Instagram is booting pickup artists and pranksters using Metas pervert glasses to harass strangers

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri has had it with the surge of obnoxious “harassing” videos shot using Meta’s ‘pervert glasses’ that are flooding the social media platform – causing the executive to ban the content.“If you’re posting content that is taking advantage of people and harassing them, like a lot of these pickup line kind of videos that we’ve heard of and seen, then we’re going to take the content down,” Mosseri said in response to a question on his Instagram stories last week.“We don’t want people to be surreptitiously taking videos of other people and harassing them and then posting them on our platform.

So we’re trying to fight that every way we can.”Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta – which owns Instagram – released its so-called smart glasses last fall which can record video and celebrities like Kylie Jenner have jumped on board to promote them – generating swift backlash online from people describing them as “dystopian.” Users quickly began hacking or covering up the tiny light that signals when the glasses are recording in order to surreptitiously film people, earning them the moniker “pervert glasses.”The latest Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) glasses start at $379 and users have been creepily filming women and their pickup attempts as well as pranks on service workers like cashiers or fast food workers.The glasses have also been used to film often older people’s reactions to obnoxious pranks like pretending to steal money from them. The pickup videos follow a familiar script — a compliment, a pickup line, a push for a name or number — with the footage later blasted across TikTok and Instagram for views, often without the subject ever realizing she was on camera.As Mosseri notes, the pranks often verge on harassment or are simply insufferable – like putting fart spray into a candle at Walmart and then asking employees to smell it; or pretending to speak limited English and provoking workers until they get kicked out or ...