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from 404 Media
People Are Modding Meta Ray-Bans to Spy On You
Episode Notes
/Transcript
1:00 - A $60 Mod to Meta’s Ray-Bans Disables Its Privacy-Protecting Recording Light
14:48 - Meta's Ray-Ban Glasses Users Film and Harass Massage Parlor Workers
48:38 - The Future of Advertising Is AI Generated Ads That Are Directly Personalized to You
YouTube version: https://youtu.be/zrXPwbNa2U4
Hello, and welcome to the four zero four Media Podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds both online and IRL. Four zero four Media is a journalist founded company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404media.co. As well as bonus content every single week, subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Gain access access to that content at 404media.co.
Joseph:I'm your host, Joseph, and with me are the four zero four media cofounders, Sam Cole
Sam:Hello.
Joseph:Emmanuel Mayberg Hey. And Jason Kebler.
Jason:Hello. Hello.
Joseph:I feel like I've got it down now where when we when I read that intro, it used to be with the music playing my ears because I need it to get the cadence and and the rhythm of the intro. Doing it without now for editing reasons, but I feel like I've got it. Okay.
Sam:That was beautiful.
Joseph:Thank you. Okay. No housekeeping this week, so we'll just get straight into the stories. The first one is written by me and Jason, and the headline is a $60 mod to Meta's Ray Ban disables its privacy protecting recording light. For those who don't know, I'm sure many people do, there's this little light that appears when you use the Meta Ray Ban glasses.
Joseph:And the idea is to, of course, warn people that they might be being recorded. Jason, I bought a pair of these and sent them to you. Do do you have them in front of you?
Jason:Of course. Yes. I do have them. This is not planned. They're right here if you're watching on YouTube.
Jason:I mean, they're like a popular product at this point. So, I mean, I see them in the wild every now and then. I don't know if you guys ever see them, but, like, I sometimes see influencers wearing them, I feel.
Joseph:I don't hang out with many influencers.
Emanuel:I saw them once. I saw them I had an HVAC guy over, and he was wearing them. I was like, oh, this is a use case that really makes sense to me because they're crawling in all these tight spaces, and I was like, oh, are you using them for work to like, you know, show yourself later what you saw or what product number you see and stuff? And he was like, nah, I got these for my birthday, and we took them to Disney World. And he was like, they're kind of cool, but they're useless.
Emanuel:Like, I don't really use them.
Jason:So By influencers, I mean, just like people walking around in LA. It's like there's I feel like I I'm seeing people filming TikToks, like, constantly.
Joseph:Sure. Yeah. And when they are filming, probably there's this white little light that appears on the side. But again, the point of this article is that there is no light on these ones you have. Are you able to hit record now to show them?
Jason:Yeah. So there's a button up here on on the right arm that takes a picture. So I just take a picture. I get a little, like, clicky clacky that tells me and there's no light. And then if I hold it like I am now, there's, like, a little noise that says tells me that it's recording.
Jason:But right now, I'm recording my screen. You know, when I send you this video, you can see how disgusting my desk is and all my Slacks and and stuff like that.
Joseph:But we'll do a POV
Jason:we'll do a POV like here's Jason recording the podcast. But I am recording right now and you can't tell, obviously.
Joseph:Here's all of our confidential business information. Here's here's all of the innards of four zero four media. Here you go. We're live streaming it on Meta without the the light or whatever. Okay.
Joseph:Obviously, people on YouTube could have seen that. If you're an audio listener, which I believe most of you are, I mean, you're not missing much. It's it's just there's no light on the glasses, basically. We'll get into the modification, that sort of thing, but I wanna hear more about your experience first in that. I mean, I'm looking at them through the camera now.
Joseph:They look like completely ordinary glasses, obviously. When you receive them in the mail, what was that like? Like, did they is if everything looked legit, basically?
Jason:Yeah. I mean, so I have, like, purchased modded hardware before in my life, most notably PlayStation one that had a mod chip added to it. And it was like which let you play pirated games. This was so long ago, so it's outside the statute of limitations.
Joseph:I was gonna say.
Emanuel:Yeah.
Jason:But, basically, it's like, I don't know. My neighbor did that, and you soldered, like, a chip onto the inside of it, and, you know, there was not, like, the sheen of this as a factory product. Whereas this, it came in the original box. It was clear that it had been opened because there's, like, a little pull tab, and the pull tab had been taken off, but that was literally the only indication that these glasses had been opened in any way. Like, there is there's, like, a sticker that comes with it that goes
Joseph:like thing or something?
Jason:The it's a seal that's a sticker that is, like, in the bridge of the nose, and the glasses don't work until you remove that. That was still on there, which I thought was kind of notable. You know, the the glasses were very clean. Like, there was no indication that they had been altered or touched in any way, shape, or form, and they they work perfectly fine. Like, you know, they come in a Ray Bans case, which, like, this is the glasses case if you're on YouTube, and it's also the charger.
Jason:And they were in that. Like, there there was no real indication that these had been modded in any way, shape, or form. And, like, the the app didn't notice. There there's, like, a Meta AI app that you have to download and, like, you have to pair it with your phone and you have to pair it with the app, and there's, like, no indication of any sort that that anything had happened to these glasses.
Joseph:Yeah. Do you wanna swap places for a second? Maybe you wanna ask me some questions. Because I I came across this originally. And then, again, you handled more the practical part.
Joseph:I did more the sort of reporting part.
Jason:Yeah. So, I mean, how did you originally find them?
Joseph:Yeah. So I got an email, I believe, from a four zero four media reader, which as we've said many times, is where a ton of our tips come from. And I think they said something like their brother was watching YouTube and they got this weird advert for these modified meta Ray Bans for some reasons. They went back and they they found the link and they sent it to me. And it was basically just a YouTube video where this person was, first of all, advertising this modification, but he was also like basically doxxing his customers where he would say, oh, this is Susan's pair of glasses.
Joseph:This is Dave's pair of glasses or whatever. And he was saying, I'm gonna ship this out, blah, blah, blah. You ordered this variation, that sort of thing. And I know that was interesting for a number of reasons. First, that it's on YouTube, so it's almost like a content moderation thing there ever so slightly.
