Sex sells, after all.

No one likes to think of it that way, but there's a lot of truth in it.

In the early days of the web, there was a lot of doubt that people would be willing to hand out their credit card details over the internet. Many investors were wary to fund legitimate business ideas. Then some cheaply set up porn sites quickly proved that yeah, people will to anything for better porn. Concept proven, investors were sold and the web exploded.

And for ages, porn has driven demand for faster websites and higher-resolution monitors and such. Sure it's not the only thing, but whenever I hear analyst insisting on giving games credit for this without mentioning porn I have to laugh.

Like it or not, porn has always been an important player in the advance of technology. And yes, it's behind ai and robotics too.

I hope this moniker catches fire.

given to users of Google's wearable spy devices years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Glass

…

Concerns have been raised by various sources regarding the intrusion on privacy, and the etiquette and ethics of using the device in public and recording people without their permission.[108][109][110] Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, claims that Glass could be seen as a way to become even more isolated in public, but the intent was quite the opposite: Brin views checking social media as a constant "nervous tic", which is why Glass can notify the user of important notifications and updates and does not obstruct the line of sight.[111]
Additionally, there is controversy that Google Glass would cause security problems and violate privacy rights.[112][113][114]

Organizations like the FTC Fair Information Practice work to uphold privacy rights through Fair Information Practice Principles (FIPPS), which are guidelines representing concepts that concern fair information practice in an electronic marketplace.[115]


Privacy advocates are concerned that people wearing such eyewear may be able to identify strangers in public using facial recognition, or surreptitiously record and broadcast private conversations.[1] The "Find my Face" feature on Google+ functions to create a model of your face, and of people you know, in order to simplify tagging photos.[116]


Some companies in the US have posted anti-Google Glass signs in their establishments.[117][118] In July 2013, prior to the official release of the product, Stephen Balaban, co-founder of software company Lambda Labs, circumvented Google's facial recognition app block by building his own, non-Google-approved operating system. Balaban then installed face-scanning Glassware that creates a summary of commonalities shared by the scanned person and the Glass wearer, such as mutual friends and interests.[119] Also created was Winky, a program that allows a Google Glass user to take a photo with a wink of an eye, while Marc Rogers, a principal security researcher at Lookout, discovered that Glass can be hijacked if a user could be tricked into taking a picture of a malicious QR code, demonstrating the potential to be used as a weapon in cyberwarfare.[120]

… more … legal issues … government bans …

(We’ve been here before.)

"after an investigation by Swedish newspapers found that workers at a Kenya-based subcontractor are reviewing footage from customers’ glasses, which included sensitive content, like nudity, people having sex, and using the toilet."

The perverts here are the subcontractors, presumably watching user's private footage, that they should not be able to see. I'd imagine the same shit is happening when people use their phones to do the same and the footage is backed up to the cloud. Perverts end up watching it.

What am I missing?

The creep factor is extremely high when people record nudity, sex, and toileting when they KNOW the days goes to Meta’s servers.

With the expectation that the content, while going to 'meta's servers', will still be password protected. My supposition from the opening paragraph is that USERS are pissed that what they thought was their OWN content is not protected/private. The Subcontractors are the perverts here is the way I took it.

Do you regularly see other people naked/having sex besides you and your partner? I don't. The vast majority of people never come across other people naked and/or having sex unless it's themselves, in private. It's not okay for subcontractors to be reviewing the content of the people's glasses recordings (or their phone's recordings). Someone should need a warrant for that.

that it was all or mostly recorded with consent?

The footage being viewed by others is apparently explained by Meta's TOS. The TechCrunch article l posted about in the LBN thread the OP first links to

https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/05/meta-sued-over-ai-smartglasses-privacy-concerns-after-workers-reviewed-nudity-sex-and-other-footage/

says

I checked the supplemental TOS and found this:

https://www.meta.com/legal/supplemental-terms-of-service/



Even if not spelled out In the TOS, anyone using genAI products with any awareness of how these unethical tools were illegally trained on stolen IP has to be very foolish, very gullible, to trust AI companies NOT to use whatever you provide them with.

