Whistleblowers who exposed Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses fired

A short while back, a bombshell investigation revealed that the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses are spying on you, sending footage of your most intimate moments to workers in Kenya. To perhaps no one’s surprise, Meta has responded to the report by terminating its contract with the company in Kenya and letting over a thousand workers lose their jobs.

Ray-Ban smart glasses spying on users

The Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses require you to accept a few terms and conditions and connect to the internet to access most of the features that are promised.

However, hidden within all of the privacy clauses are statements that say that your footage and usage habits might be subject to manual review from time to time. According to the workers who came forward, this was happening way too often.

Sharing users’ intimate moments

The workers who spoke out about this misconduct revealed that they were tasked with training Meta’s AI models by reviewing user footage and identifying objects and actions.

Due to the frequency of the footage being sent to Kenya, these workers were often privy to intimate moments and sensitive data like banking details.

Meta was aware of this, alleged the workers. Hence, none of them were allowed to bring in phones or other electronic devices at work. Security cameras would monitor their every move to ensure compliance.

Meta terminates contract with Sama

Sama, the company contracted by Meta for this purpose, has had its contract terminated. It claims that 1,108 workers will now lose their jobs as a result.

At first, Meta had said that the terms and conditions that users agree to were very clear about this happening occasionally. Now the company is claiming that Sama did not meet its standards. Sama has rejected these claims and said that Meta never notified it of a lack of standards.

The Africa Tech Workers Movement believes that Meta wanted Sama’s employees to stay quiet.

An awful welcome to XR

I love XR (Extended Reality) and had always praised Meta for all of the work that it has done for this industry. Ever since the initial report came out, I have been very bummed. I suppose you can’t teach an old dog new tricks after all.

This entire fiasco has been horrible. Meta’s response to it all has been even worse. The company has all but confirmed that it had been involved in some very shady practices.

This is also why I cannot wait for some other, perhaps more moral, company to enter the market. As for the workers who spoke out, I can only commend their courage and ethics and wish them a quick reemployment.

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