Published : 29 Aug 2026, 01:41 AM
Updated : 08 Sep 2026, 09:36 AM
Meta has rolled out a software update for its smart glasses and launched a new marketing campaign after a growing privacy backlash threatened to derail one of the company's most ambitious hardware products.
The glasses, which feature a camera built into the temples, were designed to let users take photos and videos without reaching for a phone.
But the feature has drawn fierce criticism, with viral videos showing the glasses being used to film people without their knowledge -- earning them the nickname "pervert glasses."
Meta's glasses are equipped with a small LED light on the outer frame that is supposed to illuminate whenever the camera is active, alerting people nearby that they are being filmed, reports The Independent.
But users discovered a loophole: starting a recording and then covering the light allowed filming to continue undetected.
The workaround fuelled concerns that the glasses were enabling non-consensual recording, with pick-up artists and pranksters among those shown exploiting the feature in videos that spread widely online.
Meta's vice president for augmented reality, Alex Himel, announced the update on the company's Threads platform.
"The camera won't start recording if the LED is blocked, but some people try to bypass this by starting a recording and then covering it up," he said.
"A fix for this is starting to roll out -- the camera will now stop working if the light is covered during a recording."
Himel added that "only a tiny minority of people try to get around" the existing protections, arguing that the lengths they must go to shows Meta's safeguards are working.
The latest update follows a similar patch last month that addressed physical tampering with the capture light.
It also comes days after a newly published patent revealed Meta is exploring hardware-level kill switches to prevent camera misuse.
Meta has invested heavily in its smart glasses as a cornerstone of its vision for augmented reality and wearable technology.
The backlash had grown serious enough to threaten that rollout, prompting the company to pair its technical fixes with a new marketing campaign emphasising the recording light.
Several of the new advertisements stress that the LED "lets everyone around you know" when filming is under way.