Joseph:Secondly, the fact that this modification is happening at all and that apparently works. Of course, we bought it to verify, but that was very, very interesting to me that somebody could disable the light in this for a very popular product and then film people without them knowing. And then thirdly, doxing your customers is pretty strange as well. But that's how we came across it, and, you know, we bought a pair and and then sent them to you. Yeah.
Jason:Yeah. And they came pretty quickly. Another sort of notable thing is that, like, the way that the glasses work are you record or take photos. And then within the Meta AI app, there's, like, a glasses tab, and then you import the videos and photos into that app, and they go on to your camera roll. And there were maybe, like, eight or 10 photos and videos that were already on the device, and those photos and videos were of the guy modifying them, which was super interesting.
Jason:And you were able to, like, glean a little bit of information from it, but, like, that gave us a little bit of insight into how he was doing it. Like, he he clearly opened up the the glasses. Like, you can hear power tools going, and it's, like, in in a workshop of some sort. Do you wanna talk, like, a little bit more about about that?
Joseph:Yeah. It's like well, it's not a busy workshop, but maybe it's just the guy in there or something. And, this is it's a very limited view. I remember Sam was editing the article and, like, I open it with a description of this person's in their workshop and then modifying these glasses. But it was so strange because it wasn't from his point of view.
Joseph:It was from the point of view of the glasses which have a camera in which he was working on on his workbench. So it's almost like second person perspective, and Sam had to help me find a way to communicate that to readers basically. It was pretty all over the place. But, yeah, he's in there. He's tinkering with some compressed air, something that seems to have the glasses clamped in place as well.
Joseph:But I then also emailed him as well and just asked him, like, what are you actually doing here? I wasn't really expecting him to, you know, provide details, but he's basically puncturing the LED light, I think, or the sensor. I'm a little I'm a little bit unclear on that. I I think it's the light, but he's basically using a drill to puncture that so that, obviously, when he tries to turn the light on, it doesn't turn on. And
Jason:I saw maybe he was also, like, disconnecting a wire, like in like, the wire that powers the LED or something about I
Joseph:think that's what you saw on Reddit. I think that's what
Jason:you saw That was like a theory that I saw. But Yeah. Yeah. It's unclear. It's unclear.
Jason:Think
Joseph:Yeah. And, I mean, to to that point, I, yeah, I find this and I start writing that. You go away and you find like, oh, people have been talking about this for years. And I feel like we knew that, but obviously, this was the piece and the time to include it in. But people on Reddit have been complaining basically, why do I have this light on my better better Ray Bans?
Joseph:I wanna film people without them knowing. I have legitimate cases like I want to film. I'm a lawyer, and I wanna film people signing documents or something. Okay. Whatever.
Joseph:And then some people were just there, like, I wanna film Hot Girls without them knowing.
Emanuel:It's one of the it's one of the top, like, when you type into Google and it autocompletes your question, it's one of the first things that autocompletes do is how do I hide or disable the LED light? And there is that. There's the Reddit discussions, which are very common. And then also Meta has addressed this, but I think another indication of how much people want to record people without the LED light turning on is the number of products on Amazon that advertise the ability to do this. You can buy stickers or covers for the LED light.
Emanuel:And I mean, to their credit, Meta has made it so if you cover the light, it will not record. But the existence of the product shows that people wanna do this very badly.
Joseph:Yeah. And I don't know if those covers always work. Like, maybe they do in some cases, maybe they don't in others. But this one definitely works because he punctured the LED and then we got the glasses and we verified it.
Jason:Right. Yeah. And that was like a response to this article. It was like, oh, you can just put black nail polish or like electrical tape or something like that. And as far as we know, that doesn't work.
Jason:It may have used to have worked, but Meta pushed a patch, I believe, or firmware update that disables the camera if it detects that the light is covered. But but, yeah, this works. And then I guess, like, I I would just also say that this problem is one that is, like, of time immemorial. It's like there's been a long history of people posting creep shots to the Internet, like surreptitious upskirt photos and and, like, photos of women taken without their knowledge in public. And, like, that's one of the like, I I believe there are some countries that have laws.
Jason:I I think Japan has a law where, If like
Joseph:you buy
Jason:cameras have to make a noise when you take a picture. And, you know, obviously, like, iPhones do that, but you can disable it in The United States. But I think if you have the sound on it, like, makes it a clicking noise.
Joseph:Yeah. I have a I have an English friend who, for some reason, she got an iPhone from Japan. So whenever she takes a photo, the camera shutter makes a noise. And it's like, can you silence that? That's like really annoying.
Joseph:She's like, no. I can't. It's it's mandated in there to stop upskirting photos from Japan. I'm like, oh, okay. Cool.
Joseph:Well, don't take photos of me either way. But, yeah, you you're right that it's it's very similar in that well, maybe I'll save these thoughts for when Emmanuel talks about the difference between a phone and a pair of glasses. But, yeah, it it it's very much the same issue where people have recording devices and they wanna do it surreptitiously, basically. Yeah.
Jason:Yeah. I feel that definitely different. I'm just saying that, like, other pieces of technology have had this issue before and the solve has usually been, like, it has to make a noise. And I don't know how much that's, like, actually fixed anything, but it's like a similar similar sort of issue. So, I mean, I guess we can talk a little bit about the abuses, but Emmanuel just wrote about one of the abuses.
Jason:So should we save that for for the second half of the show?
Joseph:Yeah. How about we'll take a break here, and then when we come back, we'll ask Emmanuel about his his own story about metal Ray bans and how they are actually being used in pretty weird, horrible situations. We'll be right back after this. Alright. And we are back.
Joseph:Jason, did you want you were in a flow. Did you wanna do this one as well or or should I take it? He's putting on his glasses.
Jason:So Let me put my glasses on so I can see the screen. I I was just trying to to flow it back to you. You have such you had a nice run of show in our little documents, which Sure. I'm recording right now with the with these glasses. I'll start, though.
Jason:Meta's Ray Ban glasses users film and harass massage parlor workers. This is a story by Emmanuel. This is something that you were working on in the background for quite some time. Like, I feel like you found this on Instagram and then documented it for, like, quite some time. Do you wanna describe what's going on here?
