In addition to all the other answers here, foreign governments would fall over themselves to get this kind of data.

Additionally that kind of public trust only works if you have a government operating under the constraints of a legal framework, and to a lesser extent, an ethical framework. When a government serves the whims of an individual and instead of the function of their office, shirking agreed upon laws, etc, then you no longer have a government serving the people.

Google Glass failed because they made the user look like they were wearing a high tech computer on their face ala Dragon Ball Z. It looked odd. Meta and Snap learned from this, but it had nothing to do with smartphone cameras not being part of daily life.

The first iPhone was 2007. Google Glass came out in 2013

One thing I've noticed is a large difference between what's served on Facebook's desktop site and what's served on their mobile version. I don't use the app, I just log into facebook.com on my phone, but the mobile version is serving 100% more of this AI slop than on desktop.

I think it's obvious why given the way users interact with sites/apps on their devices vs on desktop (they want to make FB mobile as TikTok-like as possible), but it's really striking how much of Facebook on mobile is just a bunch of AI slop at this point. I see some creep in on desktop too, mostly within the Reels/Shorts section (same creators/videos on both platforms, that is), but to see my recommended feed content be so vastly different indicates a lot to me about how the algorithm interprets user behavior and a lot of Meta's thinking about mobile audiences.

EDIT: mind you I don't follow a single topic or favorite anything on the platform, the content being served/recommended to me is purely based (as far as I can tell) on gender/demographic info they know about me and user behavior.

Did they even end up launching and maintaining the project? Did things break and were they able to fix it properly? The amount of front-loaded fondness for this technology without any of the practical execution and follow up really bugs me.

It's like we all fell under the spell of a terminal endlessly printing output as some kind of measurement of progress.