How Meta says it’s addressing privacy concerns amid new smart glasses lineup

It’s no secret that Meta has privacy issues.

After all, there’s been a lot of apprehension surrounding the company’s ever-growing lineup of smart glasses. In particular, these products have sometimes been called “pervert glasses” due to being used to harass people and, according to a recent lawsuit, even allegedly capture and share intimate images without consent.

Naturally, this was a big topic of discussion during a media roundtable at Meta’s Menlo Park, California, headquarters. Speaking with Ming Hua, VP of wearable devices, MobileSyrup and several other international outlets had some questions about Meta’s continued approach to addressing privacy concerns with its products.

“Privacy is always front and centre when we design [wearables],” said Hua. “Actually, from the first generation, we’ve had a privacy LED, where it’s signalling to people when you are capturing. So that continues to be very core.”

However, we’ve seen instances where people have covered up the LED to remove that layer of transparency, and a quick Google search will show countless products that are specifically designed to do just that. To address this, Hua points out, Meta recently closed a loophole that allowed cameras to cover the light after recording had begun without issue.

“We’ll continue to make sure that the algorithm is very robust, and also really bring awareness about how things work,” she added, referring to a recent marketing campaign that promotes the glasses’ privacy features.

She also cited a new feature that was announced at Connect 2026: private processing. This technology, which is already used to encrypt WhatsApp chats, will allow glasses to keep data used by AI features secure and inaccessible even from Meta. During the Connect 2026 keynote, CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that private processing will be rolled out “soon” to features like Live Translations before expanding to “more and more” features.

When asked about how the discussion surrounding “pervert glasses” influences Meta’s approach to privacy, Hua stressed that moderation in addition to all of the aforementioned initiatives, content moderation is a big focus for Meta.

“We’re also taking actions to take down the content that’s not good,” she said. “[We] take down the accounts if they continuously violate the platform policy, and also [are] blocking the search terms. We also are taking down content that teach people how to tamper with glasses.”

Time will tell what else Meta may do to improve privacy. In the meantime, it should be noted that the company just unveiled a new pair of audio-only glasses that remove the camera entirely.