Meta employees protest company’s mouse tracking program

Surprisingly, Meta employees aren’t very keen on training their robot replacements. Reuters reports that workers began circulating flyers in several U.S. offices to protest the company’s installation of tracking software on their work computers.

“You don’t want to work at the employee data mining factory? » ask the flyers. They have reportedly been found in meeting rooms, on vending machines and even in the most sacred spaces: on top of toilet paper dispensers. The brochures encourage employees to sign an online petition to protest Meta’s employee surveillance program.

The flyers and petition cite the U.S. Labor Relations Act. “Workers are legally protected when they choose to organize to improve their working conditions,” the petition states. A similar movement is underway in the United Kingdom, where workers have begun organizing an organizing drive with United Tech and Allied Workers (UTAW).

This all stems from an announcement last month that Meta would install software on employees’ computers to track their mouse movements, clicks and keystrokes. The initiative, called Agent Transformation Accelerator (ATA), is designed to train AI agents to perform complex computing tasks. “This is where all Meta employees can help our models improve simply by doing their daily work,” reads a company note announcing the program.

“If we’re building agents to help people accomplish everyday tasks using computers, our models need real-world examples of how people actually use them — things like mouse movements, button clicks, and navigating drop-down menus,” said Meta spokesperson Andy Stone. Reuters. The company tried to reassure its employees that sensitive information would be protected, saying their data would be “closely controlled.”

Reactions from employees were less enthusiastic. “This makes me very uncomfortable,” one engineering manager wrote in an internal forum comment: The New York Times reported a few weeks after the program was announced. Others expressed concern that they were helping train their potential replacements. “How do we unsubscribe?” asked an employee. (Technical director Andrew Bosworth confirmed that they could not, in fact, opt out.)

It is difficult to imagine that workers are preparing to move, whatever the context. But the fact that ATA coincides with a 10 percent reduction in the company’s workforce creates an even more worrying context. One employee reportedly said the program was “incredibly demoralizing.” Another told Bosworth: “Your insensitivity to the concerns of your own employees is concerning. » Workers created websites in anticipation of the May 20 layoffs. (The event is described as the “big and beautiful layoffs”.)

As for how many additional workers will lose their jobs, Meta is still working on it. “We don’t really know what the optimal size of the company will be in the future,” Chief Financial Officer Susan Li told investors in April. “I think there are a lot of changes happening right now, with AI capabilities advancing rapidly.”