Meta removed facial-recognition code from its smart glasses app and, characteristically, said nothing about it.
The code was embedded in the app that pairs with Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses — hardware that places cameras on people's faces and in front of bystanders who have not consented to being photographed or identified. Meta made no announcement about the removal and offered no explanation of whether the feature was ever active, what it was built to do, or why it was cut now.
The word "quietly" is doing a lot of work here. Removing a capability without acknowledgment invites exactly the scrutiny Meta was presumably trying to avoid. Smart glasses with any facial-recognition capability represent one of the more serious live privacy concerns in consumer technology: a form factor worn in public, pointed at strangers, with no visible signal that identification might be happening. If the code was never operational, saying so costs nothing. The silence suggests something more complicated.
Meta's track record on privacy transparency does not inspire confidence that this is simply a matter of cleaning up dead code.