thirds of Americans who will lose their personal savings that they need to retire" really undermines your case.
Edit: thoughtful tradeoffs against the stock market are reasonable. "I don't care" is not a carefully weighed tradeoff
It's also possible that it would benefit those same people. It doesn't necessarily need to be expensive.
This line of argument ("think of the retirees!!!") could be used in many cases, however when is it acceptable to break companies for the greater (non-financial) good?
On a parallel, can't we criticize any decision reducing the market cap of companies as an attack on the retirement portfolios? Say, if we required connected glasses to display a red light of more than x lumens when recording, would that be ok, even if it decreased Meta's market cap?
> decision reducing the market cap of companies as an attack on the retirement portfolios
Any decision that results in a long term net loss across the entire public economy? Yes.
That's something that hurts a lot of people and that hurt should be carefully weighed against whatever the assumed benefit is. Sometimes that's worth it, sometimes it's not
But it's never OK to just hand wave with "well I don't care about that class of people so screw them"
And let's not move the goalposts. OPs proposal was a corporate breakup of massive scale, not a minimum lumens requirement.
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> Undo the acquisitions of Insta and Whatsapp - I don't care that will be expensive, thats a shareholders problem.
Yikes. I thought this was America.
The US has laws against monopolies and trusts.
Yep, and heck, on occasion we even enforce them.
When we do, it can be pretty effective.
I just wish we did so more frequently, and, more importantly, that the consumer welfare principle hadn't emerged as the prevalent antitrust standard.
Those laws have been nerfed since the Ronald Reagan / Robert Bork / Consumer Welfare Standard takeover. We should un-nerf the anti-trust laws.
That sounds like “we’ve always done things this way and therefore will continue doing things this way”.
Which is a great mindset if you want to ignore new information and avoid improving the status quo.