Which could include, for instance, any passwords, IDs, credit cards you might be looking at when you or a spouse or partner uses them.

And considering how quickly the AI bros aligned with Trump, you cannot trust them NOT to turn over every bit of information and content they've gathered from you to the Trump regime.

I mean, I don't personally see any naked people or people having sex unless it's me and/or my partner, do you?

The context seems clear to me by this statement that the users are the ones pissed that their OWN privacy was abridge via the subcontractors viewing their (the users) private content they recorded with their glasses.

And I believe the Meta policy refers to the thing you POST like on Facebook and Instagram. They are informing you that THAT stuff (content that you create, share, post, or upload) is not "private", that it belongs to Meta.

Use of the glasses is a different thing, couples could use them to record themselves having sex, expecting that they would be the only ones that have permission to view that content (that's not a 'post', but it probably does get recorded to the cloud), but the subcontractors have violated that expectation, ergo, THEY are the "perverts".

Though I suppose it's possible someone could like go to a sex club with them on and record others having sex w/o their consent, I'm not saying its impossible to record that kind of content surreptitiously, more clandestinely than they could with a phone. But then I don't see how subcontractors viewing the materials are the proper ones to bust them for doing so. You think there should be a staff of "police" overseeing everything everyone records to find that sort of thing, when the vast majority of people expect their glasses video content to be private?

recognize Meta smart glasses as recording devices, and even those people who do may not realize the light to indicate recording can be temporarily or permanently disabled.

I suggest you reread the TOS I quoted...though your paraphrasing it there shows where you misread it. You wrote:

The words you left out of your very selective misreading of the TOS:

create
share
upload

It isn't necessary for you to choose to post something you give Meta access to for them to claim the right to use it.

or using their tools to either create content from scratch, or their tools to edit your own content you uploaded (which is a type of creation).

And yes, the glasses have other privacy concerns (phones do as well, the glasses just make secret recordings easier), some of them egregious like facial recognition software. I'm not saying they are not problematic, but in the CONTEXT of this lawsuit, the "problem" is the subcontractors viewing other people's material that THEY expected to be private. The subcontractors should not be doing this, that is the privacy concern in play here, I'm pretty sure. Or at least, that's how I took it.

If you're saying you KNOW that the people who are suing are the people recorded surreptitiously, then go ahead then feel free to inform me as to how you know that?

Consider this your opportunity to prove how dumb Claude.ai is

from people sometimes using them for nonconsensual recording.

Which is why Google's earlier glasses with that ability, Google Glass, earned the nickname "glasshole" for the users.

And why that Wired journalist who reviewed the Meta glasses last fall said he felt like a creep while wearing them.

And that was without the facial recognition software Meta may add to the glasses soon.

Seemed you were arguing that since nobody should have any expectation of privacy per the Meta contract, that the lawsuit must not be about what I was asserting it was about. Sorry if I misread you there, but that's what it seemed like.

Mainly though, the article you posted takes the existence of the lawsuit and riffs on it to make a case that this is in some sense why they are called "pervert glasses", and that doesn't make sense to me because the subcontractors are the perverts here, which is why my first post says what it does. One can certainly make a separate case as to why they're problematic, but in the present case, at issue is Meta's shitty behavior of not protecting footage after marketing the product with implications that it WAS private.

In this case, Meta are the bad guys (failing to fulfill their promise), not the users, so it didn't make sense (to me) to shoehorn in a totally separate matter i.e. misuse of the glasses, onto the framework of the lawsuit. These are two separate concerns is my point

generative AI technology and industry is built on theft and exploitation.

The article in the OP isn't about two totally separate matters, because what was discovered that prompted the lawsuit apparently confirms the glasses were used for recording in situations where it was unlikely people wanted to be recorded.

The subcontractors were working for Meta. Zuckerberg should never be trusted.

" because what was discovered that prompted the lawsuit apparently confirms the glasses were used for recording in situations where it was unlikely people wanted to be recorded.."

I'll humbly invite you a second time to share with me where you are getting that idea from?