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Meta Pauses Employee-Tracking Program Following Internal Data Leak

wired.com

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Re: Meta Pauses Employee-Tracking Program Following Internal Data Leak

#71

Post by otterley »

inigyou wrote: post #69
zer0zzz wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? Most of the hardcore encryption stuff was built at Facebook under the founder's supervision afaik for the purposes of making it harder for Zuck to inevitably ruin the privacy aspects. I personally don't use it, because it _is_ loaded with engagement bait but its not all worse and is better in some ways.

They added ads, an "AI companion", and backdoor logging of all chat messages

That last one’s going to need some substantiation.

“In the ordinary course of providing our service, WhatsApp does not store messages once they are delivered or transaction logs of such delivered messages. Undelivered messages are deleted from our servers after 30 days. As stated in the WhatsApp Privacy Policy, we may collect, use, preserve, and share user information if we have a good-faith belief that it is reasonably necessary to (a) keep our users safe, (b) detect, investigate, and prevent illegal activity, (c) respond to legal process, or to government requests, (d) enforce our Terms and policies. This may include information about how some users interact with others on our service. We also offer end-to-end encryption for our services, which is always activated. End-to-end encryption means that messages are encrypted to protect against WhatsApp and third parties from reading them.” (https://faq.whatsapp.com/444002211197967)

Re: Meta Pauses Employee-Tracking Program Following Internal Data Leak

#72

Post by digitaltrees »

lend000 wrote: post #52
test6554 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the day... 2004-2005 facebook was amazing. Spread like wildfire, and lots of fun to use. Just you and your college friends, and their friends.

Even the original idea (if The Social Network is a trustworthy source) was copied -- Zuckerberg just has a complete lack of vision, but is clearly an intelligent operator with good business sense. Jagged intelligence, like an LLM.

Or he’s backed by the CIA?

Re: Meta Pauses Employee-Tracking Program Following Internal Data Leak

#73

Post by digitaltrees »

magixx wrote: post #29
jazzpush2 wrote: post #4

Meta continuing to be the most shameless (and shameful to work for) company around. I can't think of a single product of theirs that hasn't made the world a markedly worse place. Even their recent hardware foray is managing to find a way to ruin trust in everyday interactions (guys filming drunk girls with Ray Bans, surveillance, etc.). Have several friends at the more 'thoughtful' frontier labs that bin meta applica…

Portal was pretty good and an originalish product

Spy on your grand parents from the convenience of your kitchen counter top!

now in arctic white!

Re: Meta Pauses Employee-Tracking Program Following Internal Data Leak

#74

Post by inigyou »

swader999 wrote: post #20
darth_avocado wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get paid for my work, not 8 hours a day. I’m a salaried employee. I sometimes have to work more than 8 to deliver things, I sometimes work less than 8. The fact that someone needs to monitor me all day long and potentially could use the information to treat me unfairly is disgusting. I’m not the first in line to defend meta employees, but this is just unacceptable.

I actually get paid by the hour but I think exactly like you do. Often work more than what I bill for. I'm delivering so much now with swarms of agents it really doesn't even make sense to pay me by the hour. I really think my next job will be a one person company run by moi.

I like to use swarms of swarms of agents, but I think my competitor is using swarms of swarms of swarms of agents :(

The first firm to successfully nest it 40 levels will achieve the singularity.

Re: Meta Pauses Employee-Tracking Program Following Internal Data Leak

#75

Post by gmerc »

zer0zzz wrote: post #65
Marsymars wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've also largely made WhatsApp worse.

How so? Most of the hardcore encryption stuff was built at Facebook under the founder's supervision afaik for the purposes of making it harder for Zuck to inevitably ruin the privacy aspects. I personally don't use it, because it _is_ loaded with engagement bait but its not all worse and is better in some ways.

Reconning. We made it so Zuck had plausible deniability for all the bad shit happening on WA as a direct result of anticipated regulatory pressure.

There is no “make things harder for the dictator” at Meta/Fb and never has been.

Re: Meta Pauses Employee-Tracking Program Following Internal Data Leak

#76

Post by otterley »

whateveracct wrote: post #63
jopolous wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where should we work instead? I’d really like to leave, but I’m kind of stuck, and I don’t have enough to retire. I have to work remote from a non-coast state for family care reasons, and the places I’ve interviewed at the last few months have balked at hiring a remote employee.

i have like 5 companies in my rolodex who would hire me to be fully remote tomorrow get with the times

Knock it off. Nobody wants to read your braggadocio, and it’s insulting to people who are having real challenges finding work.

Re: Meta Pauses Employee-Tracking Program Following Internal Data Leak

#77

Post by guessmyname »

sidcool wrote: post #58

Meta must really be paying a lot!

Indeed → https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries

• Engineer (E3, entry level) $248.2K avg ∴ https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-...

• Engineer (E5, senior level) $629.8K avg ∴ https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-...

• Engineer (E7, principal) $1.69M avg ∴ https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-...

• Engineer (E9, distinguished) $6.09M avg ∴ https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-...

And so on with other roles, as you can see on that page.

Re: Meta Pauses Employee-Tracking Program Following Internal Data Leak

#78

Post by haunter »

jazzpush2 wrote: post #4

Meta continuing to be the most shameless (and shameful to work for) company around. I can't think of a single product of theirs that hasn't made the world a markedly worse place. Even their recent hardware foray is managing to find a way to ruin trust in everyday interactions (guys filming drunk girls with Ray Bans, surveillance, etc.). Have several friends at the more 'thoughtful' frontier labs that bin meta applica…

> I can't think of a single product of theirs that hasn't made the world a markedly worse place

zstd

I’m torn about React and PyTorch :)

Re: Meta Pauses Employee-Tracking Program Following Internal Data Leak

#79

Post by otterley »

zenoprax wrote: post #45
TZubiri wrote: post #34

I'll be the contrarian here. I think the program was legal and morally fine. Take into account that these are corporate computers, and the tracking is of work that the company is paying for, so the telemetry, which is highly valuable for analysis and automation, is rightfully theirs. I also don't think that the purpose of the move was to manage workers and see if they slack off, it was to gather training data, but ev…

> Doesn't it sound reasonable? If you were hired with this as an explicit expectation, yes. It's one thing to know that your actions can be audited in case there's some sort of incident but imposing unlimited surveillance and using that information for the purpose of eliminating your job could be argued to be intimidation (ie. "we can't afford mass layoffs but aggressively monitoring employees will force the undesira…

I’m not sure the terms of their employment changed; being subject to monitoring has been in practically every employment agreement written in the past few decades.

What did change is the culture and environment. While that term was always in the agreement, it was largely dormant, activated on an as-needed basis to troubleshoot issues, collect evidence for disciplinary actions or security investigations, etc. Now, it’s on 24x7.

Re: Meta Pauses Employee-Tracking Program Following Internal Data Leak

#80

Post by inigyou »

otterley wrote: post #71
inigyou wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They added ads, an "AI companion", and backdoor logging of all chat messages

That last one’s going to need some substantiation. “In the ordinary course of providing our service, WhatsApp does not store messages once they are delivered or transaction logs of such delivered messages. Undelivered messages are deleted from our servers after 30 days. As stated in the WhatsApp Privacy Policy, we may collect, use, preserve, and share user information if we have a good-faith belief that it is reasona…

I believe it was the automatic unencrypted weekly data upload to Google Drive
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