Activist group takes over London bus stops with fake Meta Glasses ads - Engadget

One features an optical illusion spoof of 'They Live.'

Amid a growing backlash against Meta's smart glasses, an activist group has taken over two London bus stops with fake ads for the product, including one that uses a clever optical illusions to turn Kylie Jenner's face into a dystopian PSA about surveillance.

At first glance, the "ad" looks almost indistinguishable from a legitimate ad showing Kylie Jenner wearing a pair of smart glasses. But if you look at it from a different angle, the image turns to black and white and Jenner's face takes on a creepy, skeletal look. Instead of "Meta AI glasses" the text changes to "Meta: We're always watching."

Recording everything we see and do constantly? It's giving fascism, not fashion

It's just been revealed Meta is planning to make the glasses "continuously record audio while taking photos every few seconds" without any warning light*

— Everyone Hates Elon (@everyonehateselon.bsky.social) 2026-07-13T15:57:17.393Z

As Hyperallergic points out, the ad seems to be a cheeky nod to They Live, John Carpenter's 1988 sci-fi classic in which a pair of strange sunglasses plays an important role. It also follows another fake Meta glasses ad that cropped up in London earlier this month that's even less subtle. "The biggest advance in pervert technology since the trenchcoat," it says above a pair of glasses. "Hey Meta, start filming."

Both ads are the work of Everyone Hates Elon, an activist group that's conducted similar guerrilla-style campaigns to protest Elon Musk and other tech oligarchs. The group was behind a series of and posters subway ads in New York that protested Jeff Bezos' involvement with this year's Met Gala.

"Just because you CAN create sunglasses that record people without their consent and use the footage to train robots... Doesn't mean you should," the group wrote in an Instagram post about the campaign. The group also pointed to a recent report from the Financial Times that claimed Meta is testing a new type of glasses that's meant to continuously record audio and video.

Meta didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. The company recently announced that it would disable the cameras on its smart glasses if it detects that the recording LEDs have been physically tampered with. Meta said it would "continue to work on ways to make them even safer and more trustworthy."