Smart glasses have made public harassment easier to record.
A user filmed himself accosting British comedian Diane Morgan during a television shoot on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. The video, titled “rizzing on cunk,” appeared on TikTok in May and has collected over one million views—turning an ugly encounter into content for an audience that apparently did not demand better.
One netizen summed up the reaction: “I do not know how you film that video, watch it back, decide ‘This is how I want to present myself to a globally connected population,’ and post it.” The incident has renewed concerns about Meta’s Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, which critics have nicknamed “pervert glasses” because users can record people without their knowledge.
The camera is visible, but not always noticeable
Meta’s glasses contain cameras built into the frames, allowing users to take photos and videos without pulling out a phone. A white capture LED on the front blinks when the glasses record content, and Meta says the LED cannot be switched off.
Meta also states that the camera becomes disabled if the LED is covered or blocked. That safeguard does not solve the central problem: people nearby may never notice the small light, understand what it means, or know that someone is recording them.
Gene Kang, a partner at law firm Rivkin Radler LLP, contrasted the glasses with a conventional phone. “If you’re holding up your phone to somebody’s face, they’re going to know. If they’re not aware that they’re being recorded, then I think that presents a different issue.”
That issue has already moved beyond online arguments. England and Wales banned the glasses from courts, while Meta’s Instagram disabled several accounts for violations connected to live feeds from Meta glasses. An Instagram spokesperson said, “We don’t want harassing content on our platforms and take it down when we find it.”
Harassment is showing up across the footage
A University of Sydney study examined over 350 videos and found that 60% involved potentially harassing behavior. In 43% of the videos, women faced derogatory commentary or doxxing.
Those numbers make the Diane Morgan video look less like a one-off stunt and more like a symptom of how recording tools get used when social limits fall away. The camera sits on the wearer’s face, the footage can reach a platform in moments, and the person being filmed may have no clear way to stop it.
Jim Waldo, a professor of computer science at Harvard, described the wider problem this way: “We are living in weird times. The technology is changing. It’s the combination of the Meta Glasses with facial recognition, AI, and a number of other sorts of technologies that are all coming together and putting us in an environment that we just aren’t prepared to deal with yet.”
Waldo also drew a blunt line between the wearer’s safety and everyone else’s. “They’re making it safe for the consumer. They’re not making it safe for the people around the consumer.” That distinction matters because smart glasses can place recording, recognition, and distribution inside an ordinary-looking object.
People have started using face markings and singing copyrighted songs to avoid being recorded by Meta glasses. Those workarounds show how privacy protection is shifting onto the people who may be filmed, forcing them to alter their appearance or behavior in public.
Professor Yves Jeanrenaud built an open-source app called Nearby Glasses to notify users when Meta Glasses are nearby. The project reflects a growing demand for tools that reveal when wearable cameras enter the space around them.
Dr. Milica Stilinovic put the concern plainly: “We should all be very concerned.” The glasses are not only a new camera platform; they are a test of whether consent can survive technology designed to make recording effortless.
Based on
