At Wednesday's Meta Connect 2026, Meta's annual conference and product showcase, CEO Mark Zuckerberg mostly ignored the brewing backlash against the company's smart glasses.
In recent months, concerns over smart glasses and privacy have reached a tipping point. The backlash has become so intense that Apple reportedly delayed the release of its own smart glasses.
Yet at Meta Connect, Zuckerberg chose not to directly address the bad behavior associated with Meta Ray-Bans, which some critics are now calling "pervert glasses."
Zuckerberg did talk about privacy in general, emphasizing that the company's new glasses and Muse AI assistant will provide users with a secure environment.
For the Muse assistant, Zuckerberg emphasized that Muse already runs on a dedicated computer in the cloud, known as Muse Secure VM. He also promised a future version with added encryption, which would prevent Meta from accessing user data altogether. And for its glasses, Zuckerberg announced that private processing will be available for some of the glasses' AI features, starting with live translation.
Why is there a backlash against smart glasses?
As Mashable has reported previously (as have plenty of other journalists), Meta Ray-Bans have enabled some really bad behavior. At some point this year, the sheer number of creeps and nuisance streamers using Meta Ray-Bans to harass people in public became impossible to ignore, and Meta started facing a serious backlash.
Filming in public spaces is perfectly legal, of course. But a behavior can be legal while also being deeply antisocial.
The head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, eventually announced that the platform would crack down on smart-glasses videos that feature harassment and other types of bad behavior.
So, even though Meta has sold millions of Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses in recent years, public opinion has very much shifted against them, for a variety of reasons. General fears of surveillance tech (see also: Flock cameras). Reporting that Meta will incorporate facial recognition tech into its glasses. General distrust of Meta and Zuckerberg.
Meta was an early mover in the smart glasses market, and since debuting the Meta Ray-Bans, the company has expanded its product lines through collaborations with Kylie Jenner and Oakley, while rival companies like Google and Samsung are set to release their own smart glasses later this year.
Is Zuckerberg right about the future of smart glasses?
As he has in previous keynotes and earnings calls, Zuckerberg said again that he believes smart glasses will be the personal computing device of the future, with AI at the center of the experience.
“If you don't have glasses that have AI — or some way to interact with AI — you're probably going to be at a pretty significant cognitive disadvantage compared to other people who you're working with, or competing against," Zuckerberg said in an earnings call last year.
In his “Personal Superintelligence” blog post, Zuckerberg wrote: "Personal devices like glasses that see what we see, hear what we hear, and interact with us throughout the day will become our primary computing devices."
And at Meta Connect 2026, Zuckerberg said that he believes smart glasses will win out over other types of AI wearables and personal computing devices.
“We think that glasses are going to be the biggest category because, first of all, they already are, and second, they are the only form factor that lets your Muse see what you see, hear what you hear, talk to you throughout the day, and display information right in your vision, eventually," Zuckerberg said.
The question for users: Do they trust Meta to see what they see and hear what they hear?
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