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It was hardly an offensive video. Amid the buzz of the Tour de France finale, Oliver Hooson filmed himself whipping up a delicious-looking flat white for a fellow cycling enthusiast. But after posting the footage on social media, the comments that soon rolled in were a real shock. “PERV,” read one. “Out here pushing creep glasses,” said another. His mistake? Documenting the moment with Meta’s “spy glasses”.
Despite being marketed as the latest must-have gadget, Meta’s smartglasses, which can record video footage while being worn, have faced a vicious backlash, particularly relating to concerns about surveillance. There are widespread fears about the glasses being used to film people, especially women, without their consent, and the resultant footage being posted on social media. This has earned them the label of “pervert glasses”, and content creators, no matter how they are used, have faced a flood of negative comments for deploying them.
Things reached a peak this summer when Kylie Jenner collaborated with Meta to launch a pair, leading to a flurry of influencers showing off their trendy, Kardashian-approved goggles. Some content creators have been forced to apologise for plugging the specs. Rida Tharana, a content creator with 1.6 million followers on Instagram, “took accountability” for taking part in a Meta campaign to promote the glasses, criticising men who misuse them to “record and harass women”. Self-described pickup artists have used the glasses to film themselves trying to chat up women in public without their knowledge, sometimes making disparaging, misogynistic comments afterwards.
As for Hooson, while some of the comments left on his video were “savage”, he is fully in support of their message. “It definitely caught me off guard. It was a real ignorant move,” he says, adding that he hates that the glasses are being used against “women mainly being filmed against their knowledge”. The backlash was even coming from those close to home. “Funnily enough, my wife predicted it. She was going to post a banterous comment in a similar tone to the others but she didn’t press send.”
After posting the video, Hooson, who shares his passion for home design and cycling to his 224,000 Instagram followers, says he lost a “good 50 to 100” followers. He called the term “pervert glasses” a “defence mechanism” to dissuade people from using them. “If everybody gets round that they are pervert glasses, which evidently they have, then it’s a really easy way of limiting sales and the usage of them,” he says. “People do not need any more of their privacy stripped away. I’m fully in support of that.”
His interest in the glasses, which he received at a PR event, was far more innocent. “I saw [chefs at] high-end restaurants filming themselves with the glasses on, showing off their process. It was stupid, poetic and beautiful to watch. I wanted to have a play about and show people the things that I enjoy doing,” he says, adding that it is very hard to capture a point of view (POV) angle otherwise. “It was intended as a simple way of capturing a human POV of my morning coffee routine or my fast cycling descents. I think that’s vastly different from somebody going into the centre of Soho and asking somebody a divisive question and clipping them up for views without their knowledge,” he says.
But, for now, it’s not worth using the glasses. “Would I rather just not have that little fun point-of-view shot for the greater good? Yes, I would definitely get rid of them,” he says.
While the glasses have proved unpopular with some online, they sold 7m pairs in 2025 alone. Meta says the tiny, flashing LED light that activates on the glasses will let people know when they are being filmed, but there have been multiple instances of people complaining they have been videoed without prior knowledge.
In one instance, a woman told the BBC a man had recorded her, and then demanded money to remove the videos from social media. Another woman described being recorded during sexual encounters without her consent. Last month, police in Scotland said they were investigating a far-right TikToker who allegedly filmed himself making sexualised comments to young women and telling a Sikh shopkeeper about a plan to “breed out the white race” without their knowledge.
Restaurants, theatres and pubs in the UK, including Wetherspoons, have even joined in on the backlash, banning the Meta glasses over privacy fears.
Deena Lang, a parenting influencer, first got her hands on a pair of the glasses from Meta. “I didn’t really know what they were capable of,” she says, but she thought they could be a cool gadget for her son. This was especially true as the family were heading to Europe for a trip and the glasses could, very usefully, translate foreign text live.
But things took a turn when Lang wore them to a cooking class. After looking at the footage she had captured, she says she was “horrified because I just kept catching people giving me dirty looks or side-eye. For me, that was a real awakening.” She posted the footage to her 110,000 followers on Instagram with faces blurred out to act as a “cautionary tale”. She was soon flooded with comments criticising the glasses.
She says she felt “a lot of embarrassment” for using them in a public place in the first instance but understood where the criticism had come from, especially after looking at how they are used in nefarious ways. “I still think they can be used for good. People who are blind said the glasses had helped them navigate life better but the negatives just far outweigh the positives,” she says. “I heard from some people who were dancers that men were invading their privacy and wearing them into the clubs. Others said they caught their waxers wearing them during appointments.
“I don’t believe that we are in an age where technology like this can exist without people with bad intentions making use of it.”
As for now, the glasses remain out of sight. “They’re in a drawer,” she says.
A Meta spokesperson said: “We designed our AI glasses with privacy and safety features built in from the start – informed by engagement with safety experts, including women’s safety organisations. Our glasses have always had an LED light that activates whenever someone captures a photo or video for their gallery.
“They also feature tamper detection technology, and we are updating the glasses to disable the camera if they detect the LED was physically tampered with or destroyed. No other kind of camera has done this and we’re proud to lead the industry forward.”
