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Meta Pauses Employee-Tracking Program Following Internal Data Leak
- deminature 4mo agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48636632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48636632
- Ozzie-D 4mo ago[flagged]
- jazzpush2 4mo agoMeta 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 applicants straight to the trash for this very reason.
- millerfiller 4mo agoI hope there’s a day where collectively the money is no longer enough and reason and good will prevails so that Meta can crumble to dust while I am alive; but doubtful that day will ever come.
- brcmthrowaway 4mo agoThey dont need frontier labs. Meta's dashboard jockeys get paid the same
- jopolous 4mo agoWhere 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.
- dozerly 4mo agoYour options are: 1. Find another job 2. Don’t find another job You can’t say “where else can I work” like you have no agency over your life. Everyone chooses every day to do what they do that day. You don’t get to be morally absolved because you’re choosing the easy path and you’re “stuck”. I’m sure there are plenty of places that pay less that would love to have talented remote employees.
- ra0x3 4mo agoNot sure why you're being downvoted. Maybe a little preachy, but the gist of the point isn't incorrect
- dozerly 4mo agoIn a large portion of tech people like to pretend that they are absolved of responsibility for their societal contributions. “Get that bag” and all that. Work at Anduril as long as it makes that bread, etc. It makes sense that someone promoting them to re-evaluate the harm they’re causing by participating would elicit negative response
- kortilla 4mo ago> Work at Anduril as long as it makes that bread, etc. You don’t work at Anduril to make bread, at least not as a software engineer. It’s a long hours startup with worse pay than FAANG in high CoL areas. The people that work there fundamentally believe in “improving the defense of the west”. It is the private sector equivalent of joining the military. If you want to bag on people in the military, go ahead. But they are not in the same category as people just doing things for convenient good money.
- Planktonne 4mo ago> It is the private sector equivalent of joining the military. If the motivation is 'improving the defence of the west', it's more equivalent to joining a fringe paramilitary organisation; the dogwhistle is clear.
- asdaqopqkq 4mo ago[flagged]
- magixx 4mo agoPortal was pretty good and an originalish product
- pwdisswordfishq 4mo agoValve is a different company.
- steve_adams_86 4mo agoMeta's Portal is different from Valve's Portal. https://www.meta.com/ca/portal/ https://www.meta.com/ca/portal/
- whateveracct 4mo ago> Meta Portal devices and accessories are no longer available lol
- sbrother 4mo agoWhy 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.
- measurablefunc 4mo agoShareholders 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.
- digitaltrees 4mo agoSpy on your grand parents from the convenience of your kitchen counter top! now in arctic white!
- TZubiri 4mo agoWhatsApp
- asp_hornet 4mo agoI think OP’s point is that it was bought not made similar to Instagram.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- sillywalk 4mo agoNitpick: Facebook bought WhatsApp, it didn't make it.
- Marsymars 4mo agoThey've also largely made WhatsApp worse.
- zer0zzz 4mo agoHow 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.
- inigyou 4mo agoThey added ads, an "AI companion", and backdoor logging of all chat messages
- otterley 4mo agoThat 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 https://faq.whatsapp.com/444002211197967)
- test6554 4mo agoBack 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.
- lend000 4mo agoEven 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.
- digitaltrees 4mo agoOr he’s backed by the CIA?
- vintermann 4mo agoUnlikely, since he is extremely hated by the Democratic party establishment. He's treated like a scorned ex.
- TheOtherHobbes 4mo agoAny resemblance to a voluntary mass surveillance and personalised sentiment profiling network is entirely accidental.
- breppp 4mo agoOr maybe you are backed by the CIA?
- digitaltrees 4mo agoExcept there is plenty of public evidence Facebook was. I think they were even on the cap table and thiel / palintir are explicitly partners in wiring up tech data pipelines into the knowledge graph. Thats why thiel was an early investor, this is known public info.
- zx8080 4mo agoMeta is a golden jail for one teenager who cannot grow up no matter what he does. Shame.
