You may have seen a commercial from Meta saying it’s giving away Meta glasses to Blind veterans in the United States. And if you’ve seen that commercial, you might reasonably conclude that Meta, a company that recently agreed to pay around $18 billion over claims that it designed its social media platforms to be addictive to children, is doing a public good.
But Meta might be benefiting by using disabled people to market Meta glasses. And disabled people, like everyone else, have some surveillance concerns.
I looked into this issue for an article that came out today on Mother Jones. Experts I spoke with are concerned that Meta could be using disabled people just to sell a product.
“We’re seeing the systematic deconstruction of disability rights in the United States,” University of Toledo disability studies professor Rebecca Monteleone told me. “A company like Meta can justify the development of this technology based on all of these assumptions that there must be a social good here,” in a moment when wins for disabled people are depressingly rare.
In the technofascist society we live in, it’s always good to have a healthy dose of skepticism.
—Julia Métraux
