Meta is adding ridiculous 'rate limits' and a soft paywall to its smart glasses

[highplainsdem]

Source: The Verge

Would you pay $20 a month for access to AI hardware you already own? That appears to be one of Meta’s next bets. This week, it quietly announced that your glasses’ Conversation Focus feature will soon be limited to three hours of use per month, unless you pay for a $19.99 Meta One Premium subscription.

In a help article, the company insists that it won’t require a subscription to use your glasses, period; it’s merely erecting a “rate limit” for certain AI features. Even premium subscribers will only get 15 hours of Conversation Focus per month under that “rate limit,” it claims.

Problem is, Meta’s rate limit is ridiculous. The Conversation Focus feature, which amplifies the voice of the person you’re speaking to so you can hear better in noisy environments, is not something that should plausibly be rate-limited, because it doesn’t use Meta’s servers. It runs on-device, using the chips inside the glasses that you’ve already purchased. I turned off my internet, and it kept working.

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At a time when hardware is getting increasingly expensive, I suppose this isn’t as controversial as Meta quietly beginning to embed a facial recognition upgrade for these glasses in millions of phones, code that it has since quietly removed. Still, I’m filing this under “Meta will ruin its smart glasses by being Meta.”

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Read more: https://www.theverge.com/gadgets/959899/meta-ai-glasses-paywall-rate-limit

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The Verge asked if Meta planned to put other features of their smart glasses behind a paywall, and if they can explain why they did this with the Conversation Focus feature. There was no response.

The article didn't mention - but I will - that the reasoning at Meta that led to this decision is probably that anyone so addicted to AI that they'd pay for smart glasses (despite the aversion to them most people feel) can probably be milked for additional fees.

[SheltieLover]

1. I wouldn't give them a nickel for a trainload of slop glasses

[FakeNoose]

2. I wonder how they justify this added charge?

Maybe they're selling ads that will be posted on glasses ... and the benefit of paying the $20 fee is to get rid of the ads? I don't know, but I can't think of any other reason they might get away with.

This is just a very good reason NOT to buy the glasses.

[flvegan]

3. The only Meta subscription I'd buy is the monthly KAZRITN package.

That's right, the Kick Assclown Zuckerberg Right In The Nuts package. Once a month, you and your Meta glasses whatevers get to walk up and kick ole Zuckerfuck right square in the ole nads, baby, hard as you please. The subscription also pays for online storage of each Wallop 'o tha Balls and the ensuing clutching, falling, grimacing, crying, screaming, etc for the following 10 minutes. It resets once a year. For $10, you can save your favorites forever.

I kid of course, I don't believe in violence. Something like that.

[twodogsbarking]

4. The glasses better be shatter proof. You wouln't want a cut face to go with a broken nose.

[ToxMarz]

5. When it comes to paying for all this AI, that's where it always falls apart

It's a great parlor trick, but once they stop giving it away it's too expensive a toy. They need mass devoted adoption to make their business model work.

[Karasu]

8. Which is why it's being forced into fucking everything, and now we're being sold these mass surveillance glasses that

are going to enable all sorts of fucking crime if/when they actually get facial recognition (which--if we lived in a sane country--would be fucking banned).

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. JFC, Meta's share price is up 10% today

I read the OP, and thought "Meta seems to be shooting itself in the foot time after time - is it falling out of favour yet?". 10% up, today - though over 20% down from its all-time high last August.

[purr-rat beauty]

7. Nothing you buy is yours...

That's the model these tech-bros want to force their customers to use