At the Meta Connect 2026 keynote, Mark Zuckerberg announced a raft of new devices: VR glasses that could rival the Apple Vision Pro, audio-only smart glasses, and even a clever-looking pendant to house its new Muse AI. However, there was one thing that I was waiting to hear, which never came.

This entire year, there have been dozens upon dozens of reports of smart glasses being used to record and harass individuals (many of them women), with those recordings appearing on Instagram and other social media platforms, where they’ve been amplified.

There was an entire cottage industry of people who you could pay to remove or disable the recording light in Meta smart glasses, so others wouldn’t know if you were filming them.

Over the summer, the backlash against “pervert glasses” grew so strong that DuckDuckGo, the privacy browser, cheekily released its own “smart glasses” — just regular sunglasses, no tech whatsoever.

A research paper published in August from the University of Sydney highlighted how Instagram influencers regularly used Meta smart glasses to harass women in public or semi-public settings.

Yes, Meta did update the firmware in its glasses to prevent them from recording video if the light was blocked or disabled, and it did ban a number of Instagram accounts. But you would think that a company whose reputation was so damaged that its products were now called “pervert glasses” would do a little more in the way of damage control when it had the spotlight all to itself.

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