Meta cuts contractors who reported seeing Ray-Ban Meta users have sex
Meta terminated its contract with data annotation contractor Sama after workers reported viewing explicit and private footage recorded by Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, raising critical data privacy and consent concerns that have triggered regulatory investigations and a class-action lawsuit. This incident exposes significant risks in AI training data collection practices and the inadequacy of current privacy safeguards in consumer devices, particularly when third-party contractors handle sensitive user-generated content. For IT organizations, this underscores the urgent need to strengthen vendor management protocols, implement robust data handling controls, and ensure transparent user consent mechanisms—or face regulatory penalties, reputational damage, and litigation.
In February, numerous workers from a company that Meta contracted to perform data annotation for Ray-Ban Meta reported viewing sensitive, embarrassing, and seemingly private footage recorded by the smart glasses. About two months later, Meta ended its contract with the firm. According to a BBC report today, “less than two months” after a report from Swedish newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten and Kenya-based freelance journalist Naipanoi Lepapa came out featuring Sama workers complaining about watching explicit footage shot from Ray-Ban Metas, “Meta ended its contract with Sama.” Sama is a Kenya-headquartered firm that Meta contracted to perform data annotation work, including working with video, image, and speech annotation for Meta’s AI systems for Ray-Ban Metas. Sama claims that Meta's cancellation of the contract affected 1,108 workers.Read full article Comments
