Smart glasses can be genuinely useful, whether you’re taking a hands-free photo, listening to music, or asking an AI assistant about whatever is in front of you. Unfortunately, putting a camera on someone’s face also opens the door to some much less pleasant uses. That’s becoming a problem for Meta.
Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in July that the platform was working to remove videos in which people use Meta glasses to film and harass others secretly. However, a new Business Insider investigation suggests the cleanup isn’t going quite as smoothly as Meta might have hoped. The publication found dozens of pickup and prank videos still available on Instagram weeks after Mosseri’s comments. Some came from popular or verified creators, and several showed women being approached and recorded in public through Meta glasses.
Instagram is taking action, but videos are slipping through
Meta has already started cleaning house. Thousands of posts have reportedly been pulled from Instagram, some larger accounts have disappeared, and searches for phrases including “rizz” and “cold approach” are now restricted. Yes, that sounds like a fairly aggressive response. In practice, though, plenty of similar videos are still making it through. That gap is where things get messy. More than 20 potentially problematic videos were shared with Meta during Business Insider’s investigation, but only nine were ultimately removed. There have also been some confusing account-level decisions. One creator caught up in the crackdown briefly returned to Instagram after being deactivated, only to be removed again once the mistake was pointed out.
Perhaps the trickier issue is what happens after you watch one of these clips. Instagram’s algorithm is built to learn what keeps you scrolling, and that can work against its moderation efforts here. Interacting with a few videos during the investigation was enough for Reels to begin serving up a flood of similar content. At that point, finding these videos didn’t require hunting for specific accounts or keywords — Instagram was doing the discovery itself.
This could become a bigger headache for Meta
For Instagram, this is a moderation problem. For Meta as a whole, it could also become a hardware problem. Meta’s smart glasses have become increasingly popular, with sales reportedly topping 7 million units in 2025 — more than triple the previous year. They’re also an important part of Mark Zuckerberg’s broader push toward AI-powered wearable computing. That makes their reputation particularly important. If people begin associating camera-equipped glasses with being unknowingly recorded on the street, Meta has a much bigger issue than a few questionable Reels.
Meta is betting that AI can eventually improve its moderation at scale, and the company has said early tests showed its AI systems catching more violating content while making fewer mistakes than human moderators. Whether that translates into a cleaner Instagram experience remains to be seen. For now, Meta has clearly drawn a line around this kind of content. The difficult part is making sure Instagram can enforce it — especially as millions more camera-equipped glasses find their way onto people’s faces.
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