Women receive no shortage of safety advice. Cover your drink. Share your location. Avoid walking at night alone. Text when you get home.
Here is one they may not hear every day: If you think someone wearing smart glasses is secretly recording you, start playing a Disney song.
The advice has begun circulating on LinkedIn, Threads, and other social channels as more people use Meta's smart glasses to covertly film women, prank service workers, and post unsuspecting strangers online. The theory, known as "copyright hacking," is that YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, or another platform will recognize the copyrighted music and prevent the resulting video from being uploaded.
"Because Disney music is more protected than women," one X user wrote. She's not completely wrong.
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It sounds like the kind of internet hack that is equal parts clever and depressing. Women are already taught to modify their behavior in response to new risks. Now, as ordinary-looking glasses make it easier to turn a private interaction into public content, they are being handed another instruction.
While this specific piece of advice may be new, the tactic itself is not.
Would playing Disney music actually work?
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The theory is based on YouTube’s real copyright system.
YouTube uses an automated tool called Content ID to compare uploaded videos against audio and video submitted by copyright holders. When the system detects a match, the owner can decide whether to monetize the video, track its performance, or block it.
The important part is that not every match results in a takedown. YouTube says monetization is the most common policy applied to music claims. In those cases, the video stays online, but some or all of its advertising revenue may go to the copyright holder.
The rules are stricter for certain Shorts. YouTube says vertical videos between 1 and 3 minutes are blocked when they receive an active Content ID claim. Even then, however, an uploader could shorten the video, remove its sound, replace the audio, or use editing software to separate the speakers’ voices from the background music.
TikTok can similarly mute a sound that violates copyright restrictions without removing the video's visual content. The uploader can then replace the missing audio with another sound.
So yes, playing a Disney song could make a video harder to post or less profitable, and might even get it blocked — but that's not guaranteed.
Social media users were quick to point out the practical problems with this methodology.
"If you are being secretly recorded, how do you know to play the songs?" one user asked on a viral Facebook post by author and content creator Tova Leigh. Others noted that the person wearing the glasses could simply post the footage without sound.
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That first question gets at the larger flaw: Meta's Ray-Ban glasses are designed to look like conventional eyewear. The person being filmed may never realize a camera is pointed at them, and even if they notice the small recording light, they’d still need to recognize what it means, reach for their phone, and start playing music before the interaction ends. By that point, they may have already become the content.
Women may not know they are being filmed
The Disney advice is spreading as more women describe discovering that seemingly ordinary encounters were actually being recorded for an online audience.
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In February, CNN reported on the rise of "manfluencers" who use smart glasses to film themselves approaching women in airports, grocery stores, gyms, and other public spaces. To the woman involved, the interaction may feel like a stranger starting a conversation. For the creator, it is an opportunity to produce a video for thousands, or even millions, of viewers.
One woman, a DJ and producer who goes by Manic Muse online, said she gave her number to a man who approached her in a Texas grocery store because she believed their conversation was genuine. Her sister later suggested that his glasses might have contained a camera.
"And in that moment, my heart fell to my stomach," she told reporters.
Manic Muse said she messaged the man, asked whether he had recorded her, and told him not to post the interaction. He stopped replying and uploaded it anyway. The video eventually received more than 23 million views.
"It’s just so violating," she added. "I didn’t consent to being secretly recorded, and I definitely didn’t consent to becoming content for millions of strangers.”
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Once the footage is online, the recording itself is only the beginning. Viewers may scrutinize the woman's appearance, sexualize her, criticize how she handled the interaction, or search for personal information. What she believed was a private conversation with one stranger can be repackaged as evidence of whether his pickup technique "worked."
The technology has helped creators build entire accounts around people who never agreed to participate. As Mashable previously reported, smart-glasses users have covertly filmed attempts to get women's phone numbers in many public spaces. Other accounts have featured recordings of women’s bodies, sexually suggestive visits to massage parlors, and pranks targeting retail and restaurant employees.
Former prank creator Brad Podray, previously known online as Scumbag Dad, told us in January that women and service workers are often selected precisely because they can provide usable reactions while being less able or willing to challenge the person recording them.
