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Posted by dlx 22 hours ago

Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training(www.reuters.com)
Alt link: https://tech.yahoo.com/ai/meta-ai/articles/exclusive-meta-st...
689 points | 453 commentspage 3
mbgerring 8 hours ago|
UNIONIZE. If it’s not obvious to you now, it never will be.
Ridius 8 hours ago|
Much harder to get the ball rolling on unionization when AI can monitor all chats/interactions for any mentioned of the topic
loeg 21 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.
tmp10423288442 21 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.
__loam 20 hours ago||
Meta forces employees to use personal Facebook accounts at work.
kleinsch 20 hours ago|||
This hasn’t been true for 8+ years.
charcircuit 20 hours ago||
Having both a personal and work Facebook account is against the rules and may lead to getting the account suspended.
bradlys 19 hours ago||||
Everyone here is slightly wrong.

Meta does require you to have a Facebook account. The expectation is that it is your personal fb that you use regularly. However, it doesn’t need to be. You can create a new fb account with a new gmail account and that’s fine. That’s what I did and some others do as well.

That said, 90%+ of employees end up using their real personal account because the language they use makes it seem like you couldn’t do what I described.

te_chris 6 hours ago||
Cool that they don't let others do it. I tried to make a work fb account to access the hellscape that is business manager and they blocked it. Pricks.
Rekindle8090 20 hours ago|||
No they do not lol.
casualscience 20 hours 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.

Archonical 20 hours ago|||
It at least used to be true. In order to accept the job offer, you would have to make (or have) a Facebook account.
cma 20 hours ago|||
The W2 is already provided by the employer, is it really sensitive for the employer to see it?
casualscience 17 hours ago|||
Idk, do you think it's sensitive for the employer to train an AI with it and then put that AI on Instagram for everyone to use and ask for employee SSNs?
lokar 19 hours ago|||
At meta your personal FB account is your work account. I had to create one to get paid. It’s the same identity used in internal systems.
loeg 17 hours ago||
Yes, but, so what? It isn't a license to train AI on employee personal information.

That said -- social media websites were later removed from the "work-related" list. So there was at least some recognition it was overreach and did not match the stated justification.

dist-epoch 21 hours ago||
You know you are at work and monitored.

You can browser personal accounts from your phone.

darth_avocado 20 hours 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.

dylan604 21 hours ago||||
on your phone not connected to corp wifi
astrange 21 hours ago||
That doesn't matter anymore unless they have an SSL proxy. If you have ECH/ODoH anyway.
0cf8612b2e1e 18 hours ago|||
If anyone can fingerprint your personal device while literally inside the building, it is Facebook.

You don’t even need any to do something fancy in software. Could just be correlating mobile device presence with work laptop activity. Can triangulate physical location with a handful of Bluetooth or WiFi beacons.

esseph 20 hours ago|||
Lots of those these days. Zacaler has a fair amount of enterprise market penetration.
mint5 21 hours ago||||
And Ideally not connected to company WiFi
Barrin92 17 hours ago|||
>You know you are at work and monitored.

unless you're in a jurisdiction that has anti-surveillance workplace laws, which if you don't should probably think about before Mark Zuckerberg gets the idea to monitor to your body temperature from below the waistline

dist-epoch 9 hours ago||
- workplace being monitored (US)

- getting paid half the salary (EU)

I know which one most people pick.

darepublic 4 hours ago||
I assume meta is doing this to train use computer like capabilities
beloch 19 hours ago||
For those saying that this is fine because company computers are company property...

This is like going to work in a drug-lab where everyone is required to strip naked to ensure no "product" can be smuggled out. It's a zero trust environment at first blush, with the added terror of it being used to replace you with AI.

People working naked in a drug lab have more job security than meta employees and an equivalent level of respect and trust from their employer. However, they can't unionize because they have no legal protections. Their employer could literally point a gun at them if they complained. That isn't the case for Meta employees. Just sayin'.

le-mark 2 hours ago|
> This is like going to work in a drug-lab where everyone is required to strip naked to ensure no "product" can be smuggled out.

I believe this has been the reality of diamond mining.