Emanuel:Yeah. I feel like I've said this maybe three weeks in a row now, but I found this, like, most horrible things on the Internet was just served to me via the Instagram Reels algorithm. And the videos show first person perspective, Guy walking into massage parlor, talking to the front desk or to one of the people working in the back and dropping increasingly more obvious hints that he's not just there for a normal massage, he's looking for sex work. So, one of the first things they say is, I want a massage, but I only have fifteen minutes, which I've come to learn is code for, like, I'm here for a happy ending, I want a handjob, or something like that. A lot of the workers at these places, English is not their first language.
Emanuel:I think most people probably come in and point at the menu and say, like, I want a sixty minute massage, ninety minute massage, so they don't always understand. And then they become increasingly more obvious and rude in a lot of cases, and they're like, hey, I'm here for a hand job. I want I want a tuggy. Tuggy is a word that a lot of these accounts use. And in some cases, I would say maybe most of the cases, the workers either laugh it off, totally are confused and just think that they're going in for a normal massage, but there is some cases where the person understands what the person who is recording the video is asking for, and then they kind of get into more details about like what is the specific sex act that they want, how much are they willing to pay for it, and so on.
Emanuel:I should note that it's not entirely clear in the videos that they ever go through with it. A lot of the times, if the worker suggests that they go through with it, the person recording the video says, okay, I'm just going to go out and get some cash outside of the cash machine and I'll be back. And then the video ends and there's no follow-up, so that to me seems like they kind of just want to make a provocative video and and and and go viral on Instagram, which they definitely do. The I found many accounts that do this. The the biggest one I saw had over 600,000 followers, millions of views on every video.
Emanuel:This is happening all over Instagram, all over TikTok. It's like a bonafide trend. And if you're wondering why would you do this, then I found that several of these accounts, what they do is from their profiles, they link out to pay per view sites where they sell videos which they pitch as like the full uncensored version of what happens after, you know, he comes back with the cash. That's what they say it is. That's what they say it is, but I've I've I've looked at the videos and it's very clearly just random videos pulled probably from tube sites that have nothing to do with with the with the video recorder recorded at the at the massage parlor.
Joseph:So to sum that up, I mean, it's basically a grift, like that last piece you said. It's it's a harassment campaign crossed with a grift that's being carried out via meta Ray Ban glasses. And, I mean, just in case it wasn't obvious, I think it was, but these are first person perspective videos because they are being filmed by the glasses, obviously. They're then uploaded to Instagram where you see it through a recommendation algorithm and reels and that sort of thing. People view them.
Joseph:They go, oh my god. This is outrageous, or they find it salacious or something like that. And then the Instagram user directs them to a site where they can buy potentially more of the videos, that sort of thing. Just to clarify, how did you first see it? Like, did did you search out something or did you literally just randomly get served from all these videos on Instagram one day?
Emanuel:I just it was just served to me like because it is popular. I got served a video that already had like 1,500,000 views, and it was just served to me as it was served to other people because it is viral, right? It's a self reinforcing thing where people stumble on the video. It is provocative, right? It's like a shocking video.
Emanuel:And yeah, I looking for it. I didn't know it existed until it was served to me, and you know, again, the way that this works is I'm sending it to you guys, I'm clicking on the profile, I'm very clearly engaging with the videos, and then it serves me more accounts that are doing this.
Joseph:Yeah. When you sent it to us in Slack to show us, it was nuts. I was I was really taken aback by that.
Emanuel:It sucks. Like, we report many upsetting things. In the last few months, we've reported several upsetting things that have happened with meta glasses. Obviously, seeing that ICE and border patrol agents are wearing them during these raids is just, you know, it's like this is one of the worst things that is happening in this country at the moment, and that's disgusting. Whatever.
Emanuel:I I don't wanna I don't wanna, like, talk about which which is worse. It's not a competition, but this is so like, these are such upsetting videos because they're so mean spirited, right? It's like you have these guys who are trying to make a few bucks, exploiting these women who barely speak English, who don't really understand what's going on. It is very clear that they don't know that they're being recorded. And what is happening to them, what is being done to them for laughs and for a few bucks is so awfully dangerous for them.
Emanuel:I talked to Swan Vancouver, which is a organization that Sam introduced me to that advocates for people who work at massage parlors and sex workers, which are, to be clear, not like, I'm not saying every person in these videos is a sex worker. Some are. Right? But it's like whether they are or not, it's extremely dangerous for them to be exposed in these videos. And many times, it's either the person says where they're recording it or you can see where they're recording it because they're filming themselves coming in and you can see the sign of the of the establishment.
Emanuel:And it's like they might be undocumented or if they're sex workers you know, there was this awful incident where this shooter targeted a bunch of massage parlors in 2021, which he later said was because of his sexual addiction. Right? So it's it's just like a very marginalized group of people, one of the most marginalized group of groups of people in the country, and these guys are just, like, harassing them and exposing them for laughs, and they're just extremely cruel. And also, it's like it's interesting because if you scroll back, it's not as if they woke up one day and said, oh, I have an idea, let's just buy the Meta Glasses and start recording massage parlors, it's they got the Meta Glasses. First, they made a bunch of videos where they just go into a Best Buy and either they start screaming or they try to go in the back or they harass workers at the store.
Emanuel:Like, the idea was, I'm going buy these glasses, it makes it easy to record people without them knowing, and I'm going to do wild, awful shit and post it to Instagram and go viral that way because it's like a very provocative video. And then eventually, they realized that these massage parlor videos were were hitting the algorithm the right way, and then they shifted to making those exclusively.
Joseph:Right. I'll come back to the metal glasses thing in a second. But, Sam, I was just wondering, like, based on what Emmanuel just said there, and, you know, targeting, you know, vulnerable groups specifically. I'm just wondering what you make of it because, yeah, when Emmanuel sent it to Slack, you know, I think it I think it took everyone about it.
Sam:Yeah. I mean, I I don't really have a ton to add to what Emmanuel said. Like, it that pretty much captures it. But, yeah, it sucks. It's it's very much something that, you know, raids happen all the time of massage parlors.
