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Posted by 1vuio0pswjnm7 8 hours ago

Meta Pauses Employee-Tracking Program Following Internal Data Leak(www.wired.com)
228 points | 144 comments
jazzpush2 6 hours ago|
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 applicants straight to the trash for this very reason.

inigyou 3 hours ago||
Facebook, for instance, made a lot of money for shareholders, which we know is the same thing as making the world a better place.
haunter 3 hours 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 :)

59nadir 1 hour ago|||
Corporate open-source (Open Source) is done for free labor and PR, it shouldn't be bonus points for any company that does it, unless they commit to it and pay their contributors, have no CLAs that allow them to relicense the work, or adopt practices and licenses that are clearly more in line with the actual spirit of free software. Real free software that should be considered a public good is produced by people, for people.

There are sometimes well meaning people in corporations that do their best to at least get something out there and kudos to them, but corporations running Open Source projects should receive no goodwill for it, it's basically a scam.

vintermann 46 minutes ago|||
Well yeah, you shouldn't give much credit to the corporation, but neither should you backlist all applicants who ever worked for them (as OP says some frontier labs do)
59nadir 44 minutes ago||
I'm not really commenting on that, I just want to remind people that Open Source is highly overrated and should not be looked at as a point in favor of a company.
allarm 6 minutes ago||
While I agree with your point I don't agree that open source is overrated. This movement is one of the greatest developments in modern history, and the fact that corporations have exploited it for their own gain should in no way diminish its significance.
jekekepel 46 minutes ago|||
[dead]
jazzpush2 3 hours ago||||
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.
vintermann 43 minutes ago||
Without 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.

digitaltrees 2 hours ago||||
React made front end suck. Sorry.
onion2k 1 hour ago||
React definitely didn't make frontend _great_ in a lot of cases, but jQuery, mootools, prototype, knockout, ember, angular, and a whole lot more JS frameworks that have come and gone predate React. If React hadn't been invented there'd be just as many poorly developed browser apps as there are today. You can't really pin that on React.
archerx 51 minutes ago||
What I can pin on react is that it is very inefficient with resources using much more cpu power than needed to render some text and images on a webpage. Imagine all the electricity that was wasted because of react and the negative impact on the environment it has had because of that.
usefulcat 3 hours ago||||
> zstd

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

formerly_proven 2 hours ago||||
zstd was created outside FB, it's an acquihire.
colordrops 3 hours ago|||
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.
darkest_ruby 2 hours ago||
What was your framework of choice if not react, if you don't mind me asking
camillomiller 2 hours ago||
I will blow your mind: you don’t necessarily need one
zx8080 4 hours ago|||
Meta is a golden jail for one teenager who cannot grow up no matter what he does. Shame.
usefulcat 3 hours ago|||
Not to defend him, but there are actually quite a lot of people who can’t or won’t grow up.
roughly 43 minutes ago|||
Sure, most of them don't have the body count Zuck's wracking up, though.
jakeydus 3 hours ago|||
What’s your point? There’s a lot of people who can’t or won’t do a lot of things.
zombot 3 hours ago|||
Seeing how much damage he does as it is, I don't want to know the grown-up version.
vintermann 48 minutes ago|||
Depends 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 10 minutes ago||
> initial push to open weight models

...Push? Did you forget about the leak and the takedown requests?

cherryteastain 1 hour 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 1 hour ago||
I 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.

test6554 4 hours ago|||
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.
lend000 4 hours ago||
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.
arkh 1 hour ago|||
In 2001 France had Copains d'avant https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copains_d%27avant for school based networking. So not a new idea
hparadiz 1 hour ago||
Lol I was working on a social network site when FB came out and there were many sites like it (MySpace). Some of them even still exist like VK.
thin_carapace 2 hours ago||||
has zuckerberg done anything productive of his own accord? facebook was ripped off. most meta companies were acquired. it could be argued that propagandizing the entire world was productive relative to vested interests but that was done on the behest of those interests, not zuck himself. the only thing im aware of zuck actually spearheading was the metaverse, a conclusively unproductive pursuit costing tens of billions to achieve literally nothing. it isnt objective to unilaterally behave with vitriol ... still this person seems more comparable to cancer itself than any actual human. i guess you could collapse productivity to 'making money' in which case clearly he is productive, im more referring to accomplishing anything useful for humanity. i also dont consider mass surveillance to be useful for humanity as bad actors will always get away with it whether they are on or off camera.
georgemcbay 2 hours ago||
> has zuckerberg done anything productive of his own accord?

It probably will surprise no one to learn his "next big thing" is a prediction market app.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/23/technology/meta-predictio...

