Meta scales back plan for internal mouse-tracking tech, citing staff concerns
Employees can pause collection for 30 minutes and some remote workers may opt out as Meta tries to ease privacy and battery concerns.
- On Tuesday, Meta scaled back its Model Capability Initiative , a program recording employee mouse movements and keystrokes for AI training, following weeks of staff pushback.
- Staffers launched protests against the surveillance, likening the initiative to an "Employee Data Extraction Factory" while raising concerns about privacy and the company's recent restructuring.
- Vice President Stephane Kasriel introduced controls allowing a 30-minute "pause" for data collection, alongside "several optimizations" to resolve battery and data usage complaints.
- Limited opt-out exemptions are now available for roles handling "sensitive" material, a concession following the company's recent layoff of 8,000 workers.
- Despite the rollback, CEO Mark Zuckerberg previously defended the program, stating that "watching really smart people do things" is the most effective way for AI models to learn tasks.
32 Articles
32 Articles
Meta backs off tracking workers' keystrokes after they revolt
Meta has backed off a little. After announcing in April that a tool called the Model Capability Initiative would log employees' keystrokes and mouse clicks to train its AI models, the company has now told staff they can pause the data collection for "up to 30 minutes at a time" or request an exemption altogether, according to an internal memo seen by the BBC. — Read the rest The post Meta backs off tracking workers' keystrokes after they revolt …
How Meta, JPMorgan, and others track AI use, and why it's getting complicated
Employers are closely tracking workers' use of AI use.Getty Images; Alyssa Powell/BIUsing AI at work is becoming an expectation. Measuring it is proving far more complicated.As corporate America pours billions into AI software and agents, executives have ramped up efforts to measure adoption, monitor workflows, and pressure workers to integrate AI into their daily jobs.From JPMorgan to Meta, companies have built dashboards and tools to track how…
Meta Isn't Scrapping Its Controversial Employee Tracking Programme — Workers Just Won More Control
In April, Meta implemented software, the Model Capability Initiative (MCI), designed to monitor mouse movements and keystrokes carried out by employees to help train its AI models. This move prompted concerns among employees, particularly around privacy. After receiving that feedback, along with other complaints including excessive data consumption that affected battery life and spiked internet usage, Meta announced in an internal memo that it w…
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