Sam:Like, cops will go in posing as someone who wants to get a happy ending massage and then arrest the whole entire place, and it ruins lives. Like, it destroys whole entire families. You know, that's often, like, the breadwinner of the family is working in a massage parlor. You know, whether or not they're, again, whether or not they're actually doing any kind of illegal sex work in the place, it can be really dangerous and really scary because they're in there just looking for it, and they're just trying to upturn the place. So having this kind of thing on social media feels like, I don't know, like an extension of that, just, like, more mocking of someone in a pretty precarious situation.
Sam:Yeah. I mean, we don't wanna assume too much about what they are actually doing in these parlors, but it's they're he like, he's trying to, like, entrap them into something that they're obviously not there to do initially. Like, they're not advertising it when he walks in. He's trying to talk them into doing something that they don't want to do, which is so fucked up. It reminds me of, like, I think Emmanuel wrote about, like, the the live streaming of Kensington, and it's just it's like this kinda, like, rubbernecking with via technology of people who are in bad situations or, like, the, like, the bum fight videos that were really popular for a long time.
Sam:It's just sad and, like, pathetic. It's more it's like, I feel like loser behavior could be an entire beat on four four media.
Joseph:It basically is. Yeah.
Sam:And it's just it's fucking loser behavior. Not to mention that he's stealing people's content from probably stealing it from, like, leaked OnlyFans or ripping it off of tube sites and then reselling it. It's just, like, get a job. I don't know. Like, get a life.
Sam:I think also, like,
Jason:uni it's worth mentioning that, like, universally, these are Asian owned massage parlors, and, like, the comments are, like, horrendously racist, like, universally so. And it's like, of course, these women's faces are in it. Like, it's just the the whole thing is, like, extremely gross for, like, many, many, many different reasons.
Joseph:Yeah. Before I get some meta stuff, Jason, you have
Jason:some time? Gonna say so so, like, a few things. One, this this will lead into what Emmanuel is gonna talk about now. But, like, if you go on Instagram or TikTok and search the meta Ray Bans or, like, meta glasses or meta AI glasses hashtags, it's like, this is the main thing that people are using these for, at least that is surfacing on these platforms. Not not the massage parlor tuggies, although these are, like, very viral.
Jason:But it's, like, kinda universally, what you see there is, like, people who don't know that they're being filmed and, like, pranksters, for lack of a better term, just like jackasses, like, doing stupid shit in public. It's like, I could imagine actually some useful uses of these glasses, and almost all of them have to do with, like, cooking videos and, like, DIY videos at home. It is, like, useful to have a POV perspective as a as a video.
Emanuel:Kenji, who we all adore. Kenji, the the food the food vlogger
Joseph:Who stinks
Emanuel:the POV video with a GoPro, like, perfect for him. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason:Yeah. Like, there there are reasons why it would be, like, nice to have a camera where my eye is, but, like, everything that I can think of is, like, almost universally, like, I'm filming something I'm doing by myself in my own house. And then the the other thing is just, there was another viral video that I saw the other day that was, like, on a campus, and it was just a guy harassing women, like, on campus, like, hitting on them, basically.
Joseph:Like like, pickup artist lines?
Jason:Like, pickup artist lines. Yes. And then he would, like, post it, and then, like, you know, people would find out who the woman was, and then they would bother her on Instagram or on TikTok. And then, I mean, I saw the woman, like, responded in one of these cases or, like, made a video herself, and she's like, I was drunk when this video was filmed, first of all. Second of all, like, I had no idea that I was being filmed.
Jason:And so, I mean, that raises the question of, like, are they using modded versions of these glasses or alternatively, and then I'll throw it back to Emmanuel, it's like Meta put a light on these glasses and then said to the world, like, that's what we're doing. You figure out what this means. Like, it is kinda, like, fucked up that you put a technology into the world, and they're like, here's what we're doing for privacy. Like, we're putting a light on it. And then it's, like, up to random people, like, on the street to to know that and to understand that.
Jason:And then also, like, there's obviously tons of power dynamics when it's like a pickup artist, like, approaching a drunk college student and, like, hitting on her. Like, she's already being filmed, and then there's, like it's just a tricky situation. And and that plays out in some of these massage parlor videos where the women are like, get out, and then, you know, it's like it becomes a whole thing, and it's like fucked up. But, anyways, it's just like there if you click around on the hash meta Ray Ban hashtag on Instagram or TikTok, like, you'll see lots of, like, really shitty things.
Joseph:Because it seems like and it it it seems like if you upload a video from the glasses, it automatically gets tagged as filmed by Meta Ray Ban, something like that. And that's how you knew these massage parlor videos were from Ray Ban's. Right?
Emanuel:Yeah. So it's not actually clear to me how they're getting tagged, but there is an official tag, not like a hashtag, but like a watermark or Right. Like something that appears under the title of the username that says film with Meta Glasses with, like, their branding. That appeared on most of the videos, but I was also able the main account that I was following that was doing this, it was two guys, and sometimes they would look at each other and you could see that they were wearing the glasses. Sometimes they would walk in to a massage place and they would catch themselves in the mirror.
Emanuel:Mhmm. And you can see that they were wearing the glasses,
Jason:and you can see that
Emanuel:the light was on, and that didn't really make any difference. It's not like in any of the videos that I saw, somebody said like, hey, are you recording or stop recording me? It just seemed like here's a weird guy with weird glasses. You know what I mean? It's not not at all clear that they know that they're being filmed.
Joseph:Right. So like, do they not know what the light is or they and they're puzzled by it. They don't know what the light is and they sort of disregard it. They do know what the light is and they don't feel socially comfortable to ask, are you filming? Or like what Jason's point was, they've put this technology in the world, but it's not like everybody's aware of what this light means exactly.
Joseph:You know? Like, we don't we're not all owners of the glasses. Right? So what happened when you when you asked Meta for comment?
Emanuel:Yeah. So, like, let's get into that part of it. I am writing a blog. I'm gonna file it live to to our Slack just so Jason and Sam could see. I already sent it
Joseph:to you. The headline I have in the Google doc, which I know is incorrect, is headline for a manual piece, Lamao, question mark, because I didn't know what the headline was gonna be. So Yeah. We'll go
Emanuel:with that. I think the headline is gonna be like, let's see. What did I put down here? What is the difference between glasses and a phone? A helpful guide for MetaPR.
