this is surveillance state marketing

Hey,

Zuckerberg has been busy lately. Between his duty as henchman for the Trump administration and shopping for chain necklaces, he managed to find enough time to market the hell out of his AI-powered Meta Glasses.

If you missed it, the glasses connect to the internet, have (mostly) hidden built-in cameras and microphones to capture POV content at any moment, livestreaming capabilities, and until a few weeks ago, featured a facial recognition code connected to Meta's database that could identify a complete stranger from their face alone.

What Meta has done is answer the question, "what if you could look like an asshole narc while also being one?" And more chilling yet, they've unleashed a surveillance tool seemingly purpose-built for predators, abusers, pedophiles, and—it now feels redundant to even mention—the Trump administration.

The criticism has been hot, which is also in part why previous iterations of the same concept like Google Glass and Snapchat Spectacles failed. The public sniffed out the problem, particularly women and people of colour, for reasons that should require no explanation.

But Meta did what any evil company does when their product is the problem: they worked on the campaign.

Starting with targeting women.

Meta is well aware of the research showing that women are more concerned about privacy and data protection than men, probably because in the wrong hands, a woman’s data can—and often is—used to control her bodily autonomy and threaten her safety.

And this is how you know that big tech is run by men, because instead of addressing the concerns of women, Meta collaborated with Kylie Jenner to create a line of fashionable Meta Glasses accompanied by a glossy editorial campaign.

Zuck and his minions are desperate to get women to get on board with the Loser Lenses because women are trust-builders and tastemakers, and selling a product—especially to women—in 2026 requires both. Who better to do that job than Kylie Jenner?

That decision was ultimately sneakier and more strategic than her just being really good at selling stuff. Sociotechnologist Dr. Sarah Saska said it best:

Source: Dr. Sarah Saska

But feminizing technology is only part of it. This entire collection and campaign rely on the misogynist assumption that women will prioritize fashion and consumerism over protecting their safety and privacy.

And Meta isn’t the only surveillance tech running that assumption.

Earlier this year, Ring released a Super Bowl ad introducing Search Party, a new AI identity recognition feature designed to help find lost dogs by activating Ring cameras in your neighbourhood and scanning nearby footage.

Out of 10 million dogs that go missing every year, Ring's own ad copy brags that the feature finds 365 of them. They put that pitiful stat in an $8 million ad. A 0.0000365% success rate isn't a feature, it's barely a rounding error. And if Ring can scan footage to identify a dog, that exact same technology can help ICE or law enforcement identify (or misidentify) people.

When the Super Bowl campaign didn't land, Ring found another angle: the women who've been posting their outfits using Ring camera screenshots. The trend picked up enough steam that celebrities started doing it, and then even Ring leaned in by partnering with women's clothing brand Reformation.

Source: Alexa Chung

A surveillance camera = fashion content?

It's not a coincidence that Meta and Ring are both running campaigns targeted at women at the same time using an identical strategy: normalize it and make it aspirational enough that women will abandon their personal safety and privacy to the point where they’ll willingly buy the very tool of their own oppression.

It’s worth remembering that big tech companies heavily invested in AI are remarkably bad at the storytelling side of marketing because they don't see their customers as the heroes— they see them as pawns.

And it shows, because every time they attempt a narrative campaign, their true intentions surface.

It’s also worth remembering that the road to a surveillance state is paved with gadgets that reveal themselves as dangerous after they've already collected your data.

So here's what we can do about it.

First: if someone wearing Meta Glasses is near you, an app called Nearby Lens can detect them and alert you so you can be more aware of the privacy risks around you. If you want to go the extra mile, consider glasses designed to disrupt facial recognition tech.

Second: if we can make things cool, then we can just as easily make things uncool. Marketers have a responsibility to speak up when campaigns are being used to undermine public safety.

When we commit to creating grassroots content that challenges these narratives before they have the chance to normalize, we can create change.

We have the tools to do that.

So let’s get to work, shall we?

Talk soon,

Ines

‍