Nap Paladin

TL;DR: On June 4, 2026, the Electronic Frontier Foundation published “Move Fast, Surveil Things,” confirming through static code analysis that Meta has already deployed facial recognition code to millions of Ray-Ban smart glasses. The internal “Name Tag” feature converts every face in view into a 2,048-number faceprint array and matches it against a stored database. An EFF researcher activated the feature in debug mode and watched the glasses detect a known face in real time. Meta’s spokesperson says this is just “evidence of exploration.” Exploration doesn’t ship to millions of devices. This is staging for launch, and internal documents show Meta planned to flip the switch while privacy groups were too busy to fight back. ...You don’t need a central database when every user builds their own local faceprint collection. The faces still get scanned. The biometric data still gets created. Meta just outsources the storage to your phone, and the legal liability to you.

-via State of Surveillance, June 7, 2026. Emphasis mine.

But good news! There are things you can do to protect yourself and your community. As quoted from the article:

What You Can Do

Assume You’re Being Scanned

If someone near you is wearing Ray-Ban Meta glasses, treat it like a running camera, because it is. The small LED indicator that’s supposed to signal recording can be covered with tape, and Meta’s “always enabled” mode processes video without activating it [6]. The Nearby Glasses app can detect Meta Ray-Bans via Bluetooth.

Lock Down Your Meta Profiles

Name Tag matches faces against Meta platform data. If you have Facebook or Instagram accounts, set your profile photo to something that isn’t your face. Make your accounts private. Better yet, consider whether you need them at all. Every photo of your face on Meta’s platforms is training data for identifying you later.

Support the Legal Pushback

The EFF, ACLU, and EPIC are fighting this on legal, legislative, and technical fronts. Texas’s investigation proves state-level enforcement works: Meta paid $1.4 billion last time Texas came knocking over biometrics. Push for biometric privacy laws in your state. Illinois and Texas showed the way.

Don’t Buy the Glasses

Every pair sold expands the surveillance network. Meta has shipped millions already. Each one is a camera pointed at everyone else. If you own a pair, understand that the facial recognition code is on your device right now, and Meta can activate it with a software update whenever they decide the political moment is right.

Hey good news they're already quietly removed the code!!!!

Public outcry matters!!!

It's like how a bunch of celebs were big on body positivity and fat liberation...until Ozempic dropped and it turns out no, none of them ever believed any of that! They just pretended to bcs up until now healthy, long term weight loss was impossible so they had no choice but to cope by learning to love themselves no matter how they looked...but now that it's here we can go back to the truth! Being fat is ugly and gross and unhealthy and you should starve yourself and take experimental meds right now so you can be skinny which is what ALL humans are clearly supposed to be!! Yeah that body positivity stuff was fun, but come on. We know you actually just wanna be skinny and think being fat is a fate worse than death.

That's what it feels like to me. Every single time. Honestly in a lot of other areas too, one of the big issues with the left is that they really do seem to think that Republicans are right about how things work and should work but we just pretend otherwise because it's the right thing to do and it reduces suffering. Which seems fine, but you cannot be an effective leftist like this. You do actually have to deconstruct your beliefs and biases and world systems, you can't go around like "well yeah we aren't gonna kill disabled people that's eugenics and it's wrong" when you clearly don't actually think it's wrong. You think eugenics would work but implementing it would be uncivilized, and it shows. You have to actually understand that racism and ableism and all other forms of bigotry are not just cruel, but entirely incorrect.