Emanuel:And the the reason I wrote that is in all of these stories that we talked about, the mod, the ice raids, this massage parlor video, the case that Joe covered, it's a few months ago now, where somebody added facial recognition to the glasses. Yeah. Every single time we reach out to Meta and ask for comment, their response is, what is like, would you write this story if it was filmed with an iPhone? And usually, don't even respond to that. Like, we don't even respect the argument enough to engage with it.
Emanuel:In the case of the massage parlors, I was like, yes. Unequivocally, yes. Like, I would cover a viral account that was going into massage parlors and harassing people with an iPhone. But the argument that they're trying to make is the glasses have a camera, the iPhone has a camera, you can record people with both devices, and if anything, the Meta Glasses have more respect to people's privacy because there's this LED light, right, which the iPhone doesn't have. And there are two very obvious flaws with that argument.
Emanuel:The first is, if I'm walking down the street and I want to film something, I have to reach into my pocket, open the camera app, start recording, and hold my phone up to record someone this awkward gesture that we have all come to recognize and see all the time, right? Like how many videos have you seen online of two people yelling at each other, holding their iPhones up, recording each other, you know what I mean? Like, how many times have you walked down the street, somebody filming a fight, filming an argument, filming a car accident, whatever. They're just
Joseph:It's like a clear visual indicator.
Emanuel:It's it's one of the defining gestures of like the century. It's like a person holding up their iPhone to record someone, and we all it's signaled very clearly. You have to make a gesture to do it. There's no light, but it's like if you're using a camera, you have to pull out the camera, right? It's like that that is the recording light.
Emanuel:You know? If you're holding a camera with a giant lens, you know that you're being filmed.
Joseph:And just to add on that, I I feel that even when iPhones and smartphones came out initially, you know, for the first time, people are getting the iPhone three g or whatever, and someone's holding it like this directly in someone's face is unambiguous. Like That's like, what are
Emanuel:you doing? Like, even if you don't know you're you're being recorded, you're like, what are you doing to me?
Joseph:Right. But if you did ask the question, hey, are you recording me? It's almost a rhetorical facetious question because obviously, you're recording me. Get the fuck out of my face. That is not the case with the glasses, is what you're Right.
Emanuel:Because they're on there by default. There is no gesture. Like, entire even if you look at the value proposition from a totally innocuous perspective, it's that the camera is already out and looking at the thing that you're looking at, and all you have to do is tap it and boom, you're recording. Like, that is that is the the point of the camera in the glasses. So that's one part of it.
Emanuel:The other part of it, which we've all alluded to, unless Jason takes issue with it because he lives in, you know, influencer land, is like, nobody knows what the fuck these are. Okay? It's like nobody knows what these weird stupid glasses are. The iPhone is one, if not the most widely adopted electronic or gadget in the world, and it's been around for almost twenty years. It's like smart devices are common in like rural parts of Africa, you know what I mean?
Emanuel:It's just like places where there's no computers, people have smartphones. It's a very well understood device globally, and people have them and they know that they have cameras and they know how that works. People have no idea what these glasses are, and that's why I think when you walk into a massage parlor with the light on, people don't know what it is, you know, and then again, there's like this power dynamic where it's like somebody just walked into your store with a light in their glasses, and you don't feel comfortable immediately questioning what they are or how they're dressed or what's in their face, you know? It's like it's a completely the idea that a camera in a phone that someone is holding up and a camera that is embedded in your glasses are the same thing, it's like it's nonsensical. Like, can imagine twenty years from now, if these become massively popular, you know, and everybody has them and everybody's talking about it and everybody's reporting, then it's like, yeah, maybe that's the case.
Emanuel:And then if that's the case, maybe in that future, we're not writing those stories. But that is a 100% not what is happening now. We are writing these stories so people know what is happening. You know what I mean? So people know that it's like if they're at a party and somebody's hitting on them very aggressively and there's a light in his glasses, it's like, hey, he might be posting you to the Internet.
Emanuel:If you work in a massage parlor and somebody's walking in and propositioning you for sex, it's like, that is really dangerous and you should know about it, and that's the reason we write the stories, and I find their line of arguments so insulting to people's intelligence. It's just like it's it's it's not it's it's laughable. It's a it's a laughable argument. It makes me super mad that this this is the strategy that they picked to deal with what is, hope, internally, is like a massive PR crisis, you know, because it's like the only reason that these glasses make the news is when somebody does something awful, you know.
Jason:This is to say nothing of the fact that they're being used by cops, like, which we have talked about before. It's like the people who are, like, interested in this are, like, annoying influencers and law enforcement and, like, a and your HVAC guy.
Joseph:Not to put that guy off the spot. I'm sure he did a great job there.
Jason:I mean, the the other thing I'll say though is, like, glass holes became a thing with Google Glass, which you do mention in your piece. And, like, we kind of shunned glass holes. Some some people were banned from wearing, like, Google Glass in bars and things like that. And I guess I'd say, like, if you were wearing a VisionPRO, for example, it's like this gigantic thing that you strap on your face. But with these, like, you can identify them, of course, and they do have the light on, but these are wayfarers.
Jason:Like, they're design they are designed to look exactly like other historic iconic glasses, sunglasses, regular glasses. Like, they have an Oakley version as well. It's like they're trying to blend in in a way that I think maybe the technology would not have allowed with Google Glass because it was, like, bulky and weird. But I think that there's something to that as well where it's like you can kind of wear these and, like, be sort of camouflaged. Whereas, like, if you strap a GoPro to your head, like, people will know that you have a GoPro strapped to your head.
Joseph:Yeah. And you bring up the GoPro examples specifically, which is great because I can't remember if I brought it up or whether Meta PR brought it up. But when I did that first one about the students marrying the Ray Ban glasses with facial recognition tech to docs people, the argument came up in our emails like, well, would you cover this if it was a GoPro on somebody's face? And it's like, probably, but that's not surreptitious. It is very obvious that someone has a fucking GoPro on their forehead and they're walking around.
