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Article: Workers report watching Ray-Ban Meta-shot footage of people using the bathroom

Impact Score

5 / 10

AI Summary (Processed Content)

A Swedish investigative report alleges that employees at Meta subcontractor Sama in Kenya have viewed sensitive user footage, including scenes of people having sex and using bathrooms, while annotating data from Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. The report, based on interviews with over 30 Sama workers and former Meta employees, claims this privacy-sensitive data feeds directly into Meta's AI systems, making some annotators uncomfortable. Meta's privacy practices are now under renewed scrutiny due to these allegations.

The main topics covered are user privacy concerns, data annotation practices by a Meta subcontractor, and the exposure of sensitive footage from smart glasses.

Original URL

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/workers-report-watching-ray-ban-meta-shot-footage-of-people-using-the-bathroom/

Source Feed

Ars Technica

Published Date

2026-03-05 23:36

Fetched Date

2026-03-05 21:30

Processed Date

2026-03-05 21:31

Embedding Status

Present

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Not Clustered

Raw Extracted Content

Meta’s approach to user privacy is under renewed scrutiny following a Swedish report that employees of a Meta subcontractor have watched footage captured by Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses showing sensitive user content.
The workers reportedly work for Kenya-headquartered Sama and provide data annotation for Ray-Ban Metas.
The February report, a collaboration from Swedish newspapers Svenska Dagbladet, Göteborgs-Posten, and Kenya-based freelance journalist Naipanoi Lepapa, is, per a machine translation, based on interviews with over 30 employees at various levels of Sama, including several people who work with video, image, and speech annotation for Meta’s AI systems. Some of the people interviewed have worked on projects other than Meta’s smart glasses. The report’s authors said they did not gain access to the materials that Sama workers handle or the area where workers perform data annotation. The report is also based on interviews with former US Meta employees who have reportedly witnessed live data annotation for several Meta projects.
The report pointed to, per the translation, a “stream of privacy-sensitive data that is fed straight into the tech giant’s systems,” and that makes Sama workers uncomfortable. The authors said that several people interviewed for the report said they have seen footage shot with Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses that shows people having sex and using the bathroom.
“I saw a video where a man puts the glasses on the bedside table and leaves the room. Shortly afterwards, his wife comes in and changes her clothes,” an anonymous Sama employee reportedly said, per the machine translation.
Another anonymous employee said that they have seen users’ partners come out of the bathroom naked.