Retail and service workers across the United States are increasingly facing unwanted filming and harassment from customers wearing Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, according to reporting from The Verge. The glasses, which allow wearers to record video and take photos, have sold in the millions, but their proliferation has sparked backlash from public-facing employees who say the devices enable covert surveillance and pranks at their expense. Workers told The Verge that resisting such recording is difficult because they depend on their jobs for income and many workplaces have not yet established policies around the new technology.
One incident described in The Verge’s report involved a Target employee named Hinkle, who said two customers recorded her while harassing her and a store manager. Hinkle said the customers repeatedly misgendered her and the manager, pretended to be confused when confronted, and continued recording until police were called and the men were escorted out. The video was later posted online, and one clip on Instagram had nearly 400,000 views, while another on TikTok had around 155,000 views. Target declined to comment on the incident.
Another worker, identified as Emily, said she deals with up to 2,000 customers a day at a Seattle tourist attraction and has grown uncomfortable with men filming her using the glasses. She said the glasses make it hard to tell what exactly is being recorded, and she worries that the devices could be used to capture young women in ways that are more nefarious than travel vlogs. Emily noted that on some days, up to 10 people per hour enter her workplace wearing smart glasses.
A third worker, Jennifer, said she was shaken after her boss at an Atlanta-area Sprouts grocery store began wearing a different pair of smart glasses at work. She noted that Sprouts prohibits employees from wearing headphones on the store floor for safety reasons, and that non-managers cannot have phones on them, yet the store has no clear rule about management wearing recording devices.
Meta, the maker of the glasses, defended the product, saying privacy was built into the devices from the start. A company spokesperson pointed to the LED indicator light that blinks during recording and said Meta has begun rolling out tamper-proofing to prevent users from covering the light. The company also said it has removed thousands of pieces of harassing content under its bullying and harassment policy, and has blocked certain hashtags associated with pickup-artist or cold-approach content.
The Verge reported that Instagram removed the video of Hinkle after the outlet asked about it, and the account that posted it was banned. Still, the broader problem persists, as social media platforms continue to host content featuring unwitting workers, and service employees remain vulnerable because they cannot simply leave the situation. As one worker put it, the constant potential of being recorded adds to a feeling of always being watched.
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