Meta Employees Launch Protest Against Mouse-Tracking Tech At US Offices (reuters.com)
- Reference: 0183201379
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/12/2242241/meta-employees-launch-protest-against-mouse-tracking-tech-at-us-offices
- Source link: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/meta-us-employees-organize-protest-against-mouse-tracking-tech-2026-05-12/
> Meta employees distributed flyers at multiple U.S. offices on Tuesday to [1]protest the company's recent installation of mouse-tracking software on their computers , according to photos of the pamphlets seen by Reuters. The flyers, which appeared in meeting rooms, on vending machines and atop toilet paper dispensers at the Facebook owner's offices, encouraged staffers to sign an [2]online petition against the move. "Don't want to work at the Employee Data Extraction Factory?" they asked, according to the photos seen by Reuters. [...]
>
> The pamphlets and the petition both cite the U.S. National Labor Relations Act, saying "workers are legally protected when they choose to organize for the improvement of working conditions." In the UK, a group of Meta employees has started organizing a drive for unionization with United Tech and Allied Workers (UTAW), a branch of the Communication Workers Union. The employees set up a website to recruit members using the URL " [3]Leanin.uk ," a reference to former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg's best-selling book encouraging women to seek equal footing in the workplace. "Meta's workers are paying the price for management's reckless and expensive bets. While executives chase speculative AI strategies, staff are facing devastating job cuts, draconian surveillance, and the cruel reality of being forced to train the inefficient systems being positioned to replace them," said Eleanor Payne, an organizer with UTAW.
"If we're building agents to help people complete everyday tasks using computers, our models need real examples of how people actually use them -- things like mouse movements, clicking buttons, and navigating dropdown menus," said a statement Meta [4]issued earlier .
[1] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/meta-us-employees-organize-protest-against-mouse-tracking-tech-2026-05-12/
[2] https://mcipetition.com/
[3] https://leanin.uk/
[4] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/04/21/1849217/meta-to-start-capturing-employee-mouse-movements-keystrokes-for-ai-training-data
Welcome to the Panopticon... (Score:3)
...that you built. Pervasive surveillance looks and feels a bit different from the inside, doesn't it?
On the other hand: it's well past time for programmers, sysadmins, network engineers to unionize, so if this happens to kickstart such a movement, I'm certainly in favor of that.
Yeah you are working for creepy weirdos (Score:2)
Haven't you noticed he never blinks and when he laughs it looks like he's trying to eating your soul?
Re: (Score:2)
Zuck is SO LIFE-LIKE, he could almost pass for a real human being... if it wasn't for that pesky uncanny valley.
They're all gonna be laid-off next (Score:2)
That's how Meta rolls. In 2021, they had busy bodies complaining about a lack of celebrating niche identity politics attributes. Those were first to be laid off. They should instead consider unionizing and forming their own worker-owned co-ops to work at.
Jiggly mice (Score:1)
Im excited to read in the future about how many tokens this ai wastes on jiggling its mouse
What software is this? (Score:2)
Sorry I don't have a Reuters account to read TFA.
being forced to train the inefficient systems (Score:2)
"Inefficient system" seems a bit denigrating, but that doesn't seem like such a novel situation. Who hasn't trained their replacement at least once?
Indeed. (Score:3)
> "If we're building agents to help people complete everyday tasks using computers, our models need real examples of how people actually use them -- things like mouse movements, clicking buttons, and navigating dropdown menus," said a statement Meta issued earlier.
Early reports on the effectiveness of the training has shown mixed results -- the agents are REALLY good at mouse movements, clicking buttons, and navigating dropdown menus, but no matter the prompt provided to it, the agent just opens firefox and starts browsing job postings on Indeed.
Jumped the shark (Score:2)
The decline and fall of the Fecebook empire began some time ago.
Mixed feelings. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm obviously against yet more AI-fueled surveillance dystopia hell; but when the people whining work for fucking facebook ; and know what that company does, it seems like a "all who draw the sword will die by the sword; dumbass" situation.
Re: Mixed feelings. (Score:2)
Same for Amazon.
Re: Mixed feelings. (Score:2)
This should be illegal by default for all employers, including for Facebook. There are boundaries to employment contracts, and that usually is because of the law. We still have human rights while working. Make it a human right to not be tracked to that extent, it is dehumanising. I realise this is unlikely to happen in the US but seriously, making this illegal is one of the best justifications for having a government.
Re: (Score:2)
No. When using company equipment, at any company with a reasonable Computer Usage Agreement in place, all data related to said company/equipment remains the property of the company. This is pretty standard, and could easily be construed as to include mouse movements, general usage stats, etc. It's not like companies aren't watching MS Teams or Slack usage of remote workers, and while workers don't like it, it's never been against any labor laws.
Bottom line, if you don't like the company's rules, don't wo
Re: (Score:2)
When you work in a toxic fen, expect toxicity.
Why is anyone surprised at all that Meta would use draconian surveillance on their own employees, when their entire business model is based on draconian surveillance?