"They want people who are good on camera, so they’re going to hit fast food employees, and they’re going to hit pretty girls," Podray said. "A lot of random women walking around aren’t going to want to participate in a skit if you ask them to, so they remove the agency entirely by just running the glasses."
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Meta has attempted to make the recording less discreet. Its glasses include a white LED that signals the camera is operating. But users have also found ways to interfere with it. Stickers designed to conceal the indicator have been sold online, and people in at least 30 states have offered services that physically modify it, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Though Meta has put safeguards in place to make the glasses harder to manipulate, they do not solve the broader consent problem. A person can see the light without understanding what it means. In many cases, they may not even see it.
Police have tried the Disney defense, too
This is not the first time someone has tried to turn copyright enforcement into a shield against a camera.
In April 2022, a Santa Ana, California, police officer played Disney songs while a YouTuber recorded officers investigating a stolen vehicle in his neighborhood. "You've Got a Friend in Me" from Toy Story played through a police vehicle's speakers late at night. It was followed by "We Don’t Talk About Bruno" from Encanto, "Reflection" from Mulan, and "Un Poco Loco" from Coco.
When Santa Ana City Councilmember Johnathan Ryan Hernandez asked the officer why he was playing it, the officer pointed toward the person recording.
"Because it will be copyright infringement for him," the officer said in a statement. The department also said playing music while officers were being recorded was not part of its recommended policy.
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Still, the Santa Ana incident was part of a pattern that had already appeared in several other departments.
In February 2021, Beverly Hills police officers were recorded playing songs including Sublime's "Santeria" and the Beatles' "Yesterday" during encounters with activist Sennett Devermont. Devermont had been livestreaming his attempts to obtain information and body-camera footage from the department.
The timing suggested the officers might have been attempting to activate Instagram's copyright filters, which can interrupt livestreams or limit how the resulting video gets shared. The Beverly Hills Police Department responded similarly, stating it doesn’t recommend officers play music while being filmed.
A few months later, an Alameda County sheriff’s sergeant played Taylor Swift's "Blank Space" while activists recorded him outside a courthouse in Oakland. This time, the officer explicitly explained what he was doing. "You can record all you want," he said. "I just know it can't be posted on YouTube." A department spokesperson later acknowledged that the attempt had backfired.
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The practice also surfaced in Illinois. In an incident report obtained by Motherboard later that year, an officer wrote that he had been "recently advised" to turn on music when he encountered a woman recording him. That detail suggested the tactic was no longer simply occurring to individual officers in the moment; in at least one department, someone appeared to be passing it along as advice.
Platforms are starting to act, but only after the fact
Recording someone in public is not universally illegal in the United States. Laws vary by state, and additional restrictions can apply to audio recording, sexual imagery, stalking, harassment, and the commercial use of someone's likeness. But in general, people have weaker expectations of privacy on a sidewalk, in a park, or in other public places.
Nowadays, though, recording can also violate a platform's rules. Instagram head Adam Mosseri said last week that the platform would remove smart-glasses videos showing people being exploited or harassed.
Meta confirmed that two prominent accounts posting smart-glasses pickup content had been deactivated for violating its harassment policies. Both had amassed more than 1 million followers.
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The crackdown creates a clearer consequence for some of the most abusive accounts, but it does not guarantee the removal of every video made without consent. Instagram has focused its policy on harassment and exploitation, leaving a large gray area for recordings that are invasive but do not clearly meet either definition.
More importantly, moderation generally begins after the footage has already been posted. The person recorded must first discover the video, locate the account, report the content, explain the violation, and wait for the platform to decide whether it crossed a line. By then, the video may have already accumulated millions of views or been copied to other accounts.
Government rules are beginning to adapt to technology in certain areas. Beginning July 20, New York prohibited recording-enabled glasses inside every courthouse in the state's Unified Court System. Officials said the ban was intended to prevent people from secretly recording court proceedings in violation of state law and court rules.
Outside those controlled settings, people who do not want to be recorded are still left depending on the wearer’s judgment, a small white light, inconsistent laws, and moderation systems that usually arrive after the damage has begun.
Playing Disney music might occasionally interrupt that process. It could also do absolutely nothing. But when the alternatives are so limited, an unreliable defense may still feel better than no defense at all.
from Mashable https://ift.tt/IvP0MLY
