Four awful new privacy-eroding features from Meta in a month

Meta has faced backlash for four privacy-eroding features in a month, including using public Instagram photos for AI image generation, deploying facial recognition in smart glasses without disclosure, testing glasses that continuously record audio and photos, and rolling out a map feature showing exact user locations in Brazil. The company backtracked on the photo feature after three days but continues to push privacy boundaries.

Four awful new privacy-eroding features from Meta in a month This comment from Bruno, on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/brunofreire.bsky.social/post/3mqaoim7mxs2j pt BR : Instagram launches new tool that drains your entire bank account and kills your family. Here’s how to turn it off 👇 Instagram doesn’t yet do that. His joke references the recent news that photos from public Instagram profiles could be used to generate new images on WhatsApp with Meta AI, Meta’s generative AI, which also owns Instagram. The press picked it up and led with “Here’s how to turn it off” in the headlines https://manualdousuario.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/ia-meta-fotos-perfis-repercussao.jpg . My tip? Deactivate or delete your Instagram profile. The feature was so outrageous that it took the company only three days to backtrack. In an update to its press release https://about.fb.com/news/2026/07/introducing-muse-image-meta-ai/ , Meta said it “heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark” and that, as a result, “it’s no longer available.” It says a lot that Meta’s leadership needs to “hear feedback” to figure out that this kind of madness “missed the mark,” but the truth is nobody there is innocent. I imagine these launches are calculated risks: if it sticks, it sticks, and if it doesn’t, the seed of the idea has been planted; maybe next time society will be distracted by something else a tactic they’ve used before https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/meta-facial-recognition-smart-glasses.html or more willing to accept it straight out of the Silicon Valley playbook . In early June, Wired magazine discovered https://www.wired.com/story/meta-smart-glasses-face-recognition-nametag-connections/ that Meta had built and deployed a full facial recognition system into the Meta AI app, installed on tens of millions of devices, meant for use with the smart glasses made in partnership with EssilorLuxottica, owner of the Ray-Ban brand, among others. The ones popular among creeps https://manualdousuario.net/en/smart-glasses-ugly-tacky/ . The next day, the company scrubbed the code https://www.wired.com/story/meta-removes-face-recognition-code-meta-ai-app-smart-glasses/ from the app, and VP of Communications Andy Stone told the magazine the feature was “purely exploratory” and that “no final decision has been made on what to do here, if anything.” One decision was made, though: to slip that code in without any disclosure — an app capable of letting Meta/Ray-Ban glasses recognize people just by looking at them, inside the very app that controls the glasses. Finally, on July 8th, the Financial Times reported https://www.ft.com/content/ac282450-91a8-4597-8f60-9e6ef416865a?accessToken=zwAAAZ YJQmGk888DsxYYwtNdNOKvbF-tzEWz9PBCsWyALpHwdOF26Z1TieU5tOsKCRQkahFl9OPYJ5u9BaGWgE.MEQCIB2b3OCIMLFrpWhGxDYz9DxrTdNEvkCqkHgxHSZ7eAURAiATRpXOmuOoglt3vQttZICH1eZrWbqu1 0nZpd0oh4tdQ&segmentId=7d4bcc2e-e664-92ba-62e3-5590579f1902&syn-25a6b1a6=1 that Meta is testing a new line of smart glasses that continuously records audio and takes a photo every few seconds, with no visual or any other kind of indicator that it’s happening. Like that episode of Black Mirror, “The Entire History of You.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The Entire History of You In a statement to the British paper, the company said it doesn’t comment on “internal prototypes,” but that it follows a “privacy built in from the ground up” approach. Nilton reminded me https://bsky.app/profile/nilton.bsky.social/post/3mqk6rkjfak22 pt BR of another Meta blunder from this same stretch, this one here in Brazil. On June 10th, the company rolled out a map feature on Instagram in Brazil https://www.tecmundo.com.br/produto/413794-instagram-entrega-localizacao-de-usuarios-brasileiros-saiba-como-funciona-e-como-desativar.htm pt BR that showed users’ exact location. The headlines, as usual, dutifully included “here’s how to turn it off.” The fun didn’t last: the next day, the map was disabled, and Meta apologized for having released it “by accident.” This feature was released and it’s working in the US. Brazilian ONG Ctrl+Z https://newsletter.ctrlz.org.br/p/pedimos-uma-investigacao-contra-a and congresswoman Erika Hilton PSOL-SP independently called on Brazil’s federal prosecutor’s office to investigate the “accident.”