influencing technology / harassment aid
Noticed: 30 June 2026
Location: Tottenham Court Road Station
technology
technology
Currently sprawled across Tottenham Court Road station, Meta advertises their new and improved generation of smart glasses.
This product is not seminal in how it makes taking photos and videos more seamless. Go Pros and other wearable cameras have existed for at least the past decade, but none have involved as little bodily functions as simply, ‘Hey Meta, take a photo.’
This actually only one of several posters across the station, (and indeed, the world), it is a major campaign. Each person pictured in similar glamour, sporting a different version of the eyewear. At the least, this is the latest piece of kit for content creation to date, with AI supportive features for direct uploads to Meta platforms like Instagram.
The wearable cameras of the past were often associated with the great outdoors. No free hand to take content while skiing? Buy a Go Pro. Content has long been taken underwater and supported other adventures.
But they do not need an activity, lifestyle, or even a pretty landscape to promote wearable cameras anymore. Clearly, it is widely understood that taking photos and videos is just what people do now. And here’s how to do it by simply wearing your favourite sunglasses. It’s perfect!
But since creation, these have attracted concerns around privacy. And I want to apply this to a very specific risk this technology may pose.
With these, you do not need to operate an object in itself to take a photo. Forgetting that people used to use cameras, even with a smartphone, it is obvious to others around you when you are recording. Sure, it is still possible to use your phone without people knowing, but more difficult than to simply tap your sunglasses.
What I don’t know if Meta appreciates in their Golden State innovation, is they have unleashed something that at least progresses technology towards taking photos of people without their consent, permission, or even knowing.
See where I’m going with this?
In London, over half of women report feeling harassed on the tube, (let alone how many experience it). The statistics for violence against women and girls, that involves leering, stalking, unsolicited sexual advances, has not exactly gone away. Year by year, VAWG increases by over 7%, and I wonder if we have arrived at another situation where technology creates more opportunities for harassment. The other example I think of is AI and ‘deep fake’ technology, that very essentially creates pornography of people without their consent.
I would ask if Meta and others realise how their products can subvert etiquette. Now that, less than 20 years after the birth of the smartphone, you don’t even need to point a thick rectangle at anything to invade someone’s privacy.
I can’t definitively say that perverts will now go and buy these and take non-consensual photos of people for goodness knows what. But they now can.
