Meta glass holes have arrived

It happened: people are walking into public spaces again with a video recording computer on their head. Only this time Face Computer is selling Meta, not Google.

Say hello to the Mater Glasshole.

As buyers got a chance to try out the new Meta Quest 3 headset for the first time over the weekend, some started posting videos of themselves interacting with the real world. instead of from the game

Sure, it’s great to break down your walls and gun down low-poly bad guys, but isn’t it technologically impressive that Meta’s new headset lets you do it? cook food or sweep your floor or enjoy Fine coffee on a beautiful day Ever take the device off? This enables Quest 3’s full-color passthrough video

It didn’t take long for people to push the boundaries, both technologically and socially. Jay Mayo entered the New York Comic-Con Hall With the headset on, you can record clips of strangers on the go.

Filmed by Kukurio59 himself Waiting for the elevator, which is truly one of the most socially difficult places for humanity. (They were also photographed Some less public protests.)

And in the video you’ve already seen at the top of this post, XR and AI supporter Six Leave almost completely hacked Glasshole to go straight to a coffee shop in San Francisco and order without bothering, to hide the cafe’s address.

Here’s the video again:

I spoke to Ray Ng, co-owner of the fiddle fig cafe in question, and he found it “hilarious and funny.” Ng says Lev didn’t sit down and drink coffee with headphones on. “They took the player, sat down and that was it,” he told me over the phone. The whole thing will be over in “probably 5 minutes.”

But that won’t necessarily stop other attention seekers from following in Lev’s footsteps, and they can encourage each other. “Now I don’t feel guilty walking around with headphones on during comics.” May Liv answerThe artist, who filmed himself walking through New York Comic-Con, watched the video of Cafe Liv.

Of course, we’ve seen this before — a decade ago, public opinion turned against Google Glass, with public employers in particular speaking out against the technology. Restaurants, movie theaters, casinos, bars, and other public venues have banned headphones entirely — a woman in San Francisco was allegedly attacked for wearing Google Glass, and an XR patron in Paris was assaulted while using a similar-looking device.

But that was a decade ago, and I argued last year that our definition of privacy, our tolerance for public photography, and our resistance to wearable technology have changed dramatically since the launch of Google Glass. Maybe this time there will be no problem? The ubiquitous smartphone camera is now the norm, and small businesses often use the effective material. Ng named this story the Fiddle Fig Cafe.

I wonder if the Meta Quest 3 is poised to be the glass-hole headset of choice. While the company has carefully thought out how to ensure that Ray-Ban glasses don’t fall into the same trap as its glasses, it has released a privacy and data protection policy. Instructions for using these glasses in public placesQuest 3 doesn’t appear to have similar published guidelines – including proactively informing people you’re recording.

It’s also hard for passers-by to tell when the Quest 3 is recording. It just pulses slowly with a white light and that’s what it does The light is already on by default. When I asked my wife if she thought I was recording, she said she had no idea.

On the other hand, if I see someone walking into a coffee shop with a white object over their face equipped with multiple camera holes, I will automatically assume that they are recording absolutely everything.

Meta did not respond to a request for comment.