Meta Eases Employee Activity Tracking Plan After Internal Backlash
Meta has scaled back its employee activity tracking programme after criticism over data collection for AI training.
SociapaHQ
Meta is scaling back plans to monitor employee computer activity after staff criticism over a program meant to collect data for training artificial intelligence models.
The internal memo states that the company has also implemented new controls that enable employees to suspend data collection for a maximum of 30 minutes at a time and request to be excluded from the initiative altogether, according to reports.
Meta did not comment publicly on the matter.
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Privacy Concerns:
The changes come after weeks of employee concern about the company’s Model Capability Initiative (MCI), announced in April, a tool to track everything from keystrokes to mouse clicks to help train AI systems.
At the time, Meta defended the program, arguing that AI agents built to assist users with mundane computer tasks require examples of how humans interact with devices in real-world scenarios.
The company had said the data collected would only be used for training AI purposes and that measures were in place to protect sensitive information.
But the explanation did not reassure many employees.
Some internal pushback has emerged to the initiative, including a petition that has reportedly garnered more than 1,500 signatures. Several workers said the monitoring programme was intrusive and raised privacy concerns, especially when the company is spending money on AI development.
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Policy Revisions:
One employee previously described the idea of using day-to-day computer activity to train AI systems as “very dystopian”, while another former employee characterised the programme as part of a wider push to embed AI across the organisation.
The move comes as Meta continues to lay off staff. This year the company has cut roughly 2,000 jobs and said before it would cut its workforce by about 10 percent, or about 8,000 employees.
The internal memo appears to have been written by Stephane Kasriel, a vice president in Meta’s Superintelligence Labs unit.
In the memo, Kasriel said the team behind the program had made several improvements to reduce the tool’s impact on laptop battery performance.
The change comes after complaints from staff that the software was using a lot of data and increasing internet usage, especially for those working from home.
“While we remain confident in the privacy protections we put in place at launch, which went through several layers of risk review, we have heard your concerns about personal data on work devices, battery life, and wanting more control over when capturing happens,” Kasriel reportedly wrote.
