Meta Thinks We’re Too Distracted to Care About Facial Recognition

Since Meta’s Ray-Ban Sensible Glasses launched in 2021, there’s at all times been a lingering, controversial query about whether or not they could possibly be used for facial recognition.

The query has surfaced once more extra not too long ago, in accordance with a New York Instances report on Friday. And this time, the story says, there is a purpose the corporate thinks it might add facial recognition with out kicking up an excessive amount of of a fuss: as a result of we’re all busy fearful about so many different issues happening on the planet.

It isn’t clear whether or not Meta will observe by way of on the plans. “Whereas we ceaselessly hear in regards to the curiosity in this sort of characteristic — and a few merchandise exist already out there — we’re nonetheless considering by way of choices and can take a considerate strategy if and earlier than we roll something out,” Erin Logan, a Meta spokesperson, informed Enterprise Insider in an announcement.

Since their launch, the Meta Ray-Ban glasses have been a shock hit, with Ray-Ban proprietor EssilorLuxottica saying it tripled gross sales in 2025 and is struggling to maintain up with demand.

In 2024, some Harvard college students rigged Meta Ray-Bans to carry out facial recognition by sending digicam photographs to a third-party service for scanning. On the time, Meta was adamant that folks perceive the glasses themselves weren’t performing facial recognition, and that this wasn’t a functionality of the machine itself. Which was true, however a fact considerably orthogonal to the general public horror in regards to the concept of individuals utilizing facial recognition glasses in public.

So far, authorized and privateness points surrounding facial recognition, not technical limitations, have stored the characteristic at bay. So what’s modified?

The New York Instances seen a doc that offers us a clue:

Meta’s inner memo stated the political tumult in the US was good timing for the characteristic’s launch.

“We’ll launch throughout a dynamic political atmosphere the place many civil society teams that we might count on to assault us would have their assets centered on different considerations,” in accordance with the doc from Meta’s Actuality Labs, which works on {hardware} together with sensible glasses.

That is straight out of the playbook for a celeb saying their divorce throughout the Tremendous Bowl to reduce consideration. Principally, a minimum of one individual at Meta was apparently contemplating the truth that — waves palms — so many different horrors are happening on the planet that folks will probably be too distracted to deal with this.

And what, precisely, may this unnamed Meta individual be assuming are the “different considerations” holding civil society teams’ assets centered? I’ve some concepts:

Frankly, any of those is a sufficiently big distraction to maintain me from complaining about facial-recognition glasses!