- citadel_melon 4mo agoDon’t anthropomorphize the lawn mower. He could leave anytime and learn how to enjoy a more modest and less harmful life.
- zombot 4mo agoSeeing how much damage he does as it is, I don't want to know the grown-up version.
- usefulcat 4mo agoNot to defend him, but there are actually quite a lot of people who can’t or won’t grow up.
- dxxmxnd 4mo agoBinning applications for working at Meta seems hilarious and over the top. The ‘thoughtful’ labs are vacuuming up everyone’s chat logs and prompts to train the next model as well.
- zer0zzz 4mo agoWhat are these "thoughtful" frontier labs you speak of? I see Meta folks going to the big ones all the time. Ton of former PyTorch/Inductor folks now are at Ant/TM etc. Everyone I know in the GPU compiler/GPGPU space seems to be either going to meta or leaving meta for NV or some AI lab. My anecdotal observations don't align with "bin meta applicants straight to the trash."
- ryan_n 4mo agoYea I was going to ask the same question about "thoughtful frontier labs". Not sure that's really a thing unless we're talking about being thoughtful of accumulating wealth and power for a small handful of people.
- zer0zzz 4mo agoI have to assume "thoughtful frontier labs" is either a pretty small lab, or a place holder for a lab that doesn't exist. So many of these anti-meta posts come off as based entirely in the feelings of opinionated techies rather than actual reality.
- inigyou 4mo agoFacebook, for instance, made a lot of money for shareholders, which we know is the same thing as making the world a better place.
- user_of_the_wek 4mo agoFor a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for the shareholders…
- haunter 4mo ago> 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 :)
- jazzpush2 4mo agoThey 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.
- vintermann 4mo agoWithout React we might not have had the JavaScript framework explosion, we'd all be programming in Angular JS. Maybe I'm exaggerating slightly, but I think we should judge frameworks compared to what other things existed at the time. It's, by the way, another example of how the only good thing Facebook did was deny Google complete dominance.
- agrippanux 4mo agoReact was a godsend vs dealing with the Angular $digest loop
- calgoo 4mo agoWe would still have a framework of the week like we do today. There was a new framework weekly before React and there are frameworks of the week after React. React just gave us one more way of showing text on a screen.
- sd9 4mo ago> React just gave us one more way of showing text on a screen. Well, yes, but... its popularity is not completely accidental. It's good - even by today's standards, but certainly by the standards of the time.
- 4mo ago
- cherryteastain 4mo ago> shameful to work for As bad as Meta products are for society, I'd say Palantir is far more shameful to work for.
- hbcdbff 4mo agoI disagree. Many Palantir FDEs work on morally benign or even positive projects, for example helping hospitals during COVID. (Of course, many also do unethical work). At Meta, almost everyone is contributing to unethical ends.
- LtWorf 4mo agoLike saying you were a medic in the SS. You're still in the SS.
- qsxfthnkp2322 4mo agoExactly 1000000%
- port11 4mo agoOkay, but this is between being a medic in the SS or an engineer building Panzers.
- watwut 4mo agoEngineer building Panzers is better then SS medic. No doubt there. It is in fact better to be employed arms manufacturer then be member of SS - regardless of which position they put you in. You knew this is fascist organization as you was entering it and that everything you will do is to advance those goals.
- port11 4mo agoI don’t know if the distinction holds. The philosophical base of where you work goes is the same: fuelling the Nazi war machine. Building a machine that kills thousands isn’t that distinct from healing a soldier that kills dozens. Meh.
- steve1977 4mo agoI guess having an insecure creep as CEO could play a role in all that.
- vintermann 4mo agoDepends on what you consider theirs I guess. The pytorch ecosystem and initial push to open weight models, I consider a pretty good thing for the world all things considered. Lots of great code from FAIR.
- whilenot-dev 4mo ago> initial push to open weight models ...Push? Did you forget about the leak and the takedown requests?
- dataflow 4mo ago> I can't think of a single product of theirs that hasn't made the world a markedly worse place. I feel I have to ask... how do you feel Messenger made the world a worse place?