Joseph:The entire point of these glasses that they are supposed to look normal. It's like Facebook wants its it one has its cake and eat it too. It wants it to be an exceptional interesting technology, but it also wants it to be completely normal and blended into the background. It's like you can't have that. It is an exceptional technology in that.
Joseph:It's not normal. It's not normal to have a camera on your face the entire time, and and they're trying to have both, you know.
Emanuel:In the recent presentation about this latest model of the Meta Glasses, all Mark Zuckerberg talks about is that for ten years, they worked to miniaturize the technology in order to make it seamless. It is literally the point of the device is to make it like a seamless computer interface that sits on your face, and that's what people have been talking about with AR forever. Like, if you listen to Palmer Luckey back when he was working at Facebook and he was working on VR and AR, that's, again, all he talked about is like, we need to shrink the technology to make it small enough that it fits into your glasses that you're not even thinking about it. And like, obviously that has an appeal. Like, if we're in some future where I have like a brain computer interface and I can just Google things seamlessly and so on.
Emanuel:I mean, that's cool, I guess. But, again, in reality, when we see how people are using it, they're using it to harass and abuse people. That and
Jason:that's Well, that the is cool, but I I think that's important point that you made because it's like, one, Google Glass had, like, an AR display, and so that there was an aspect to it where it was like, you're talking to me, but, like, what are you actually looking at? And, like, are you looking up information about me? Like, what is going on? These don't have an AR display at the moment, although I believe That's plan. The plan.
Jason:And it's like Mark Zuckerberg has talked about it being like a super intelligence on your face, as you said. And so it is, like, designed, and it already has, like, AI capabilities. Like, you can talk to Meta AI through it and stuff. And so, I mean, another thing to think about is, like, like, AirPods and, like, earbud earbuds and stuff like that. Like, you go around life, and it's like if you're talking to someone who has an, like, AirPod in, you're like, that's weird.
Jason:They're, like, kind of rude, but they're probably listening to music. But they could very well just be, like, getting talking points from an AI buddy, and you have, like, no idea what's going on. And, like, that is, like, the that is, like, the plan here is this is gonna be like an AI assistant on your face. And then when you're interacting with someone like this, like, you interacting with them? Are they recording you?
Jason:Like, are they getting, like, talking points from an AI? Like, are they facial recognizing you? Like, what is going on? And I think that that is, like, another way that this differs a little bit from a phone. And and the last thing that I'll say on this is that, like, I feel like when you pull out your phone or camera or whatever, it, in most cases, unless you have, like, a a strap of some sort, it, like, takes your hands out of the equation.
Jason:It's like you're using your hands for something. And I think this where it's, like, strapped to your face and you still have total use of your hands, it's like it doesn't have, like, the disabling effect of, like, oh, I'm I'm doing this is what I'm doing. Like, what I'm doing is I am filming you with my I'm using my hands and I am filming you or I am taking a picture. Whereas here, it's like, you can start filming and you can continue filming and you can do whatever the fuck you want with your hands. You can go punch someone and watch them, like, through POV in your glasses.
Jason:And I think that that is like an actual, like, difference. I think that that is like a that's kind of like why cops are interested in it and, like, all that is that it's like a it's like can film you while you are doing something, whereas with a phone, it's like you are filming. That's the thing that you're doing. You're not doing, like, another thing on top of that. Yeah.
Jason:Does that make any sense?
Joseph:Yeah. Yeah. Totally. With the AirPods one, I think that there's just always a societal shift whenever there's a new piece of technology. Like when AirPods first came out, like that was weird to people.
Joseph:Right? Or wireless earbuds in general, people didn't really understand that. I don't know if this is a myth or not, but what like when jogging became popular in the twenty first in the twentieth century, cops would stop joggers and be like, so what what are you doing? You're you're running away from something? No.
Joseph:No. I'm on a jog. I can't that's just saying I read on the Internet, and I've it's buried into my head, but it reminds me of that. And, yeah, same with, I don't know, contactless systems in cars or the AirPods or something like that. There's gonna be societal shifts.
Joseph:I think the last question is, do you think there's gonna be a point where I can go outside wearing my PlayStation virtual reality headset and I'll be socially accepted. You could do
Emanuel:it now if you wanna
Joseph:be cool. No. I feel like a punch in the face.
Jason:Socially accept you. I feel attacked this entire conversation though because I'm wearing them.
Joseph:I did. My device. There was a was a good bit when Emmanuel said those stupid piece of shit glasses and Jason just like slowly just I
Emanuel:I said this on BTB. We don't have to get into it, but I do wonder how long the Ray Ban brand could have put up with this. Right. It just seems like a disaster.
Joseph:It's clearly meta it's clear. I mean, I'm I'm speculating, but to me, it's clear. The deal is Meta handles the PR.
Emanuel:For sure. I mean, they threw us to Meta several times. Right?
Joseph:Ray Ban doesn't want anything to do with it. When a journalist comes knocking, Meta has to handle it and I imagine that's why they're so particular about it.
Jason:I mean, I do wonder though, like, I think it's made Ray Ban's like incredibly uncool as you said in your behind the blog. And, you know, wayfarers have been traditionally considered just like these timeless sunglasses or whatever. But I do wonder if it's been a net positive or negative for Ray Bans, which is, like, sucks to say because I think that these are so shitty and stupid. But, like, people are buying them. There, like, is, you know, kind of like, oh, look at this crazy technology aspect to it for, like, this really old brand, etcetera.
Jason:Like, I don't know if any of you have, like, any thoughts on whether, like, how this is going for Ray Ban's. I I I can only guess. But, like, I don't know. I I feel like people are buying these. Yeah.
Jason:But maybe not.
Emanuel:TBD, I think. TBD on how how it shakes out. I don't see them. I I've I've seen literally one from Sean, the HVAC guy. Shout out to Airman.
Emanuel:Wow.
Joseph:Wow. We're naming him now? Woah. Woah. Woah.
Joseph:Okay. Okay. I don't think he's gonna sign. They
Jason:sold 2,000,000 pairs according to the verge as of February, which I don't know. I don't know if that's a lot or not.
