Meta disabled the camera on thousands of glasses over a taped-over light

Thousands of Meta glasses have lost their camera because their owners taped over the small light that tells bystanders they are being recorded.

What Meta changed

Meta VP of wearables Alex Himel told Semafor on September 1, 2026 that a recent software update detects a covered or removed recording LED and disables the camera on the affected glasses. Meta puts the share of tampered devices at under 0.1% of all glasses sold. With 7 million pairs sold in 2025 alone, that still comes to thousands of units. Without the camera, the glasses work as a pair of Bluetooth headphones.

The update closes a specific workaround. On August 27 Himel said on Threads that the camera now stops if the light is covered during a recording. Before that, the check ran only at the start of a recording, so a user could begin filming with the LED visible and then cover it. Quartz reports that a taped LED gets the camera back once the tape comes off, while a drilled-out LED loses it for good; Meta has not spelled out that distinction publicly.

The regulatory pressure

The same day, Norway’s digital minister Karianne Tung said the government is looking at regulating camera-enabled wearables, which local critics have nicknamed “pervert glasses,” and the Norwegian Consumer Council asked retailers to pause sales until the rules are clear. Tung plans an expert group to advise on protecting consumers from the technology.

What it means

Himel described the situation as “a little bit of a cat and mouse game,” and cheap third-party covers for the LED already exist, so this update is unlikely to be the last. The larger change is structural: a camera worn on someone’s face is now a device the manufacturer can switch off remotely, based on what its sensors report about the wearer’s behavior. That cuts both ways, for the people being filmed and for the people who paid for the hardware, and Norway’s move suggests regulators will not leave the balance to Meta alone.