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Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

bbc.com

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Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#241

Post by devmor »

jbuhbjlnjbn wrote: post #209
caymanjim wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US, there's the expectation that when you use an employer-provided device that any and all activity on it can be fully monitored/recorded I don't expect this. I know that some companies install spyware on their devices, but I don't expect it, I don't accept it, and if they did it without disclosing it I'd be furious. I understand they're allowed to do it. I'd never work anywhere that did.

You can rest assured a company firing you for what they saw while surveilling your work computer will not be so stupid as to reveil this fact. That would indeed be a liability for them. They will simply invent a different reason for firing. Because they know it's not allowed (or at least frowned upon), but they decided to do it anyways, the company surveillance is kept secret and downplayed and plausibly denied as mu…

Or they just find another way to show you did it - the idea is very similar to how law enforcement uses illegal spying. They simply find another way to prove what they already caught you doing - it’s called Parallel Reconstruction.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#242

Post by reconnecting »

anticorporate wrote: post #149
everdrive wrote: post #17

I don't work for Meta, but how many more years do I need to work in tech? I'm in my 40s and my kids are young. I've already set up 529s for them, and am paying for some expensive home upgrades. Maybe when that is finished and I've built up a buffer I can switch industries for the last 5-10 years of my working life. Curious if anyone here has any similar plans.

I quit tech at 40. I still do cool things with technology, but now at a community-owned grocery co-op. I can't recommend leaving tech highly enough. My cortisol levels are so much lower than they used to be. I don't have to schedule my life around EMEA and APAC meetings outside of my normal hours. I only work more than 40 hours a week if I feel like it, which I sometimes do, because I actually enjoy my work now. I ma…

> I only work more than 40 hours a week if I feel like it

This line really hurts! I made my first website in 1999 and my first online business in 2010, and I've never had a real vacation without emails since then.

However, in my 40s, as self-employed, I've never paid myself a six-figure salary either. So perhaps I need to reconsider my plans for the rest of my life.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#243

Post by flippyhead »

crispyambulance wrote: post #20

It's always been hard to know the extent of how draconian tracking actually is (IT pros tend to not talk about it much). In the US, there's the expectation that when you use an employer-provided device that any and all activity on it can be fully monitored/recorded and used against the employee for any reason. In practice, however, few people worry about reasonable amounts web-surfing, being on hacker-news or doing l…

Or, the tracking won't change much, it'll be the big-brothering that will dramatically accelerate

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#244

Post by phreeza »

crispyambulance wrote: post #20

It's always been hard to know the extent of how draconian tracking actually is (IT pros tend to not talk about it much). In the US, there's the expectation that when you use an employer-provided device that any and all activity on it can be fully monitored/recorded and used against the employee for any reason. In practice, however, few people worry about reasonable amounts web-surfing, being on hacker-news or doing l…

Is it really that different with the current iteration of AI compared to what was possible 10 years ago? There may be some new awareness at the executive level of what is possible, but I feel like a "slacker detector" or whatever would have been possible with xgboost or lstms.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#245

Post by yodsanklai »

fourside wrote: post #211
yodsanklai wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are tons of good reasons to work for Meta. You can work on interesting projects, build your resume and network, work on interesting engineering problems, learn from other people, and of course, they pay very well. People do need to support their family, secure their retirement and so on... Is it perfect? certainly not. Is the company toxic? where do you draw the line? how much are you willing to compromise give…

Growing up, I’d wonder how people could work for companies like cigarette manufacturers even after it became well known that their products wreck havoc on your health. This comment is a masterclass in the type of mental gymnastics people do to justify working for these kind of companies. > Is the company toxic? where do you draw the line? You couldn’t even answer the question you yourself posed.

Meta isn't nowhere near cigarettes manufacturers in terms of damage. Tobacco kills millions every year. Meta may need even more regulation, and you can argue that social medias aren't the greatest invention, but I don't think they are that bad.

There's no mental gymnastics here. I draw the line differently than you, that's all. I'm not a big fan of Meta and their products, I would be happy to work there anyway for the reasons I mentioned. But I wouldn't work for let say Marlboro.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#246

Post by latexr »

> new controls will allow employees to pause the data collection for "up to 30 minutes at a time" as well as request exemptions from the initiative altogether.

If they deny your exemption, make a tool that every 30 minutes fakes a bunch of nonsensical keystrokes for a few seconds, then automatically request another 30 minute pause. If they ever find out and confront you about it, say you’ve always heard Meta leadership encourages “moving fast and breaking things” and “asking for forgiveness instead of permission”, so you were only following the company’s ethos.

Or, you know, quit Facebook if you have the means.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#247

Post by jbuhbjlnjbn »

vanuatu wrote: post #220
yojo wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta is straight evil. It undermines the institutions of democracy and it negatively impacts its users mental health, all in service of selling your data to advertisers so they can better goad unnecessary consumption. If I learn you work at Meta, I will judge you as at best lacking a moral compass and treat you appropriately. Apple has problems, but is a lot closer to morally neutral. Ditto for Netflix. Amazon has ho…

not to defend zuck but its a common misconception that meta sells data advertisers dont see the personal data they buy for ad placement

There is no misconception. Meta also sells data, next to selling advertising space.

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#249

Post by netsharc »

afavour wrote: post #9

And who knows who gets to see the tick against your name as "opted out". I get that the money is good but holy hell I don't understand why anyone still works at Meta.

They should just create a leaderboard of how many minutes opted out this week/month...

Although... If an employee is pretty low on this leaderboard, that means s/he'll freely feel s/he can opt out a bit more. The overlords wouldn't want that!

Re: Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min

#250

Post by mannanj »

macNchz wrote: post #107
crispyambulance wrote: post #20

It's always been hard to know the extent of how draconian tracking actually is (IT pros tend to not talk about it much). In the US, there's the expectation that when you use an employer-provided device that any and all activity on it can be fully monitored/recorded and used against the employee for any reason. In practice, however, few people worry about reasonable amounts web-surfing, being on hacker-news or doing l…

This is something that genuinely runs the gamut across different companies—plenty don't even know the serial numbers of company-owned machines, never mind which devices individuals have, while others do effectively have live feeds of every employee's screen available to managers at all times. In between you have many businesses that manage their devices but only insofar as to enforce some basic protection and reserve…

Isn't Facebook training their AIs on their finest engineer's computer use so the AIs can become better computer users?

In this case, the more insidious yet subtle risk and attack vector for humans using these Facebook computers, is that Facebook begins to use this data to discriminate (legally) on performance metrics. They can then use these to automatically disseminate performance improvement plans, lead to higher productivity (perceived, as whats measured no longer ends up being a useful metric) and control and urge people to do more of what they desire.

And my curiosity is: does what Facebook desire align with what the humans who work for Facebook desire? I think with AI, that's a no. The company desires as low a labor/workforce/compensation cost as possible, while the humans desire as much compensation as possible.

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