- adriand 4mo agoGo look at Messenger on the App Store and look at the “data linked to you” section. An app with that much surveillance baked in is surely not improving the world.
- Traubenfuchs 4mo agoI know people who married after meeting thanks to facebook dating.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- troyvit 4mo agoMan I despise Facebook, no two ways about it. But one time our dog slipped her collar and escaped while we were out of state. We got back late in the evening after she had bolted. We were up all night searching for her and we posted to the Ft. Collins Lost & Found group. We got a few hits that night, and by the next morning there was so much participation that we could trace her movement through town with an accuracy rate of a few blocks. The latest picture was at the intersection of a side-road and the state highway as it left town, so I was down there, looking around and freaking out that she was street pizza, when she booped me on the back of the leg. Don't know how I missed her but I sure am glad she found me. When social media works right it's an amazing thing. It's just too bad that we don't use 90% of it right. As an example I've never given back to that commons when I see a stray pet.
- marysol5 4mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Compute_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Compute_Project But yeah
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- chopete3 4mo agoIf you read the linked article it says the leaked data screenshot of some employees private conversation in plain text and other performance information. It was a bold move to do full screen recording and hoping they would anonymize it.
- weedfroglozenge 4mo ago[flagged]
- millerfiller 4mo ago[dead]
- HeavyStorm 4mo agoWow. What a narrow, naive view.
- weedfroglozenge 4mo agoHow? If you're seriously concerned about the monitoring, what are you doing the company wouldn't approve of?
- ldng 4mo agoLet me guess, because you, yourself, are not an employee so you don't mind because it does not apply to you ?
- bijowo1676 4mo agobecause he is smart. he uses personal cellphone to browse reddit and hacker news be smart like the top poster
- EagnaIonat 4mo agoIt's been a fact of life for as long as I can remember. If you using the companies resources, they are well within their rights to monitor what you are doing. Just don't use the company stuff and you are fine.
- dr_kiszonka 4mo agoI agree with you. But do you remember when we could chat with a colleague about how much of a doofus our boss was without worrying that some automated system would possibly notify the boss about it? Nowadays big brother is always watching.
- darth_avocado 4mo agoThey paused it, but they fully intend to restart it. Edit: I don’t know why I’m getting downvoted. Quite literally from the article: > “We will only re-enable MCI when we are confident in the effectiveness of our data protection controls,” Kasriel said.
- ChrisArchitect 4mo ago[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48636632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48636632
- claaams 4mo agoIf they're willing to do this to their own employees that they pay and supposedly wanted to keep around, what are they willing to do with your data? What are they willing to do with the systems they connect to your systems? "Dumb f*cks" has truly been the ethos of this company from day 1.
- zombot 4mo agoFor context, Zuckerberg once said about early Facebook users, “They trust me. Dumb fucks.” https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/2010/05/14/facebook-founder-called-trusting-users-dumb-fcks/294365 https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/2010/05/14/facebook-foun...
- khurs 4mo agoZuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just ask. Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks
- ahartmetz 4mo agoAnd in case anyone shows up to talk about youthful sins and people can change: People can change, but they do it either slowly or quickly for a particular reason. Zuck shows no signs whatsoever of changing slowly, and his modus operandi is working too well to have something change his mind in a dramatic way.
- albatross79 4mo agoGarbage company going into a death spiral.
- Schlagbohrer 4mo agoUnfortunately the amount of cash they have saved up plus the golden goose of FB means they'll be around for a while yet.
- ryan_n 4mo agoMy understanding is that WhatsApp is also very heavily used in many countries.
- daft_pink 4mo agoThat system is going to be a nightmare in discovery
- neilv 4mo agoThat sounds like a brilliant idea. I wonder whether they already thought of that, and are exempting from monitoring the roles most likely to generate "smoking gun" evidence.
