Guerrilla London Bus Ads Mock Kylie Jenner's Meta Glasses Campaign
The UK activism group Everyone Hates Elon launched a lenticular bus ad campaign in London to critique Meta's new smart glasses collaboration with Kylie Jenner. The spoof advertisement flips between a promotional image and a skeletal X-ray with the tagline 'We're always watching,' highlighting deep concerns about privacy, consent, and the potential for sexual harassment using hidden cameras. This protest underscores the widening gap between technological advancement and ethical responsibility as surveillance tools enter everyday life.
Billionaires could fund cures for cancer — so why are they funding glasses for perverts instead?
- wolvoleo
Wow really well done with the lenticular effect. I immediately recognised the reference to They Live too.
That must have cost a lot. To get posters like that made.
- paxys
I don't understand why Meta is so insistent on making the camera and creepy video recording the primary feature of these glasses. They do have a ton of other uses. The speakers are genuinely great. It's useful to be able to hear notifications while walking. Having a decent AI for asking random questions is nice as well. It supports live translation. And unlike Airpods it doesn't tune out the rest of the world, which I like. And the new models have a display, which could be useful for stuff like maps.
Release a model without a camera and people might actually give it a chance.
- gdulli
It's hard to believe that in the late smartphone era there are people who think they're not online enough already, and want smart glasses so they can be even more online.
- chvid
Ray-Ban Wayfarer used to be a such classic design. By associating them with cameras and Meta, Ray-Ban risks messing that up for good.
- zkmon
Unfortunately, educating people against some technology is not going to help. It should be a state-level mandate to have any effect. Most people are discretion-less, sheep-minded money pockets. Meta and other businesses discovered this fact long ago and exploit it to maximum extent. Their products always target the "sheep-following" aspects, instead of individual usefulness.
- jader201
Could you imagine someone walking around with their phone pointed wherever they look, recording the whole time, as they casually walk down the street, sit at a cafe, or engage in a conversation with you?
How are these things not publicly shamed out of existence?
It feels like each year lately has been a new Black Mirror episode.
- _carbyau_
Basically, "small cameras/microphones, cheap enough to be everywhere" completely changes the "free to take photos/video in public" equation - so that's probably worth revisiting legally.
Clearly there is a difference between someone waving a SLR camera around (digital or film) and the possibilities of today and where the content ends up.
However... the pub/bar/nightclub, gym, pool, etc etc etc isn't public. It is the private property of the owner. So if people don't like them - as is evident it seems - these glasses should hit social resistance.
- gumby
The real killer app form me requires a camera (though it doesn’t need to record photos or video for me to access — I have a phone for that).
I need a device that tells me who I’m talking to if I’ve been introduced to them before and tell me how I know them (This is Bob Dobbs, you first met him in Texas in 1985 and he saved you at that party when you needed some Slack)”. Especially great when I meet someone out of context.
But bad actors mean I’ll probably never get this prosthesis.