Meta CTO says the technical issues during live demos of its new smart glasses were due to a self-inflicted DDoS and a bug that put Zuckerberg's glasses to sleep
and it wasn't the Wi-Fi Lakshmi Varanasi / Business Insider : Meta's CTO: We'd ‘love’ iMessage on Ray-Ban glasses, but Apple won't allow it David Heaney / UploadVR : Meta Explains Why Its Connect Live Demos Failed On-Stage Ariel Zilber / New York Post : Mark Zuckerberg has Wi-Fi glitch during live demo of Meta's new $800 smart glasses Jay Bonggolto / Android Police : Meta's CTO breaks down why the smart glasses demos went south at Connect Shubhangi Goel / Business Insider : Andrew Bosworth on the double tech breakdown at Meta Connect: ‘We missed an opportunity for legendary status’ Emily Forlini / PCMag : Meta Explains Multiple Live AI Demo Fails at Connect: 'We DDoS'd Ourselves' Usman Qureshi / iPhone in Canada : Meta Explains Smart Glasses Demo Failure at Connect 2025 Rani Molla / Sherwood News : Watch: Meta virtual reality conference bloopers Atchutanna Subodh / Analytics Insight : Zuckerberg's Meta Ray-Ban Glasses Fail During Live Demo: Was Wi-Fi Really to Blame? Hamish Hector / TechRadar : 'We DDoS'd ourselves': Meta explains why it's smart glasses demo failed so spectacularly - and says ‘never-before-seen’ video bug is now fixed Patrick Redford / Defector : Mark Zuckerberg Demonstrates That His AI Smart Glasses Suck And Don't Work X: Saja Boy / @anveio : @GergelyOrosz Do you buy this story? Meta, the company that famously can't handle, what, a hundred requests per second? They didn't load test? Near / @nearcyan : *turns on loudspeaker at 5,000 person venue* “Hey Meta, text my ex and say I miss her” @tpae : @GergelyOrosz What's worse than claimed DDoS is the fact that your voice activates other people's devices. Sounds like a huge flaw 😂 Jonathan Zittrain / @zittrain : Hunh. (1) Wouldn't everyone then notice on their phones that they'd been triggered to start AI? Is that what people experienced? (2) If true, it highlights serious issues where strangers can get people's phones to do things through voice command, like [Article: “Burger King debuts Whopper ad that triggers Google Home devices"] Sarbjeet Johal / @sarbjeetjohal : This is a classic! The need for ‘voice to identify mapping’ is an obvious one. My POV on @Meta 's multiple demo fails: It baffles me that @Meta is trying to do glasses 🤓 for last 10 years and they still miss some basic functions like that. Not having native internet connectivity is ‘ANOTHER GLARING FLAW’ — multiple demos failed, multiple times, occasionally blaming wi-fi connectivity. WHO ARE THESE ARCHITECTS? Gergely Orosz / @gergelyorosz : @anveio Buddy, it's not about req/sec but bandwidth and CPU processing. It's about sending who knows how much live video streams to a dedicated server for the event that wasn't preprated for it Yes I buy it because why lie about it? This is amateur stuff that... happens to the best of us @sporadicalia : okay, to be fair, this is probably the coolest way to fuck up a live demo @dhh : The problem with media training: Everyone ends up playing the same role, repeating the same scripted gesticulation. It looks uncanny and fake because it is. They might as well just use AI. @jasteinerman : So here's the story behind why yesterdays live #metaconnect demo failed - when the chef said “Hey Meta start Live AI” it activated everyone's Meta AI in the room at once and effectively DDOS'd our servers 🤣 That's what we get for doing it live! Jim McPherson / @mcjamez : @jasteinerman Is this copypasta that I'm not following? How can 10's of devices DDOS ~META's~ servers? Gergely Orosz / @gergelyorosz : Plus, as Meta's CTO, Boz explained: all AI traffic in the building was setup to route traffic to a dev server... routed via Iceland (from California!) Honestly props for Meta for doing a proper live demo. Makes me more interested in future demos, seeing it's no pre-recorded Mark Gurman / @markgurman : Remember Face ID? Failed demo but essentially flawless for users. I wish Apple would go back to live but I don't think it'll ever happen. Much more reach now and they definitely see taking risks for this type of thing as pointless (I don't think they're wrong). Mikaël Dufresne / @purplemikey : Meta Connect 2025 was short, to the point and sincerely, impressive. It was not the best conference I have seen, but it covered things I am very interested in. Avatar in 3D VR is amazing. Hyperscape is a cool tech. Horizon worlds is making huge progress... And wearables too! [image] @basedbeffjezos : We should reward innovation and risk taking with respect IMO. Too many mega corps playing it safe. Zuck is one of the few still in founder mode. @theo : Hot take: Zuck handled this incredibly. Can't imagine how stressed the team must have been. He went out of his way to not put any additional pressure on them. When the lead came out, he consoled them and said “don't worry, we'll share a video of it soon” Great leadership 🫡 Olivia Moore / @omooretweets : Ancient tech wisdom says a failed live demo is a good omen for a killer product 🧘 @basedbeffjezos : If you watch the full video they actually nailed 4/5 features presented. Idk I was super impressed. If the stock dips temporarily it could be a good buying opportunity. Dylan Field / @zoink : Congrats to the Meta team on today's launches! I saw some of the tech while it was still in development... the glasses, AR interface, neural band and overall capabilities are extraordinary. And yes, live demos can fail. We've all been there. The tech is still awesome. Onwards! Shaurya / @shauseth : it takes a lot courage for someone in his position to go live and make a fool of himself. everybody