Meta finally acts: two dating-and-creeping “DM” accounts with millions of followers were blocked by IG, but they only managed to affect their own doorstep

Two “pickup” filming-style accounts tracking over two million followers on Instagram were taken down, and Meta confirmed they violated the updated harassment policy; however, with the full rules not disclosed and at a time when sales of smart glasses are nearing 9 million units, whether blocking accounts can truly resolve the upskirt/hidden-camera controversy remains in question.
(Background: Say goodbye to Llama! Meta releases a new multimodal AI model, “Muse Spark,” and fully rolls it out across IG, FB, and smart glasses)
(Additional context: Are smart glasses the future? Meta posts about a new MR glasses model “Puffin,” featuring holographic display, a camera, a microphone..)

Table of contents

Toggle

• Two fan pages, a long-overdue cleanup
• Who watches the watchers—cameras or conscience?
• Bans can manage accounts, but not glasses

Two separate Instagram accounts, each boasting more than 1 million followers, vanished overnight. The two accounts became popular through street “pickup-style hidden-camera” videos using Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. Meta confirmed that the accounts were removed for violating the updated harassment policy.

Two fan pages, a long-overdue cleanup

Instagram head Adam Mosseri recently let slip in an Instagram Stories Q&A that the platform is stepping up the crackdown on a specific kind of content: someone wears smart glasses, secretly records strangers in public, then edits the footage into pickup-setup segments or pranks and uploads them afterward. His exact words were:

“We don’t want people to secretly record others, harass them, and then post those videos on our platform. So we’re going to take every action we can to go after this.”

The two taken-down accounts had similar content patterns: using Ray-Ban Meta glasses, approaching unsuspecting women in public and recording the entire interaction, then cutting the other person’s startled reactions into view-driving clips. Another batch of taken-down videos fell into a different category as well: prank segments where people wore glasses and harassed/played pranks on cashiers and fast-food employees.

Mosseri was blunt in his criticism: “If the content you’re posting is taking advantage of people, harassing them—those pickup videos we’ve heard about, seen—then we’ll take down the content.”

But the problem is that the platform has only published outcomes, not the “rules.” What scenes count as pickup, what counts as legitimate street interviews, and how the takedown thresholds are set—Instagram didn’t say anything, nor did it want to disclose how many accounts were handled in this round.

Who watches the watchers—cameras or conscience?

Ray-Ban Meta’s design logic has always been to hide cameras inside everyday accessories—the frames are a bit thicker than typical sunglasses—and a single status light is used to remind bystanders during recording.

But the issue is that the light is noticeable in indoor dim settings, yet becomes nearly invisible outdoors under sunlight. On earlier models, people could even cover the light with a strip of tape or directly drill holes to disable it; the status light is essentially rendered meaningless. Meta later added a software update: when the status light is detected as blocked, the camera is disabled.

Even so, this still can’t solve the core issue of whether strangers are willing to be filmed in the first place. The design premise of the status light assumes passersby will look up at your face, rather than at the glasses—on the face—that look almost identical to other sunglasses on the market. That’s also why reports say Apple plans to make its smart-glasses camera ring more conspicuous: instead of relying on software-side fixes after the fact, it would be better for the hardware itself to make “this is a camera” impossible to ignore.

Bans can manage accounts, but not glasses

Criticism has been equally direct: taking down two accounts is treating the symptom, not the root cause. Deleting videos won’t provide any compensation or notification to those bystanders who were filmed without knowing it. More troubling is that the boundaries of what Instagram can police ultimately cover only the portion “uploaded to Instagram.” As for footage that was recorded but not posted, posted on other platforms, or stored in devices, the platform’s harassment policy simply can’t reach it.

In other words, this is a cleanup conducted only at the front door.

And traffic through that front door is expanding in multiples. Last year, Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses sold about 7 million units, with annual sales three times higher than the previous year; cumulative sales have already approached 9 million units. The original target to reach 10 million units of annual production capacity by the end of 2026 has apparently been pulled forward by demand, and rumors say both sides are already discussing raising the goal straight to 20 million to 30 million units.

On one side is the rapid swelling of the number of lenses/cameras; on the other is still-unpublished, still-experimental enforcement standards. In the gap between them, the divergence will only grow bigger in the short term.