@jwildeboer My language is logic and I call it assistive tool which is being abused like tons of other things. It's just another thing to bash on without thinking about the fact that these are actually useful to some people who don't use them for such things, but as I mentioned, you can abuse and misuse everything.
@jwildeboer btw, don't get me wrong. Meta is a garbage company and exactly that is the reason why I haven't bought these yet. I'm sure they'd be practical for a blind person like me in the 1 or other situation, like they already are for others, but I don't get this pointless bashing of the glasses. A pervert is going to use something else if the glasses are gone. So go bash the people not the tool, it was obviously not made for them.
@Jonathan Using cameras and computers to improve daily life for people with visual (or other) disability is absolutely something we should strive for, and that I would support wholeheartedly.
But these glasses are not that. They are data collection devices for a huge, aggressive advertising company know for it's predatory abuse of people's behavioural data and privacy breaches.
Assistive technology needs safeguards and oversight over how personal data is used and handled. You won't get that from Meta or any of the other shady corporations promoting similar glasses now.
@harald So in the meantime, we should just...what? Not use what's available, while we wait for some charity to make something that works for the poor blind people? Not an option; I need to keep a job and eat. And if you're disabled, "keeping up" with everyone else isn't enough. You have to be better, cheaper, and faster. So if a technology that enables that comes out, you have no choice but to adopt it; your personal opinion really doesn't matter. If you refuse, society asks "Why are you insisting on being a burden instead of using the tools to be indipendant?" So now disabled people get to have our privacy violated, and also have to accept the risk of frequent violent physical assaults from people who don't like smart glasses.
Demand that these companies are regulated, and that the products and services they offer are safe to use. Should have been done years ago, so that this would not even be a problem today.
But those of us who have been warning against these companies for over a decade now has been actively hushed and ignored by everyone, especially politicians.
So we are where we are, and now have to deal with the conflict caused by technology that is damaging to some, while helpful to others. (And this is even worse for the people who depend on help from these tools. As you say, there's no choice. There's no longer any safe, private spaces left for them.)
Nobody should have to accept any risk of violence, but neither should we have to accept that our privacy is being violated by tools we or those around us rely on.
While we wait for the regulators and tools actually meant as assistive technology to catch up, we will have to accept that some people need to rely on these tools. But we should also be able to request that this is disclosed, so that everybody can take precautions to protect their privacy as best they can.
@harald And the way to encourage disclosure is to make it not actively dangerous to disclose. I avoid disclosure whenever I can for my own physical safety.
@harald The worse thing is that in the current environment, if you're around a completely blind person, your safest bet is to assume you're privacy is being violated. Because of the backlash, we're unlikely to feel safe to be upfront about it, and yet with disability benifits and services being cut more and more every day, we can't choose not to do it. As an ally the only thing I can really do now is avoid queer spaces, and not attend protests at all.
@🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 Which is terrible! Not only for the ones around, but for the blind people themselves. What about a queer blind person?
As a society we need to do better! But I still don't think leaving it to predatory ad-companies is a good solution. Though I see your point. When that's all there is, we have to endure it until we can replace it with proper tools.
Thanks for providing your perspective! It's been useful to me at least.
@harald I suspect the solution is local AI. The three real dangers here are: first, blind people ourselves getting sold on the idea that only the massive cloud companies can do what we need; they're already using us as marketing, and as a reason not to have regulation. Secondly, blind people being unable to use the tools or get the education required to develop a solution that we control and own for ourselves. Thirdly, the general population being unable to tell the difference between ad-company smart glasses and local-AI, privacy preserving smart glasses. Privacy protecting solutions do us no good if the public just tars all solutions with the same brush. But all of these dangers are social ones, not technological ones, and will take an entire generation to actually solve. I bet that the blind person who could soon develop an actually good accessibility AI is right now still in highschool, struggling through her inaccessible math class, and may well drop out of math entirely before she even gets to university, and thus will never have the chance to create anything.
@jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net
