this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026
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568
Meta is adding ridiculous ‘rate limits’ and a soft paywall to its smart glasses (www.theverge.com)
submitted 1 day ago by Wispy2891@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
158 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

TL;DR: you now need to pay a $20/month "meta premium" subscription to use a 100% offline feature that runs on your own malware-ridden smartglasses.

If you don't subscribe, you can use the feature that is already included in the hardware that you already paid for 3 hours each month

The now-paywalled feature boosts the voice of the speaker in front of you, something that even low-end ANC earphones are doing now. 5 minutes of free usage per day is basically nothing.

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[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 22 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Pretty sure the author nailed it, but I hit a paywall before I could copy it.

Anyways:

The only plausible explanation is they licensed this feature, expected huge sales to cover the license, and now can't.

I don't think they have licensed it per use, it was likely a flat fee and now they're desperate to recoup it. They can't do it by sales, so it's monthly fees.

It might not even be this directly, but some other license and this is just where they can squeeze consumers. They might have even just picked what gets used the most

[–] tempest@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 day ago

These things are very clearly just used for data collection for AI training. Making the users offset the cost is just bonus.