- TZubiri 4mo agoI'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 even if it were, I think that's normal? In any other job managers can, and are expected to, monitor employee productivity, they are paying for it, they need to ensure they are getting something worth. But again, I don't think that was the main goal here. The computers are not intended for personal usage, if the employee wants to watch netflix, or porn, they are free to do so in their personal computers. Imagine if this were a construction company, and there's a foreman watching the employees output, and the machine operators have their actions logged so that the machines can be automated in the future. Doesn't it sound reasonable? Is this very different at all? So yeah, maybe a lot of people see Meta and computer tracking and immediately jump to 1984, but I kind of like nuance more than knee jerk reactions, or jumping into a narrative that we enjoy being angry about.
- tmpz22 4mo ago> 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 even if it were, I think that's normal? This is the cost of losing consumer trust over two decades of untrustworthy acts.
- survivalcrziest 4mo agoAs it turns out, they did watch porn: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/10/meta-says-porn-downloads-on-its-ips-were-for-personal-use-not-ai-training/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/10/meta-says-porn-d...
- zenoprax 4mo ago> 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 undesirables to quit"). No one likes the terms of their employment being changed against their will no matter how legal it might be. Why not make it opt-in in exchange for some other perks? If the data is valuable then compensate employees for the added burden/liability of total telemetry.
- JesseTG 4mo agoI'm making popcorn, anybody want some?
- sidcool 4mo agoMeta must really be paying a lot!
- guessmyname 4mo agoIndeed → https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries • Engineer (E3, entry level) $248.2K avg ∴ https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-engineer/levels/e3 https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-... • Engineer (E5, senior level) $629.8K avg ∴ https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-engineer/levels/e5 https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-... • Engineer (E7, principal) $1.69M avg ∴ https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-engineer/levels/e7 https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-... • Engineer (E9, distinguished) $6.09M avg ∴ https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-engineer/levels/e9 https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-... And so on with other roles, as you can see on that page.
- whateveracct 4mo agoZuck is so washed as a CEO.
- khurs 4mo agoThe revenue keeps rising though...
- mbf1 4mo agoThey probably wrote the utility with AI - it's not that big a surprise that AI can't secure stuff.
- tway235 4mo agojust wait for Microsoft to productize and commoditize employee tracking - see the CEO's recent "learning loops" idea - what could possibly go wrong?
- alfiedotwtf 4mo agoTo be honest, I’m not worried about work doing this to me. But when the government MANDATES this for all citizens, I’m ditching computers and going strictly pen and paper
- tempodox 4mo agoNot using surveillable tooling will be a felony by then.
- alfiedotwtf 4mo ago> By sitting in the alcove, and keeping well back, Winston was able to remain outside the range of the telescreen, so far as sight went
- Lio 4mo agoFor all those saying “if you’re not breaking the rules you have nothing to fear” consider that most firms regard “working to rule” to be a form of protest. If you just follow their rules this surveillance will be used to identify and sanction you.
- iluvcommunism 4mo ago[dead]
- techterrier 4mo agopanopticon for me and for thee! seems fair enough
- rochak 4mo ago[dead]
- baditaflorin 4mo agoIf you need to track you employee so hard and invesive, there is something wrong with your company
- KaiserPro 4mo agoThey did a lot of the spy infra to try and track down/stop who keeps leaking stuff.
- Humorist2290 4mo agoI'm increasingly convinced that these kind of leaks are the only effective resistance to this surveillance society we're entering. Meta will keep doing this, and other employers will probably follow, and then of course governments will use "appropriate legal processes" to add the data to their dossiers, etc. We are watching in real time the expansion of surveillance cameras, chat control, deanonymization, etc. Leaks of this data make it obvious to everyone how much a liability it is. Meta Execs have their data in this pile as well; soldiers and congresspeople are in Flock's database. How many senators do you think PornHub has an accurate taste profile for? Of course there's harm that comes with leaking this data. But is the harm really greater than everyone being surveilled by everyone, everywhere?
- outime 4mo agoThe harm may be greater when it's not leaked. In other words, it can be used to blackmail people in power. They may not even be doing anything particularly illegal - just making a controversial statement or having an unusual sexual preference - and there you go. Or of course illegal stuff, you know. Or ultimately if nothing illegal, enough to assemble a parallel construction case.