IAmBroom 1 hour ago||
Which has also long been associated with inhumane labor practices, including slavery.
rldjbpin 4 hours ago||
for the company that is one of the major players in tracking similar data across the web, i don't see much wrong with this.

if they continue to share their work through open releases despite the leadership change, i hope we get to benefit with their work.

not quite optimistic about the result as i wonder if on aggregate we all consistently interact with computers the most efficient way possible. maybe to beat captcha or scraper detection through mimicry perhaps.

fidotron 21 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.

dist-epoch 21 hours ago|
That people watch TikTok instead of Instagram reels. Quite embarrassing.
dylan604 21 hours 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.
sharts 22 hours ago||
They have nothing else to do. Someone needs to be able to justify their position by creating stupid changes like this to create a line item on their LinkedIn.

Meanwhile, nobody seems focused on capturing CEO’s data for AI training.

ndegruchy 22 hours ago|
The same company is trying to build an AI Zuckerberg...
asdff 21 hours ago||
It is going to be funny in a few decades when zuck transfers his shares and voting rights and estate to the ai bot, and makes himself functionally immortal. Or at least a sort of commissioned renaissance painting version of himself, probably.

Imagine in 300 years we are still ruled by zuck, ellison, bezos, musk, thiel, et al, just in ai model form empowered by estates worth more than entire nations and legal protections designed to outlast heat death of the universe. Assuming there is still a "we" living on earth. Charitable assumption I guess.

le-mark 2 hours ago|||
There was a sci-fi story that explores this idea. The person who wanted to live past their death had to transfer their assets to a trust controlled by the person derived AI (uploaded consciousness in this story) in a roundabout manner. The person was legally dead.

Edit “Mr. Boy”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Boy

pigeons 21 hours ago||||
Not funny ha-ha though.
alex1138 13 hours ago|||
You're just being fatuo- NO THIS ACTUALLY IS GOING TO HAPPEN. IT IS GOING TO HAPPEN. I have no doubt they're shameless enough to literally do this if they could get away with it
stingrae 13 hours ago||
If it is available for training, I assume it is available for discovery.
atleastoptimal 16 hours ago||
Do most people who work in AI companies realize that if this buildup of reasoning models succeeds at what every tech CEO is aiming for, all of them will be out of a job?
hx8 16 hours ago||
Yes! That is exactly why they talk about "the permeant underclass" and hold onto their RSUs.
blitzar 8 hours ago|||
It is the case with most companies, that once you build something for them, you are out of a job.
ozgrakkurt 7 hours ago||
It is pretty obvious they won't succeed at that with LLMs.

They don't even understand what these people do.

It is delusion and lies all around.

dbgrman 15 hours ago|
Because ends justify means. To quote Boz himself:

“ The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is de facto good. It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned.”

andrekandre 15 hours ago||
> connect more people more often is de facto good

i've heard it described that evil is that which believes itself to be good without exception. i think i'm starting to agree...

le-mark 2 hours ago||
“Good” for their bottom line, not for the people.
reroute22 10 hours ago|||
While reality can be anything but.

As far as I understand, there is plenty of research there in disciplines raging from social studies through psychology to game theory and economics, as well as informal simulations, that strongly suggest that human interactions are positive to participants pretty much if and only if those interactions are repeated, which realistically only occurs if participants are circumstantially close already - same neighborhood, same job, family, friends, same school, etc.

One-off interactions are almost invariably toxic with at least one of the participants getting cheated, bullied, or otherwise harmed.

So the whole premise of connecting people unconditionally, including anonymously, automatically, and from opposite sides of the world is inherently broken and doomed to do a lot of damage.

So even Meta's self proclaimed mission is damaging to society if followed, what could possibly at that point be expected from what they actually do, given the combination of basic facts that the primary purpose of any business is to make money, Meta's specific notoriously evident disregard towards ethics, their position as an advertisement business and entertainment provider, being deep into enshitification and market saturation, and of course actual honest mistakes to boot.

c-oreills 3 hours ago||
> human interactions are positive to participants pretty much if and only if those interactions are repeated

> One-off interactions are almost invariably toxic

I think these claims are too strong. I can believe that there's less incentive to treat people well when you don't expect to repeat interactions.

To give a mundane counter-example: last week I had a flight where I chatted on-and-off with the person next to me. I had zero expectations of repeat interactions with them following the flight, and it was still a friendly and courteous exchange, on both sides.

dbgrman 15 hours ago||
“ That's why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it.”
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