Joseph:Sounds like a lot, but, yeah, I I don't know how much they're projecting. Alright. We'll leave that there. If you're listening to the free version of the podcast, I'll now play us out. But if you are a paying four zero four media subscriber, we're gonna talk about how the future of advertising is probably, basically, AI generated ads personally personalized directly at you, you know, maybe with your face or your favorite football or baseball team or whatever, and we're already seeing signs of it.
Joseph:You can subscribe and gain access to that content at 404media.co. We'll be right back after this. Alright. And we are back. Jason, this is when you wrote, the future of advertising is AI generated ads that are directly personalized to you.
Joseph:So there's sort of two parts. It's like these specific efforts you found and then you branch out. Let's keep it with the specific ads first. What are these Ticketmaster ads you saw? I think it was Ticketmaster.
Jason:So Ray Ban sold $8,700,000,000 worth of glasses in 2025. So divide that by, like, $200 and you'll get they sold the gazillions of of pairs of glasses. Okay.
Joseph:Onto Not not the smart glasses, to be clear.
Jason:Just total revenue for the company. Yeah. That that's not how you do that, but very, very curious.
Joseph:We we we're not business So
Jason:these these ads are really shitty and stupid, and I found them on Facebook as I was scrolling because I live in Los Angeles as I've noted many times, and the World Series was last week. And so I got an ad that was basically like, do you wanna see the Dodgers play against the Blue Jays? Click here to buy tickets, and it was a Ticketmaster ad. And the ad featured an AI generated family wearing blue hats. And the Dodgers colors are blue and white, but, like, it didn't have the Dodgers logo on it.
Jason:It was just, like, totally generic family. And it and, you know, they were at a Stadium, but it didn't seem like it was Dodgers stadium blah blah blah. And, you know, I'm very attuned to, like, hey. Here's AI slop. And at this point, it's it's everywhere.
Jason:But I was still pretty surprised that a company like Ticketmaster would do this because they are selling in person events with real people. Like, what they're selling is kind of the opposite of AI in general. It's like you wanna, like, enjoy your time with other human beings, blah blah blah. Go see real art. Go see, like, real sports, whatever.
Jason:And they were using this sort of, like, really generic AI slob for their ads. So I went into Meta's ad library, and I typed in Ticketmaster, and I scrolled through. And what was interesting is that they did have a lot of ads that had, like, real sports players or, like, real artists that that seemed to not use AI. But then they also had a few different series of ads that had, like, entire AI generated families and then a bunch of different variations of these ads. So the one that I ended up writing about says, like, there's nothing like a sea of purple.
Jason:See Washington football live. And the picture is of a black family wearing purple hoodie purple hoodies, and Washington is like Washington University of Washington. I don't know what they're called. They didn't use the name of the school in the in the ad. And then there's another one that's like, there's nothing like a sea of red, see USC football.
Jason:There's nothing like a sea of gold, see Vanderbilt. And it goes on and on and on like this where it's the literally the exact same family wearing different colors, and they've changed the ad to comply with, like, the school or whatever. And this is obviously being geo targeted to fans sports teams or these colleges, maybe people who went there, maybe people who live in that area. That's how advertising is on Facebook has worked for a really long time is, you know, you have different versions of ads for the same product or similar products that are targeted slightly differently. But what I've been noticing and what I've been writing about for quite some time now and what I'm starting to see is that companies are instead of making a couple different versions of a given ad and targeting them at different people, they are making, like, hundreds of different versions of the same ad, and then they're targeting them to different people.
Jason:And the segments that they're targeting are getting, like, smaller and smaller and more specific and more specific. And they're doing this using AI.
Joseph:Yeah. Yeah. So you have that. That's already a story by itself. Right?
Joseph:And I think you initially went out to write it just about these Ticketmaster ads, but it sort of broadens out to Meta and Mark Zuckerberg's idea of advertising as well. What was sort of the catalyst that made you branch that out a bit? Was it the Meta ad library or?
Jason:Yeah. I mean, so so this again, I did mention this once in an article a few months ago about where I thought all the AI slop was going. And I think where it's going is, like, hyper specialization of content where it's just, like, really specific content served to you based on your interest, based on your based on what you engage with, based on what Meta's algorithms know about you. And that's not, like, new. Mean, people people have known about that for a long time, like the siloization of social media.
Jason:But what's new is that Mark Zuckerberg is now talking about it in their earnings report. And so the q three earnings report came out last week, and Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives talked about two specific products, both of which I was aware of before. One is called Advantage Plus and one of which is called Andromeda. And let me just give you Zuckerberg's quote, and then I'll explain what those are. So, basically, Zuckerberg was like, ad sales are going super well.
Jason:Like, ad sales are through the roof. Meta's earnings was really, really good last their revenue at least was really good in q three, and it keeps going up and up and up mostly based on advertising. He said, quote, advertisers are increasingly just going to be able to give us a business objective and give us a credit card or bank account and have the AI system basically figure out everything else that's necessary, including generating video or different types of creative that might resonate with different people that are personalized in different ways, finding who the right customers are. So I think that's pretty self explanatory, but he's basically like, instead of if we wanted to buy four zero four media ads on Instagram, rather than us spending time designing those ads and thinking, like, who is our audience? Who are the types of people that we wanna reach?
Jason:What message will resonate best with them? Which is, like, what advertisers have done for a really long time. Like, this is what fucking, like, mad men is about, you know, where it's like, you come up with, like, our genius tagline and, like, figure out which celebrity you want to sell your ads and, like, all of that. Rather than that, we would just go to Facebook and say, we want a bunch of subscribers. Here's our credit card and do nothing else.
Jason:And what Meta would do would be to use AI to create a bunch of ads and then to use their AI targeting to put them in front of the right people. And Meta is already doing a version of this, and what they're doing, it's it's called Advantage Plus, which I mentioned. And it is a system where you go and you upload. Like, it's not fully automated at this point, but you upload a couple different versions of what you want your ad to say and, you know, like, some photos and stuff like that. And then there are generative AI tools that that will make slightly different variations of everything that you upload.
Jason:They will test out different, like, call to action, which is, like, the what the text that it says. They will try out, like, different variations of all of this. And then you just go, like, I wanna buy these ads. And then Andromeda is the ad targeting AI. And so previously and I think maybe Facebook still has this, but previously, they had something called lookalike audiences.
