Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
Editorials & Other Articles
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
An Engineer's Post Protesting Laptop Surveillance Is Going Viral Inside Meta - Wired
Meta’s decision to track employee keystrokes and mouse data is causing an uproar within the company. “Selfishly, I don't want my screen scraped because it feels like an invasion of my privacy,” wrote an engineer in an internal post seen by nearly 20,000 coworkers this week. “But zooming out, I don't want to live in a world where humans—employees or otherwise—are exploited for their training data.”
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’s a piece of mandatory software that Meta began installing on the laptops of US employees last month. The tool records employees’ screens when using certain apps with the goal of collecting “real examples of how people actually use” computers, including “mouse movements, clicking buttons, and navigating dropdown menus,” according to Reuters. Meta has yet to say whether the initial data is paying off.
snip
In the US, employers generally have wide latitude to monitor workers’ 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—and one that doesn’t 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.
Meta’s 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’s also the leading driver of an employee unionization effort at Meta’s UK offices.
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’s a piece of mandatory software that Meta began installing on the laptops of US employees last month. The tool records employees’ screens when using certain apps with the goal of collecting “real examples of how people actually use” computers, including “mouse movements, clicking buttons, and navigating dropdown menus,” according to Reuters. Meta has yet to say whether the initial data is paying off.
snip
In the US, employers generally have wide latitude to monitor workers’ 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—and one that doesn’t 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.
Meta’s 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’s also the leading driver of an employee unionization effort at Meta’s UK offices.
https://www.wired.com/story/meta-employee-protest-mouse-tracking-surveillance-ai-training/]