The backlash to Meta glasses has Apple spooked

Given the apparent failure of Vision Pro, it seems fair to say that there’s a lot at stake for Apple when it comes to its rumoured smart glasses. The company is going to want to get its second stab at AR eyewear right – but the reputational risk could be even greater this time around.

Over the last few months, controversy has been building around what are increasingly being referred to as “pervert glasses”. Yes, this dubious nickname for Meta glasses is doing the rounds online, leading the company to announce a slew of privacy measures in attempt to combat the product’s increasingly negative reputation.

One company that’s been watching the fallout is Apple. According to seasoned Apple leaker Mark Gurman, the company’s smart glasses were on track to release this year, but are now looking at a late 2027 release. But rather than technical, the issue is reputational: Apple wants to protect its reputation for privacy. “The teams developing glasses within Apple’s Vision hardware group and elsewhere in the company see privacy as priority No. 1, I’m told,” Gurman says.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri recently said the platform would ban any content depicting someone harassing others while wearing its glasses. “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,” he said. “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.”

But for all the pro-privacy bluster, there’s no getting around the fact that these are glasses with cameras on them. And it’s hard to imagine how even Apple, with its marketing genius, is going to be able to make the seem anything other than creepy.