Your Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses are showing your intimate moments to workers in Kenya, claims bombshell investigation

A bombshell investigation from last month has put Meta in the spotlight of what could be a major blow to its new business model with the Ray-Ban smart glasses. Hidden behind lengthy terms of service agreements are, according to the report, clauses that allow Meta to share your most intimate moments with workers in Kenya.

Footage of your life sent to Kenya

The lengthy and detailed investigation (translated source) has uncovered some very disturbing facts about using the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses, which have exploded in popularity in the last few years. On the condition of anonymity, workers at a Kenyan company named Sama reveal that they can see everything that people wearing Meta’s glasses are doing.

Sama is a subcontractor to Meta. Its workers, who are called data annotators, sit in large office complexes. Their job is to train Meta AI to recognize everyday items and actions taking place in recorded footage.

These workers are not allowed to bring in phones or video recorders of their own because the work that they are doing deals with people’s most sensitive and intimate moments. They are also under strict non-disclosure agreements and their jobs are on the line if word of their interviews with the investigators gets out.

What goes on behind the Ray-Ban glasses

The report uncovered that Meta’s terms of service and privacy agreements are quickly accepted by most users without going into much detail. However, even if you read through the terms, the company is slightly vague about when a user’s data might be reviewed manually by another person.

To actually make use of the Ray-Ban glasses and Meta AI, users need to consent to sharing their data with the company’s infrastructure. What this often means, however, is that footage from the glasses is sent to Sama, where workers help in training the company’s AI models to recognize everyday items while judging AI answers to user queries.

Unfortunately, as the report uncovered, the glasses are very often sending footage to Kenya without the users ever realizing it. Once you’ve agreed to share data with Meta’s infrastructure, even the simplest of tasks can prompt the glasses to contact the workers at Sama.



Sama’s workers reveal that they are unwittingly privy to users’ most private, most intimate moments. Even bank card details are in plain view whenever the glasses send back footage, let alone other events that no one would ever want anyone else to witness. The company’s software, which is supposed to blur faces when this footage is sent to Kenya, can also sometimes fail to work.

The problem, the report alleges, is that Meta makes it very unclear when its glasses will be recording and sending back footage to Sama. Users are mostly unaware of their private lives being shared with a worker across the globe.

Interviews with former Meta employees, also on the condition of anonymity, come to the conclusion that Meta will do whatever it wants with user data. All the company needs is for customers to agree to their data being shared to improve its services.

The investigators contacted Meta with specific questions about the entire ordeal but received only one answer after two months that just referred to what has already been explained in the privacy clauses. Sama was also contacted for answers and the possibility of an official interview but there was no response.

Not the future we asked for

I’ve been a strong proponent of AR smart glasses replacing smartphones, taking their place as the future of computing. This report has left me feeling deflated.

I suppose I should have known that some sensitive data might be shared with automated systems, but the breadth of what is shared and with whom is just unacceptable. The report goes into a lot more detail about the very private moments that are recorded and sent back to Kenya for manual review.

I wanted some cool glasses to wear in public, I didn’t want this. Meta, and any other companies hopping on the smart glasses bandwagon, are now going to have to do a lot more when it comes to user privacy before I can trust smart glasses again. What a shame.

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