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Meta\u2019s decision to track employee keystrokes and mouse data is causing an uproar within the company. \u201cSelfishly, I don't want my screen scraped because it feels like an invasion of my privacy,\u201d wrote an engineer in an internal post seen by nearly 20,000 coworkers this week. \u201cBut zooming out, I don't want to live in a world where humans\u2014employees or otherwise\u2014are exploited for their training data.\u201d<\/p>\n
The message aimed to rally support for a petition circulating inside the company since last Thursday that demands an end to what Meta calls the Model Capability Initiative. It\u2019s a piece of mandatory software that Meta began installing on the laptops of US employees last month. The tool records employees\u2019 screens when using certain apps with the goal of collecting \u201creal examples of how people actually use\u201d computers, including \u201cmouse movements, clicking buttons, and navigating dropdown menus,\u201d according to Reuters. Meta has yet to say whether the initial data is paying off.<\/p>\n
\u201cI'm mixed on Al. On one hand, I really enjoy using it to write software. On the other hand, I'm really nervous about its impact on the world,\u201d the engineer wrote in an internal forum for coders. \u201cAnd what kind of norms are we establishing about how the technology is used, and how people are going to be treated?\u201d<\/p>\n
The petition, also seen by WIRED, states that \u201cit should not be the norm that companies of any size are permitted to exploit their employees by nonconsensually extracting their data for the purposes of Al training.\u201d<\/p>\n
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| Are you a current or former Meta employee who wants to talk about what's happening? We'd like to hear from you. Using a nonwork phone or computer, contact the reporter securely on Signal at peard33.24.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n In the US, employers generally have wide latitude to monitor workers\u2019 devices for security, training, evaluation, and safety purposes. But using these tools to build datasets that instruct AI systems on navigating computers without human supervision appears to be a new tactic\u2014and one that doesn\u2019t sit right with many Meta workers. Over the past few years, several companies have jumped into the race to develop agentic AI models. But when gathering data, they have typically tapped volunteers, sometimes paid, who are willing to have their computer activity recorded.<\/p>\n Meta\u2019s decision to move forward with its tracking tool despite weeks of protest from employees has become one of the leading reasons for what 16 current and former employees recently described to WIRED as record-low morale. It\u2019s also the leading driver of an employee unionization effort at Meta\u2019s UK offices.<\/p>\n \u201cThe workplace surveillance and training AI models is the number one thing,\u201d says Eleanor Payne, a representative of United Tech and Allied Workers, which is helping organize Meta employees. She declined to specify the number of employees seeking to form a labor union but called it \u201csignificant\u201d and unprecedented.<\/p>\n While only US employees are currently subjected to tracking, UK employees are concerned for their colleagues and the potential for expansion of the program. \u201cI think of it pretty much as a breakdown of trust,\u201d Payne says. New laws that eased unionization in the UK have encouraged employees about the chances of success, she adds.<\/p>\n In Meta offices in California and New York, workers have been posting flyers in cafeterias and other communal areas pointing colleagues to the petition. Two employees, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, say the company has removed some posters, with those on bathroom walls seemingly staying up longer.<\/p>\n Meta declined to comment on the allegation.<\/p>\n Petition organizers have called on Meta to respect their legal right \u201cto discuss, organize, and advocate for better working conditions.\u201d So far, organizers have declined to comment on the number of signatories and whether they may pursue other legal or regulatory actions to push back on the tracking program.<\/p>\n The engineer\u2019s internal post this week chronicled what they believe to be a degradation in Meta\u2019s culture over the past 11 years, with much of the shift happening in the past five. \u201cLayoffs, budget cuts, years of efficiency and intensity\u2014all of it contributed to a growing sense of dread,\u201d the employee wrote. They described growing apathetic about their work and workplace, until the rollout of the tracking software stunned them.<\/p>\n \u201cMCI is a microcosm for the Al movement,\u201d the engineer added. \u201cYes, it's just a small turn of the temperature knob, but it's representative of the types of systems that people will be compelled to build.\u201d<\/p>\n They addressed skepticism and fear about the petition drive by underscoring the value of collective action: \u201cYour voice matters. Moments like this are why I was drawn to Facebook in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n Some workers reluctant to sign the petition are quietly staging their own form of protest by delaying installation of the screen recording tool, sources say. It means dealing with a nagging notification. How long Meta will accept the maneuver is unclear to employees. But after layoffs hit next week, the company will have 10 percent fewer people to try and wrangle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Save StorySave this storySave StorySave this story Meta\u2019s decision to track employee keystrokes and mouse data is causing an uproar within the company. \u201cSelfishly, I don't want my screen scraped because it feels like an invasion of my privacy,\u201d wrote an engineer in an internal post seen by nearly 20,000 coworkers this week. \u201cBut zooming […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50449,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-50448","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} |