Meta capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training data
84 points by dlx 3 hours ago | 46 comments

dagmx 54 minutes ago
This is going to be a huge chilling factor for employees. You’d no longer be able to disent, or discuss anything non-work related with even the slightest expectation of privacy.

Yes they could have accessed logs before but there’s a difference between directed checking after incidents and active surveillance at scale.

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everdrive 37 minutes ago
Yes, but I cannot imagine Meta cares about chilling their employees. They're deep into the "extract more value" phase and are no longer bringing in the cutting edge talent.
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stringfood 29 minutes ago
at this point employees should be kept in cold storage to acclimate so as to prevent being shocked from any more chilling announcements. also will cut down on bathroom breaks
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simmerup 50 minutes ago
Yeah, if at any time Mark can ask Meta AI ‘which of my employees insulted me today’ for example, that’s wild
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kridsdale1 34 minutes ago
I insulted him in my mandatory Exit Interview form from HR when I resigned.

It had no impact of recruiters trying to win me back since then.

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gambiting 26 minutes ago
In my experience at other companies recruiters and pretty much no one else has any idea that someone has been blacklisted, until you do all of your interviews and tell HR to hire that person and that's when they tell you the person is on some kind of shit list and we can't hire them. That was an awkward conversation with someone who was basically told we'll be making an offer soon.
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balamatom 18 minutes ago
Huh. What do you reckon would have happened if you'd hired them anyway?
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computably 3 minutes ago
What? Hiring is a contract between employer (company entity) and employee. No individual "you" can hire anybody except through the company's official process. If HR says "no we won't extend an offer," a lowly HM extending an offer would be clear-cut fraud.
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gwerbin 36 minutes ago
That's not a bug, that's a feature
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jmull 2 hours ago
I like to imagine they’ll mostly capture meta employees using AIs to do work.

Then they’ll deploy models trained on this, and begin capturing employees using AIs that are good at using AIs to do work.

Repeat a few times and they’ll start capturing the keystrokes from people mashing their heads into keyboards with dispair and exclaiming, “Why can’t these models do anything anymore!!”

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darth_avocado 36 minutes ago
I am to speculate that they are going to use this as an excuse to let people go without doing mass layoffs and having to pay severance. Training AI is just an excuse.
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lotsofpulp 13 minutes ago
White collar firms with a reputation for paying well don’t cheap out on severance. It’s a cheap way to get employees to sign some stuff reducing the risk of lawsuits, plus their unemployment insurance premiums stay lower.

It’s only once the business is having a cash crunch or will no longer need to hire competitive candidates that they start letting people go without severance.

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arjvik 2 hours ago
While it would be a hilarious failure mode to encounter, this is actually a good thing!

These models already have the skills that humans were using them for, so either by training the models to use subagents or simply inlining the work done by the AI, you have a much easier time training the model to perform tasks from a human-distribution. The humans have done the work of making the human-distribution look more like an AI distribution.

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bwestergard 2 hours ago
Doesn't this assume that what humans are current doing with LLM agents is working out? Isn't it a bit early to bet on that to this degree?
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dylan604 44 minutes ago
Not when all of the marketing of LLMs is touting their abilities to do the exact thing and that is what investors are being presented.

If it is as you say, then eventually the house of cards will crumble. Then we can finally go back to work and quit being inundated with needing to use AI for everything.

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wrs 2 hours ago
>data collected would not be used for performance assessments or any other purpose besides model training

And you expect Meta employees, of all people, to believe this?

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anonym00se1 2 hours ago
In the midst of their 4th straight year of layoffs with another looming 20% cut coming, I'm guessing Meta employees are a tiny but suspicious.
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dylan604 43 minutes ago
These are the same employees that willfully code the largest spy network on the planet, so it seems like they are willing to believe a lot
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HoldOnAMinute 39 minutes ago
Are they merging with Palantir any time soon?
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kridsdale1 32 minutes ago
Meta people used to protest and demand Thiel be removed from the board all the time, in the 2010s. But it’s probably not like that anymore.
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wonnage 21 minutes ago
Everyone that’s left either buys into the culture or is stuck due to immigration
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orangecoffee 2 hours ago
Does not matter? I think the high compensation will be what will drive the compliance.
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camjw 39 minutes ago
I guess this is why they acquired https://www.limitless.ai/ ?
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fidotron 2 hours ago
Meta going all in on their brand with this.

Someone had to do it, distasteful though it may be. Could be quite hilarious what it learns in the process.

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dist-epoch 51 minutes ago
That people watch TikTok instead of Instagram reels. Quite embarrassing.
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dylan604 41 minutes ago
It would be really embarrassing if this is what it takes to come to that realization rather than the same way the rest of the world does.
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jtemplestein 2 hours ago
I wonder if this screen + mouse + keyboard (+ camera + speaker + mic) interface is really the right level of abstraction to model a “digital entity”

Sure, you can do everything a human can, but it also seems VERY inefficient

As an alternative, maybe you could just do network in/out?

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evanjrowley 2 hours ago
It's the same approach as Windows Recall, but all data remains sovereign to the company generating it.
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loeg 2 hours ago
For context, when the article says "a list of work-related apps and websites," this includes Google properties like gmail, docs, etc, and social media websites like Facebook and Instagram, with no provision for excluding personal accounts.
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tmp10423288442 2 hours ago
No one intelligent should be logging into their personal accounts on their work devices in any case - it's always been the case (at least in the US) that companies can do whatever invasive scanning they want on devices they own.
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__loam 27 minutes ago
Meta forces employees to use personal Facebook accounts at work.
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kleinsch 24 minutes ago
This hasn’t been true for 8+ years.
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Rekindle8090 24 minutes ago
No they do not lol.
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casualscience 14 minutes ago
They absolutely do, wtf are you talking about.

Also people use their work accounts and laptops to read their w2 and other sensitive info.

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dist-epoch 52 minutes ago
You know you are at work and monitored.

You can browser personal accounts from your phone.

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darth_avocado 33 minutes ago
Yeah automatically assume everything on your work computer is available for your employer to see. And everything you do on your own device when connected to their WiFi or VPN.

I’m surprised this needs to be said out loud.

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dylan604 42 minutes ago
on your phone not connected to corp wifi
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astrange 37 minutes ago
That doesn't matter anymore unless they have an SSL proxy. If you have ECH/ODoH anyway.
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esseph 26 minutes ago
Lots of those these days. Zacaler has a fair amount of enterprise market penetration.
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mint5 41 minutes ago
And Ideally not connected to company WiFi
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bradlys 2 hours ago
Data collection isn’t new. The training is.
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shimman 2 hours ago
You don't think collecting this type of intimate information about your employees as a major violation of the social contract?
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bradlys 43 minutes ago
I’m just saying that they’ve been collecting this info for years. Keyloggers, etc. are on all the computers you’re given. Employees didn’t have any expectation of privacy - just a hope. Now, it’s clear it’s completely gone and so the hope and goodwill is gone.
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arghandugh 2 hours ago
[dead]
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zingababba 40 minutes ago
[flagged]
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rvz 59 minutes ago
Meta can even afford to destroy themselves and their own employees.

More proof that they do not care about you at all. This is Meta's way of moving fast and destroying everything at all costs.

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