ZuckOff is a free app that sees Meta glasses before they see you

(wired.me)

Comments

user_7832 22 hours ago
I... don't know how I feel about this. I mean, the concept, sure, good idea. Is it reliable? Perhaps. But... I get a "buy merch" popup the moment I open the page, and there seems to be a pro option for what seems to be a very much LLM-aided app? ...IDK, rubs off a bit wrong IMO. Just my personal opinion.
phyzome 21 hours ago
Existing, probably less sketchy app: https://github.com/yjeanrenaud/yj_nearbyglasses (as linked in the other thread)
flexagoon 22 hours ago
Not sure why you'd use this sketchy vibecoded proprietary app over the same thing that's open source and existed for a while

https://github.com/yjeanrenaud/yj_nearbyglasses

tuzemec 22 hours ago
Dunno why I remembered "The Quantum Thief" by Hannu Rajaniemi. Basically, you had fine-grained control over what others perceived of you. Your friends can see you completely, while strangers can only see a blur.

It was an amazing book.

rafram 21 hours ago
> Shows the evidence behind every flag, so you can disagree with it

> Logs every Bluetooth device it hears, glasses or not

How much AGI is required before LLMs stop putting totally irrelevant technical details into marketing copy?

ldes 23 hours ago
Reading this inspired me that it would be nice if there were a do-not-film-me standard: your mobile phone sends out a do-not-film-me request with a (rotating) hash of your facial biometrics via Bluetooth. All cameras (glasses, phones, etc.) then blur your face in recordings.

Similarly, a venue could request a do-not-film-this-venue setting and make sure no photos are taken at a party.

anonreplier 22 hours ago
Been around for ages for Android as "Nearby Glasses" app
dmaa 22 hours ago
Unlike other commenters, I do not mind the ai-ness of this app. This is a quick solution to a problem that we should not have had in the first place.
bwnkl 22 hours ago
> Own a pair? Add them to known devices

Oh, the hypocrisy

ourmandave 22 hours ago
I hope the Microsoft marketing dept is paying attention, because ZuckOff is amazing branding.

Instead of Copilot for Counter Spying, or Anti-Creeper.NET.

asar 22 hours ago
cool solution to a problem that shouldnt even exist I'd say. how did it become ok to be recorded at all times without prior consent??
Singletail 21 hours ago
It only works while the glasses are in pairing mode. This is useless.
niemandhier 22 hours ago
Good to know, now I need to find my flipper zero and build a small app to use the information gained.
ageitgey 22 hours ago
Cool idea, but why not spend 5 minutes to tell Claude to generate something besides the default AI UI style for your app?
baggachipz 20 hours ago
Remember when flip phone cameras were forced to add an un-mutable "click" sound when somebody snapped a photo, in order to try to stop creep shots? We've sure come a long way since then.
captn3m0 23 hours ago
Does it beep louder as the BT signal strength changes and the camera comes closer?
BubbleRings 19 hours ago
It would be cool to see an individual US State pass a law to say that recording glasses have to have a visible logo on the front indicating recording capabilities.
nubinetwork 22 hours ago
So google can already figure out if you're being followed by an air tag, why can't they natively scan Bluetooth for smart glasses and do what zuckoff does without a third party app?
lordnacho 21 hours ago
Why do any of the device's network connections (WiFi/BT/etc) need to be on? What's to stop someone recording and uploading later?
ebtebt 22 hours ago
What is the difference betwen this and https://www.noglasshole.com/ ?
world2vec 20 hours ago
In the novel "The Mountain in the Sea" (great read, very pertinent as well for the discussion of AGI and what is consciousness), an "abglanz" is like a digital identity shield that hides a person's face behind a shifting weird pattern of colours. I wonder how far off we are from everyone just retreating into higher privacy settings and opt out.
itqwertz 23 hours ago
Great name
drbojingle 20 hours ago
Zucker no zucking, Zucker no zucking, Zucker no zucking! We did it, we stopped Zucker!
dirkc 21 hours ago
> Quiet is not proof that nobody is recording, and a detection is not proof that anyone is

So, you might sometimes know that someone might be recording?

I don't want to dismiss that as useless, but that is a difficult signal to incorporate into behavior.

eecks 20 hours ago
'loud' and 'quiet' is not good terminology for this
h1fra 22 hours ago
I was going to say: can't wait for EU to regulate this, but they already did!
tantalor 20 hours ago
A comment on the design of this site: I was super confused about what this actually is. How do I use "ZuckOff"? Is it a piece of hardware? A website that I just leave open? Do I download some software, or maybe fork a repo? Where is the fucking download link? Cmd-F for "download" and "install" fail.

I scrolled down. Only the newsletter and contact info at the bottom. Do I have to email them? I scrolled up. Just a list of features and description of what it does, but not how do I use it. What's the first step? Please for the love of God.

I see a big blue button that links to "the shop". Oh, maybe that's where I buy it? No it's just "merch". I'm not sure why some random piece of tech would be offering tote bags for $28 (!) but okay.

I go back to the website and keep hunting. Then I see a row of buttons squeezed in a random location, seemingly out of place, like the designer had a stroke at this point in the process. They don't match the visual style of the rest of the site, so they are easy to just ignore as clutter. One says (in very tiny letters) "download on the app store".

puelocesar 21 hours ago
I wonder the battery impact of discovering BT all the time..
QGQBGdeZREunxLe 12 hours ago
Is this for a specific model or is this a General Zuckoff?
voidUpdate 23 hours ago
*knows when a pair of camera glasses are in the room
solenoid0937 20 hours ago
These glasses are amazing for capturing memories on vacations, way nicer than using my phone camera.
throwaway85825 22 hours ago
A better solution would be a miniaturized quadrf style device that could see radio sources and overlay them.
partiallypro 19 hours ago
I think the panic around smart glasses cameras is so strange, it's SO much easier to be a creep with a phone recording. You'll see it all the time if you're paying attention. Everyone is already on their phones anyhow, and especially with "creep shots" your head is a massive giveaway; with a smart phones, not so much, it can be placed anywhere. What practically could someone record without their knowledge that isn't already widely and more easily available through a smartphone? I just don't get it.

