If that feature gets activated one day, will taking down and destroying someones Smart Glasses count as self-defence?
Yes we’re beta testing this feature but we pinky promise, swearsies that we’re never going to actually use it even though we’re beta testing it to make sure it works.
And yet, according to the company’s executives, it’s “dishonest” to inform the public about a piece of unreleased tech that Meta has chosen to incorporate into a consumer product.
Meta referred to the discovery as “sensational” and characterized NameTag as exploratory. “We’ve said before we’re exploring these types of features, and what you’re seeing is just evidence of that exploration,” the company said in a statement to Wired. “Nothing has shipped to consumers and no final decision has been made on what to do here, if anything. If we do decide to roll something out, we will take a and do so with full transparency. One decision we can be clear about—we are not building a central face database.”
“It’s not until [paragraph] four that Wired says this feature is ‘not enabled,’” declared Meta spokesperson and VP of communications Andy Stone. “And then takes until [paragraph] 16 for Wired to reflect that Meta has no existing plans and this is exploratory. And not until [paragraph] ten does Wired quote its own expert saying the feature is not ‘exposed to consumers.’”
“This is more than shoddy reporting, it’s intellectually dishonest,” Stone continued. “Pure advocacy-driven click bait.”
The fact that you’re “exploring” this tech at all is deeply concerning. You’ve done everything possible to erode the trust of the public so why would anyone believe you would do it “thoughtfully”?
“Ok, ok. Everyone calm the fuck down. We haven’t actually released the see-through-clothes-a-vision feature. No consumers have access to it, and it’s not yet been decided that we even will release this tech. We’re just developing and testing this personal x-ray tech to explore the possibilities, that’s all! We think it might have great applications for anatomy education, medical exams and law enforcement.”
“Ah, come on. Don’t get your panties in a wad. Yes yours. I can see them getting all wadded as I speak! Don’t you want to be like Superman, but without any of the moral restraint?”
“Besides you’re not allowed to get mad at us until after we’ve actually unleashed this mass privacy violation tech onto the world. If we do end unilaterally deciding to irrevocably destroy every semblance of modesty, privacy, and personal descretion for sharing one’s own body, we promise, we’ll be completely transparent about it. As transparent as your dress is to these glasses right now. Wowza!”
It’s pretty easy to not get caught surveiling customers.
All you have to do is… Not surveil customers.
The irony of calling out Wire for “Dishonest Reporting tm” while saying this nonsense in your leaked memo is staggering:
But this isn’t the first time in recent months that NameTag has been in the news. In February, the New York Times reported on an internal Meta memo in which Meta discussed plans to install NameTag into its smart glasses. In the striking memo, the tech giant noted that the ethically-fraught feature should ideally be launched “during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns.”
So you know this feature is controversial, you absolutely do plan to release it to the public according to your own internal memos, and you have the nerve to call out a publication for explaining what the feature is and why it’s bad before they explain that it’s not currently implemented and you claim it won’t be. Sloppy work, guys.
That’s proper evil planning in action, 10/10 will evil again.
Try not being evil then if you’re mad about being caught.
“What? Evil? Not us! No, we’re just disappointed that the heavy marketing blitz to get kids to wear these while we definitely would not be taking secret pictures and vids has to be scrapped. ~For now.~” –Facebook execs probably
If it’s not enabled and “exploratory”, then why the fuck did you deploy it, fuckface?
Furious? Cuckerberg was spying on us and THEY are furious?? Get fucked assholes!
It seems more like that he’s furious that their enormous spy network was not quite deployed yet and was discovered before it could do the real damage that it was designed to do, and now that it has been discovered, his plot has been foiled! In the most supervillainous sort of way
Probably because they were dogfooding, testing/using their own product before release.
Bad News, everyone!!!
Quantum Fuckery!
It makes me delighted that meta-execs are furious. Gotta savor those bits of Shadenfreude Joy!
Code uncovered by journalists revealed that Meta quietly embedded facial recognition tech into its AI-enabled smart glasses
Last week, Wired reported that Meta discreetly moved to infuse facial recognition tech into its popular smart glasses, as evidenced by a piece of code discovered in the Meta AI app by the magazine’s journalists. The unreleased feature, internally dubbed “NameTag,” would “transform faces captured by Meta’s glasses into unique biometric signatures, commonly known as faceprints, and check each one against faceprints stored on the user’s phone — a database that’s currently configured to receive updates from Meta,” as Wired put it.
Though it’s not yet actively available for consumers.
Doesn’t mean meta isn’t already tagging every face it can and logging them then selling the data
So …it’s literally FaceBook
NameTag
Wat a patronizing as fuck codename to boot 🤬
It’ll go perfectly with the Luigi app that highlights millionaires in your vision.
Eh, it’s a name you could easily also encounter from a FOSS project without malicious intent.
