Meta Can’t Stop the Avalanche of Content Filmed on Pervert Glasses

Meta’s Starfire AI smart glasses, designed by Kylie Jenner.

Last month, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said that the platform would ban videos filmed on Meta smart glasses that harass women in public places — but it seems the ban isn’t working.

After Mosseri personally delivered the news in July, Meta announced that two large pickup artist accounts — pickup artists refer to men who approach women on the street to try and get their contact details — were pulled from Instagram.

However, an investigation by Business Insider found that not only was one of those accounts reactivated not long after the news, but dozens of accounts and hundreds of videos delivering similar content remain visible on Instagram; Meta says the large account has been banned again.

While similar videos also appear on other platforms, including TikTok and YouTube, these types of videos are a particular issue for Meta, which not only supplies the glasses but also provides an entire ecosystem for the resulting content in the form of Instagram and Facebook.

This kind of intimidating behavior, filming young women without consent and posting it online, has given the glasses a bad reputation; they’ve been dubbed “pervert glasses.”

It’s led to some users declaring they’re scared to wear them in public for fear of reprisals and Apple, which is set to launch its own model, is trying to avoid succumbing to the same fate.

“There is a backlash, and then Meta tends to minimize its own responsibility for it. They talk about how this is user-generated behavior or an error in enforcement,” Carolina Are, a digital criminologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science, tells Business Insider.

“But they don’t recognize the systemic issues that are causing that to happen, and they take no accountability for what their policies or infrastructure have done to enable that behavior.”

Another study carried out by Oligarch Watch found similarly that videos of men harassing women continue to surface on Instagram.

Instagram detects when a video is filmed by its smart glasses and displays a small icon of Ray-Ban’s famous Wayfarer frames, which users can tap on and it takes them straight to a store where they can buy a pair.

Mosseri said Instagram is trying to “fight” harassment videos, but Oligarch Watch says that “fight” has been “largely hollow.”