Jason:And so this is something where it was like, I wanna reach I wanna reach we're four zero four media, and we wanna reach people who read Wired magazine. And so it would target people who like Wired magazine because we can, like, surmise that it's another technology publication. Maybe the people who like Wired will also like four zero four media. You can also you could also do things like, I wanna target people in a specific state or a specific region. You could also say, like, I wanna target people who have, like, specific interests, so on and so forth.
Jason:And over time, these targeting this targeting has gotten a little bit more specific where you can, like, you know, say, I wanna target people who like this who like this sort of content and they will go find them. But what Andromeda does instead is it's basically like you go in and you're like, I wanna buy ads and I wanna convert like, I want people to subscribe to four zero four media, and then it starts targeting for you. And what I mean by that is, like, Advantage Plus will have, like, dozens and dozens and dozens of different types of, like, slightly, slightly varying ads. And then Andromeda is like this is as I understand it. There might be other things going on as well, but this is like what Facebook this is how Facebook described it in its white papers, etcetera.
Jason:It's like Andromeda starts showing different versions of these ads to different people, and over time, it learns which types of people are acting on which types of ads. And then you figure out, like, this version of this ad is working really well with this demographic of person blah blah blah blah blah. And what's happening is that the ads on Facebook are getting a lot more effective according to its own sales metrics. It's like people are clicking more, people are buying more, and they're measuring this because advertisers are spending more. And advertisers are spending more because their ads are more effective, and they're more effective because they're more personalized, they're targeted better, so on and so forth.
Jason:And so what's happening is, like, you can make a thousand versions of the same ad, but you're only actually gonna put money behind the ones that the algorithm determine works. And that's like how social media advertising works is like you pay per impression or per click or whatever. I think that all makes sense. It's a very complicated system, but I tried to, like, simplify it as much as I could.
Joseph:No. No. That that totally makes sense. It almost I mean, in my eyes, it sort of flips on its head rather than, okay. We're gonna go target this particular subset.
Joseph:It's like, well, maybe we don't know. Maybe this AI can figure out a better subset basically to target, and then we could figure out from there. I guess maybe just the last thing is what do you make of those claims that people are clicking on more ads at Meta? Like, I'm just skeptical of the advertising industry. You know, there's so much ad fraud.
Joseph:There's so much BS. And of course, you know, we just have to go on what they say at this moment. We don't have like any internal reporting or something, but like, do you think it tracks? Like, yeah, maybe more people are clicking on stuff that's related to this. I don't know.
Jason:Yeah. I mean, I don't wanna be like I don't wanna necessarily take them specifically at their word, but I guess like anecdotally, will say I feel like, Juan, I'm I'm seeing a lot more generative AI ads on Instagram and on Facebook. Like, I'm coming across a lot more. And I feel like they're targeted pretty well at me. I feel like I'm getting lot I just I get a lot of ads for surf companies, for photography companies, for, like, small business software, for example, like, that
Joseph:we Dude, that's your life.
Jason:Might use. It it's just like I I'm getting a lot of and I'm getting a lot of, like, variations. And, like, of course, you know, if I click on like, I'm getting a lot of ads for couches right now because I was trying to buy, like, a new, like, couch for back there. And that one I understand. It's like I clicked on a cow I searched couches on, like, Facebook marketplace, and then I clicked on one of the ads, and now I get, like, the same, like, company over and over and over retargeting me.
Jason:But then I'm also getting, like, tons and tons of ads for things that I have not clicked on, but that I honestly think are, like, things that I might be interested in or that I might buy. Or, like, I can understand why Instagram would think I'm interested in them. Like, I'm getting a lot of ads for, like, AI real creation tools, and I'm not interested in that personally, but I'm interested in it professionally as, like, a thing to report on. So I'm, like, clicking on a lot of that sort of thing. And so, I mean, I don't know.
Jason:I don't know. But I I do think that my ads are like far more relevant now than they were when, for example, that I was getting a bunch of ads for literal heroin and cocaine on Instagram, which is a launch story of four zero four media. But, yeah, I don't know. I think that it's working. Like, I think it's working just because I see they're they're they are making a lot more money in in ads, ad revenue.
Jason:And, like, Google is making a lot more money on ad revenue as well, and I think Google is probably doing something similar. I just haven't dove in as deep on that. And it's particularly notable that Google is making more money in ad revenue because so much has been said of people not clicking on websites anymore where it's like Google AdWords is like basically, like, there had there had been this theory that Google's ad revenue was gonna fall because people were using ChatGPT or people were looking at the AI AI summaries and not clicking through. And it's like when you do click through, Google usually owns the ads on whatever website you're clicking through to as well. And so, like, there was a thought that maybe their ad revenue would fall, but that's not happened.
Jason:And so I guess the last thing I I'll say is that Zuckerberg has talked endlessly, endlessly, endlessly about AI superintelligence and how they're building, like, all this super sophisticated AI, and it's like every Meta AI product I've used is, like, total dog shit. Like, it's worse than ChatGPT. It's worse than Gemini. I'm not, like, a power AI user. I, like, barely use AI at all except to test things like this.
Jason:But every time I'm like, wow. These image generators suck. This video generator sucks. Like, their chatbot is not good. All of that.
Jason:And I I don't think that they're, like, on the path to super intelligent AI, but I do think that they've built, like, super powerful AI advertising tools. And, like, that's what the company has always been good at. That's why it's so valuable. That's, like, what it's always done. And I think that that kind of remains the case at least from from what I can see.
Joseph:Yeah. That makes sense. Alright then. We'll we'll leave that there. We'll keep an eye on it.
Joseph:And with that, I will play us out. As a reminder, four zero four media is journalist founded and supported by subscribers. If you do wish to subscribe to four zero four media and directly support our work, please go to 404media.co. You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad free version of this podcast. You'll also get to listen to the subscribers only section where we talk about a bonus story each week and early access to our new interview episodes.
Joseph:This podcast is made in partnership with Kaleidoscope. Another way to support us is by leaving a five star rating and review for podcast. That stuff really helps us out. This has been four zero four Media. We'll see you again next week.