TL;DR: you now need to pay a $20/month “meta premium” subscription to use a 100% offline feature that runs on your own malware-ridden smartglasses.
If you don’t subscribe, you can use the feature that is already included in the hardware that you already paid for 3 hours each month
The now-paywalled feature boosts the voice of the speaker in front of you, something that even low-end ANC earphones are doing now. 5 minutes of free usage per day is basically nothing.
They use the fact that they have multiple microphones and some audio processing to isolate the voice of the person from the background noise. Taking your earbuds out would make it harder to hear them, not easier.
In noisy areas (like a bar) it can be the difference between being able to understand the person you’re with and being deafened by the background noise.
It’s all done on your device so it makes zero sense that they would charge a subscription other than as a means of financial extortion to use the hardware that you paid for.
This. Honestly they’re amazing on airplanes, since you can still talk and hear all the announcements / flight attendants without the background noise.