I do understand recording maybe during a sexual act or something without knowledge, but even that is probably just as easy with a phone. Feels like everyone is focusing on the wrong thing, given that level of privacy has already been eradicated and no one is going to give up their phones.

swrrt 19 hours ago
Does someone want to make this into a product and selling to people?
marcosscriven 22 hours ago
As much as I despise Meta and concerned about privacy, I’ve not found anything better for recording snippets of my glider flights than the Meta glasses.

I don’t post them anywhere (except occasionally to friends or family in direct messages).

I fly club gliders and can’t really attach a camera easily. And in any case the PoV is a useful learning tool. I can check I was doing lookout properly, I can see the instruments clearly and so forth.

I have a second pair of normal glasses that I always swap to when I’m back on the ground.

KellyCriterion 23 hours ago
It says:

> Flags camera glasses by their manufacturer signature <

How is this guaranteed to be not spoofed?

jan_m_savage 22 hours ago
love this. We need more anti-privacy gizmos like this!
LightBug1 22 hours ago
v2.0 ... auto-project two middle fingers at the recording camera, in place of the recorded subjects face.
bdavbdav 23 hours ago
This is fantastic.
mandeepj 5 hours ago
Imagine wearing Zuckoff merchandise to a Meta onsite interview or at their Connect conf :-)
markvdb 22 hours ago
Good. Now what about fscking smartphones? There's 1000 times more of those, most with dual cameras and microphones.

I have "Hey Siri!" enthousiasts visiting soon. They can leave their iPhones in a nice Faraday cage at the entrance.

thiago_fm 19 hours ago
This name is so good.

ZuckOff!

I wish they'd just make them illegal, it would be easier.

Like, if people want to use it on their private property, alright, legal.

But in public? I never accepted any terms and conditions for it...

varispeed 22 hours ago
I think this will go like this: - Resistance. People don't like being "secretly" filmed. - Most people will realise it does not affect their lives. - People will ignore it - New generation will accept as something normal to do. Everyone recording everyone.
seany 16 hours ago
Are there any decent glasses have similar features but aren't meta?
flanked-evergl 22 hours ago
You can only fight the future for so long.
VeejayRampay 22 hours ago
we really need to regulate fast on those pervert glasses
cubefox 22 hours ago
From https://about.fb.com/news/2026/07/metas-ai-glasses-your-ques...

> Can’t people just cover up or disable the LED?

> The camera is disabled when people try to do this. Beginning with our second generation of glasses, the camera is automatically disabled if we detect that the capture LED has been blocked. No photos or videos can be taken until we detect that the light is unblocked.

> Since the introduction of this safeguard, we’ve seen some people go beyond using tape to sophisticated efforts to modify or destroy the capture LED. We are continuously improving our ability to detect tampering, and now we’re updating the glasses to disable the camera if they detect the LED was physically tampered with or destroyed. No other kind of camera has done this and we’re proud to lead the industry forward.

gitowiec 22 hours ago
pl_PL ( 。 ♡ ‿ ♡ 。 )
knowaveragejoe 19 hours ago
A non-slop and non-freemium variant:

https://github.com/yjeanrenaud/yj_nearbyglasses

badgersnake 19 hours ago
Perhaps the techbros might eventually realise that smart glasses are a shit idea. It’s not like this hasn’t been attempted before with Google Glass.

I don’t have high hopes though, listening doesn’t seem to be their strong point. If they have a strong point.

shevy-java 22 hours ago
The Spy Glasses need to be abolished everywhere.

I was, however had, quite surprised when I saw them used by "auditors" (here, I refer to e. g. "auditors" on youtube specifically). Now this brought a problem for me, because auditors on the one hand, bring interesting encounters, even if they (or some of them) meta-jabait and provoke (again, only some of them at best, in many cases they don't really). But when they use spy glasses to serve greedy mega-corporations, this totally shifts the whole "audit" instantly, because then they also support evil Facebook, Google or what not. And that kind of runs counter to the whole audit-idea. So far I only saw one use the facebook spy glasses, but I wonder whether he even gave any thought to this. I understand why he uses spy glasses, but I don't understand why he does it to benefit Facebook. That IMO puts the whole idea behind audits instantly in a wrong angle. I haven't seen others use it, so perhaps it just was one or few, but they don't seem to really think anymore. Some audit channels were also censored by Google in the last weeks, others were not, but this just amplifies the whole problem here. Imagine if the spy glasses were made by Google. And the auditors depend on Google money. It's really strange. The whole setup does not work well. I understand that they want to make money, but why would I want to support facebook-agents using spy glasses at all? That makes no sense, so I decided when an audit-channel uses facebook spy glasses or anyone else's corporations spy-glasses, I won't watch anything from there. Same with AI content - anyone using AI content I instantly add to a perma-ban list. I recently saw more and more people use AI slop images and AI filters. This is soooooo horrible. These people don't seem to understand that AI slop kills interest. Yet some swear by it - it is fascinating. Those who use AI slop, can not be convinced that using AI slop is detrimental. They have been converted into AI skynet servants.

brap 22 hours ago
Sorry to be that guy but:

>Quiet is not proof that nobody is recording, and a detection is not proof that anyone is

Is such claudespeak it’s not even annoying it’s just funny at this point

eqvinox 22 hours ago
Amazing. But it won't work for long, they'll patch the BT beacons with some "privacy" mode :(