Instagram removed a satire video shot on Meta glasses at Meta's office

Meta sells glasses that can film the people around you. This week Instagram removed a video that pointed them at Meta’s own employees.

The video

Dutch satirist Roel Maalderink, working with the digital rights group Bits of Freedom, stood outside Meta’s Dutch office wearing Meta’s camera glasses and asked employees what they thought of the device. All faces were blurred before the video was published.

The answers were not enthusiastic. “I haven’t even had coffee yet,” one employee says in the clip, according to NL Times. Maalderink’s verdict: “It’s a shame that people at Meta itself aren’t such fans of these glasses.”

The removal

Instagram removed the video on Wednesday evening, citing bullying and harassment. By then it had around 500,000 views across apps, per Bits of Freedom. Maalderink said in a statement that he has made satirical videos for ten years, on subjects from Gaza to refugees, and this was the first one taken down.

Bits of Freedom framed the takedown as a question of power. “Meta determines what becomes publicly discussable and how the debate unfolds,” the group said. “Apparently, there’s no room for criticism directed at Meta itself.”

Why the timing stands out

The removal came the same week as Meta Connect, where the company unveiled new AI glasses and its Muse Charm agent device. Camera glasses sit at the center of Meta’s hardware plans, and the privacy objection to them is simple: the people being filmed may not know it or want it.

The satire turned that objection back on the company. The employees in the clip were in exactly the position the product puts strangers in, with the difference that their faces were blurred before publication.

It also shows who sets the rules. The company whose product raises the privacy question also moderates the platform where that question gets asked, and in this case its moderation decided the video crossed the line. Whether the same standard applies to the many glasses clips of ordinary people filmed in public is the question the takedown leaves open.