Meta Pauses Employee-Tracking Program Following Internal Data Leak • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by otterley » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 5:10 AM UTC

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #59

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…

Nope. Nope nope nope NOPE. No part of this is remotely reasonable. Stop normalising mass surveillance. It is not okay. Not even your own employees, to this degree. Employees are humans too (maybe not the ones at Meta, but I'm speaking in general). Just because somebody is receiving a paycheck for something does not make them fair game for anything and everything to be done to them. > there's a foreman watching the em…

Do you believe that police should have their activities monitored at work? How about child care workers? Nuclear power plant operators? Bank tellers?

And if those are ok, what makes them different?

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

#82

Post by measurablefunc » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 5:11 AM UTC

sbrother wrote: post #64

magixx wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Portal was pretty good and an originalish product

Why did they discontinue that? It was a very good product; we got them for all the grandparents and they worked really well at bringing the family together across distance. Could have fit in so well with WhatsApp too. But then they just killed it.

Shareholders didn't like it. At the end of the day Meta is an advertising company so everything they do must be in service of increasing revenue from advertising.

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

#83

Post by otterley » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 5:11 AM UTC

inigyou wrote: post #80

otterley wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Can you post a link?

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

#84

Post by bluefirebrand » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 5:17 AM UTC

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

There's some kind of irony using outdated terminology like "rolodex" and telling someone else to get with the times. :)

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

#85

Post by jazzpush2 » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 5:17 AM UTC

haunter wrote: post #78

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 :)

They author thousands of open-source. Nobody would consider those 'products' (though feel free to play pedantic). And many would argue React did far more harm than good.

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

#86

Post by usefulcat » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 5:17 AM UTC

haunter wrote: post #78

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 :)

> zstd

Yes, but also “damning with faint praise” immediately comes to mind

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

#87

Post by usefulcat » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 5:20 AM UTC

zx8080 wrote: post #53

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…

Meta is a golden jail for one teenager who cannot grow up no matter what he does. Shame.

Not to defend him, but there are actually quite a lot of people who can’t or won’t grow up.

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

#88

Post by colordrops » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 5:28 AM UTC

haunter wrote: post #78

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 :)

I've avoided react as much as I could. Maintained a high paying frontend career without react until a year or so ago, when I was forced by management to start using it. Thankfully AI was able to touch it for me while I pinched my nose.

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

#89

Post by jakeydus » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 5:31 AM UTC

usefulcat wrote: post #87

zx8080 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta is a golden jail for one teenager who cannot grow up no matter what he does. Shame.

Not to defend him, but there are actually quite a lot of people who can’t or won’t grow up.

What’s your point? There’s a lot of people who can’t or won’t do a lot of things.

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

#90

Post by jazzpush2 » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 5:32 AM UTC

least wrote: post #37

ra0x3 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you're being downvoted. Maybe a little preachy, but the gist of the point isn't incorrect

People don’t particularly care for platitudes from anonymous people on the internet. Even less so when they reduce a complex dilemma in your life to a binary choice between an “easy and amoral” option and a “difficult but righteous” one. Most people make compromises inside imperfect systems. The person casting judgment almost certainly has their own moral compromises too, except those they understand, contextualize,…

I agree. That said, a cursory glance at their post history shows they donate 6-figures to charity, which while very commendable, flies in the face of the idea of being 'stuck'.

In any case, it's quite simple. If you work at Meta, you certainly have other options. Similar-tier companies pay just as well, and lower-tier companies will interview you readily.

We're not talking about someone scraping by here - working at Meta is a choice, and takes hard work to get into. That does not absolve you from the damage the company has done to the world. If you work there, you contribute to it (no matter how small the capacity) and you benefit from it literally through wages and share ownership. Your vested interest is in the company growing. Historically, that has meant via very dark patterns.