gansta in their comfortable controlled environments Dmitrii Kovanikov / @chshersh : Firing people who made this product would be very wrong here. In fact, it's a common pitfall managers in tech do: firing devs who make mistakes and hiring a brand new team. You learn from mistakes. New people don't have the context. People who do know how to fix the shit and get better. They will get better... Rohit / @krishnanrohit : This feels quite bullish for Meta. I think they're close to cracking this. A HUD on glasses is something I'd buy in a heartbeat. Yuchen Jin / @yuchenj_uw : Shit can happen during live demos. But that's better than shiny, staged videos, because it shows what real users might face. “The biggest risk is not taking any risk.” - Peter Thiel once told Zuck. Salute to those who dare to fail publicly and keep going. @benz145 : Two incredibly key things that Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses gets right: 1) The waveguide is very subtle. You can notice the diagonal slats on the left side of the lens, but these are only one of two sets of gratings. The other set is directly in front of the eye, but very hard to see. 2) The light-glow shining out from the display (ie: what other people would see when looking at you), is extremely minimal...Both of these are critical to social acceptability. People who aren't up on the latest tech will probably have no idea there's anything special about the glasses when seeing them in passing, except that they're a little chunky. Kristof / @zenfuturist : I feel bad for Zuck and the Meta team :/ they swung for the fence with a live demo of some insane tech and it didn't work out. Meta is doing some insane stuff that doesn't get enough recognition TJ Parker / @tjparker : Meta execs are ~20 years younger than Apple's and still willing to do live demos. Unfortunately very bearish on Apple. Bluesky: Ben Torkington / @bentorkington : if they are not even thinking about the first-order consequences of saying “Hey Meta” in a room full of people wearing the stupid goggles, they are definitely not thinking of the second-order consequences of the stupid goggles. [embedded post] Kristian van der Vliet / @vanders : “Sometimes our shit randomly stops working” great advert you dork @chrisdeleon : holdup does this possibly mean even the people who are working on the hardware pretty much never have more than one person wearing them turned on in the same room at once Karl Stanley / @karlstanley : When you're expanding you're losing. The demo didn't work because Meta's tech is hot garbage. [embedded post] George S / @harmonygritz : It's for moments like this, yes, this is why I follow Techmeme. I'd miss half the fun! [embedded post] @chrisdeleon : I'm old enough to remember 11 years ago when Aaron Paul turned on every Xbox in the country with a super bowl ad and, somewhat naively apparently, I would think people who are professionals in the field of voice activated devices would be aware of and mindful of that kind of issue ever since, too. Pippa Brooks / @pwbrooks : Wait, anyone can give your Meta AR glasses instructions? People can just go around saying, “Hey, Meta, show me <horrific thing>”? Dan Ness / @danodano : Wait! You mean saying “hey Meta, start Live AI” into a room of glassholes will activate all of them?? — Seems like a bozo flaw. Tim Trautmann / @timtrautmann.com : So they have billions worth of servers and a handful of devices can overwhelm this massive infrastructure? LMAO. Threads: Katie Notopoulos / @katienotopoulos : It seems (if I am understanding this correctly boz?) that what happened during the cooking demo was like that annoying thing when someone on TV says “hey Alexa” and all the devices in your house go nuts https://www.theverge.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Meta has been positioning glasses as a longer-term computing platform, including its earlier discussion of the Orion AR-glasses effort and Ray-Ban partnership. The failed Connect demonstrations put unusual public scrutiny on the reliability of the software and event infrastructure behind that strategy.
The explanation also arrives alongside a separate hands-on test reporting inconsistent display and wristband behavior, making the issue more consequential than a one-off stage mishap.
First-order effects
- Meta must address the demo-stack overload and sleep-state bug, while its smart-glasses team faces a more immediate credibility test around reliability.
- The reported lack of iMessage access leaves Meta’s glasses dependent on the integrations available to it, even as it tries to present the device as a daily-use interface.
Second-order effects
- Product reviewers and prospective buyers are likely to weigh real-world interaction consistency more heavily; that raises the bar for Meta’s validation of hardware, input, and cloud-backed features before public launches.
- The episode sharpens the strategic value of platform access: services controlled by Apple can materially affect the feature set Meta can offer on Ray-Ban glasses.
Third-order effects
- If repeated reliability problems persist, smart-glasses competition may hinge less on showcase AI features than on dependable end-to-end execution across hardware, software, networks, and companion controls.
- The category could increasingly split between companies that control key operating-system and messaging layers and hardware makers that must negotiate access to them; the extent of that divide remains uncertain.
The trend: AI wearables are moving from concept demonstrations toward an execution test in which dependable interaction and platform access determine whether ambitious features become habitual products.