Police probe TikTok creator over street harassment filmed with Meta glasses

Police Scotland confirmed they are investigating TikTok creator Scott Margerison following complaints over video clips recorded using Oakley Meta smart glasses and shared across social networks.

According to a report by the BBC, the published videos show Margerison approaching strangers in public, hurling verbal abuse at a pedestrian, and making racially charged remarks about "enforced diversity" to a British-born Sikh shop owner. In another instance, he made suggestive comments about two teenagers before putting on the camera-equipped glasses to document the confrontation with the minors and their parents.

The case underscores the growing tension surrounding wearable cameras. Meta equips its glasses with an external LED that lights up during capture and automatically halts recording if the light is obscured or tampered with. However, that privacy mechanism does little to deter creators who use the devices specifically to record and escalate confrontations.

Platform moderators and competing manufacturers are already adjusting to the backlash. Instagram recently banned accounts belonging to pickup artists who used Meta glasses to record women without consent. Meanwhile, Bloomberg previously reported that heightened privacy scrutiny prompted Apple to delay its own plans for AI-powered smart eyewear.

Source: habr via BBC