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Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

reuters.com

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Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#271

Post by satvikpendem »

ryandrake wrote: post #268
satvikpendem wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Im pretty surprised you're getting so much flak for this. This is the least controversial opinion I've seen on HN. I've been working for ~30 years, and every job I've had, if you actually looked at the IT policies, they were all very clear that work devices were for work, personal devices were for personal stuff. It wouldn't even occur to me to cross the streams. Carrying a second phone for personal stuff is a trivia…

I'm also very surprised, so much so that one of my comments got flagged for it. Seems like it's a few dissenters while others have mentioned concurring with this fact as I also have always been under the impression that work hardware is for work only. And then some people are talking about how it's authoritarian or anti human, like, it's not that deep.

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#272

Post by shimman »

Blackthorn wrote: post #205
gdhkgdhkvff wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a naive take on this. Do you think it stops with just metamates(lmao that’s what they call themselves) being surveilled? Nope. This is the exact type of thing that software IC’s should reject in solidarity. Being happy with BadCompanyX trampling employee expectations directly allows for GoodCompanyY to enact the same policies.

I'm happy to see the metamates (lol) receiving the same pain they inflict on others. Maybe it will teach them a lesson in solidarity. You can't have solidarity about a bad thing with the people who are doing the bad thing! They have to stop doing the bad thing first! That's how solidarity works!

Don't expect any solidarity to come from such people, they literally sold out humanity for slightly higher salaries. They made their beds, least they can do is feel bad.

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#273

Post by ryandrake »

jaapz wrote: post #92
PradeetPatel wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tbh that's to be expected, the work machine is the company's property and there shouldn't be any expectation of privacy. I work at a tech firm in India, and we are encouraged to create skills.md based on the traits of our colleagues, with the intention of reducing key personnel risk. A handful of engineers were let go as the result of a re-alignment, and their AI counterparts are actively maintaining their code. I wo…

There shouldn't be any expectation of privacy? There absolutely should!

Whether they should or shouldn't, you have to expect that your company has root on your work device or at least some sort of corporate admin profile that gives them access to everything on the device and all attached peripherals. This has been pretty standard at IT / tech companies for as long as I've been in the workforce. I personally wouldn't do anything personal on a work computer, from sending personal E-mails all the way up to storing nudes on it. Why do that when a separate personal computer is cheap and solves the problem entirely?

EDIT: I remember, an example of this actually came up a while ago on HN. An Apple employee had to return a device unwiped, due to legal discovery, but the device had intimate pictures on it[1]. Oops! Don't do that, people.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28241917

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#274

Post by shimman »

__loam wrote: post #259
darth_avocado wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> White collar firms with a reputation for paying well don’t cheap out on severance Tell that to Elon Musk and Twitter employees.

Musk saddled that company with an additional billion in debt interest payments every year so they were in a cash crunch.

Oh is that the excuse why the billionaire couldn't afford to pay out pennies?

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#275

Post by vrganj »

Hey fellow engineers.

I know you've long been hypnotized by libertarianism and the cult of the individual.

Maybe it's time you reconsider in light of the overwhelming evidence that the capitalist class is, in fact, not your friend.

The only known way for workers to assert their rights is collective action. Alone, you are weak and replacable. Together, we are strong.

It's time for a proper tech worker's union, to give us some fangs to claw back our dignity with.

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#276

Post by dbgrman »

Because ends justify means. To quote Boz himself:

“ The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is de facto good. It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned.”

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#277

Post by Ifkaluva »

gip wrote: post #209

Taking dystopia aside, without a lot more context I don't quite get how the captured data will be particularly useful to train models for say software engineering. If someone can shed light - thanks!

They have a lot of internal tools. My guess is that it’s to train the model to click around the internal tools

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#279

Post by m0llusk »

bradlys wrote: post #85
wonnage wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone that’s left either buys into the culture or is stuck due to immigration

Or stuck with HCOL that is the Bay Area. There’s not really any purely “ethical” companies in the Bay Area that pay enough for you to live there. You’d be surprised how few people actually buy into the corporate culture at these companies. It’s just to get paid because everyone needs a job to pay their expenses. You want to solve this then lower the cost of housing.

Medical device companies are run very differently from most technology development companies. They have to be because the stakes are high, evaluation criteria are different, and medical related marketing and sales have separate industry managed channels and venues.

Re: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training

#280

Post by dbgrman »

dbgrman wrote: post #276

Because ends justify means. To quote Boz himself: “ The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is de facto good. It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned.”

“ That's why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it.”
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