Hits the Meta product trifecta perfectly:

* Derivative

* Late to market

* Harmful to society

digitaltrees 3 hours ago|||
Or he’s backed by the CIA?
vintermann 38 minutes ago||
Unlikely, since he is extremely hated by the Democratic party establishment. He's treated like a scorned ex.
steve1977 1 hour ago|||
I guess having an insecure creep as CEO could play a role in all that.
magixx 5 hours ago|||
Portal was pretty good and an originalish product
digitaltrees 3 hours ago|||
Spy on your grand parents from the convenience of your kitchen counter top!

now in arctic white!

sbrother 3 hours ago||||
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.
measurablefunc 3 hours ago||
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.
pwdisswordfishq 4 hours ago|||
Valve is a different company.
steve_adams_86 4 hours ago||
Meta's Portal is different from Valve's Portal.

https://www.meta.com/ca/portal/

whateveracct 3 hours ago||
> Meta Portal devices and accessories are no longer available

lol

zer0zzz 3 hours ago|||
What 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."

millerfiller 6 hours ago|||
I 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 6 hours ago|||
They dont need frontier labs. Meta's dashboard jockeys get paid the same
asdaqopqkq 5 hours ago|||
[flagged]
TZubiri 4 hours ago|||
WhatsApp
sillywalk 4 hours ago|||
Nitpick: Facebook bought WhatsApp, it didn't make it.
Marsymars 4 hours ago||
They've also largely made WhatsApp worse.
zer0zzz 3 hours ago||
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.

myng111 2 hours ago|||
From an infrastructure PoV, I seem to recall that WhatsApp was one of the few major companies that used Erlang, and were famous for being able to run the entirety of WhatsApp on only a few servers, each of which was serving millions of concurrent connections, mostly thanks to Erlang/BEAM (at least, from what I read). When it got acquired by Facebook, they then proceeded to rewrite the entirety of the backend in C++. Seems kind of baffling to me.
inigyou 3 hours ago||||
They added ads, an "AI companion", and backdoor logging of all chat messages
otterley 3 hours ago||
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)

inigyou 3 hours ago||
I believe it was the automatic unencrypted weekly data upload to Google Drive
otterley 3 hours ago||
Can you post a link?
inigyou 2 hours ago||
No. It's a special arrangement between Google and WhatsApp which makes a file only visible to WhatsApp, and not appear in your regular drive so you can't do normal cloud file operations like generating public links.
otterley 2 hours ago||
Without evidence of this “special arrangement” I don’t see why anyone should believe you. You made a claim that is directly contrary to WhatsApp’s published materials and they have a lot to lose if you are correct. On the other hand, if your accusation is false, it’s tantamount to libel.
inigyou 1 hour ago||
How's this? Not sure if it's the same issue but it's much more damning than the one I knew about. https://www.techspot.com/news/112232-federal-agent-whatsapp-...

You know how I found this link? Googling WhatsApp encryption backdoor. You could have too.

x______________ 41 minutes ago|||
> You know how I found this link? Googling WhatsApp encryption backdoor. You could have too.

No need for the attitude. Op asked you for a source, which is customary for one to back up their initial claim; an onus on you and not for someone else to validate your claims.

otterley 1 hour ago|||
[dead]
gmerc 3 hours ago|||
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.

asp_hornet 4 hours ago||||
I think OP’s point is that it was bought not made similar to Instagram.
jopolous 6 hours ago|||
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.

dozerly 5 hours ago|||
Your 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.

tempay 4 hours ago|||
The key point here is the “pay less” part. I know people that have turned down offers from meta that would 5x their salary and their personal situation would notably improve from at least some of that extra cash.

The OP is a bit preachy and maybe some employees really don’t have any other options even with accepting lower salaries, but the majority should at least realise the golden handcuffs their bound by even if they choose not to act on them.

test6554 4 hours ago||||
I don't blame someone for working at facebook, but I don't think most of you realize how cash money a FANG company looks on your resume to IT managers at the lowly normal companies. Go work in financial services, insurance, retail, go be a contractor and work/travel until you find what you like.
ra0x3 5 hours ago|||
Not sure why you're being downvoted. Maybe a little preachy, but the gist of the point isn't incorrect
dozerly 5 hours ago|||
In 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 1 hour 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.

least 4 hours ago|||
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, rationalize, and forgive themselves for.

It’s just tiresome. There may not be a ton of context, but even knowing that someone is bound to a particular place because of caregiving responsibilities should be enough to invite a little more empathy and grace, and a lot less judgment.

jazzpush2 3 hours ago|||
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.

kortilla 1 hour ago||
> donate 6-figures to charity, which while very commendable, flies in the face of the idea of being 'stuck'.

Have you considered that the harm of the loss of 6 figures can completely destroy local charities?

This quickly devolves into effective altruism and the problems that come with that but it’s very easy to end up in a situation where you think the net good you bring by keeping a local abused women shelter open far outweighs the negative consequences for working at Meta.

ryandrake 4 hours ago||||
I think there would be more empathy if Meta were the only company in the world where it was possible to work. That's "stuck." This is not.

I've quit jobs over ethical boundaries. It's not an easy decision, and "integrity" doesn't quite pay rent, but helped me to sleep better at night and let me live with myself.

pishpash 4 hours ago|||
They are not understanding that it's not one person's moral failing at the root of it, it's the system that forces everyone into participating in amoral things, including for example the investors of Meta who are getting a bigger bag. That includes every one of you S&P500 index fund hodlers.
blitzar 38 minutes ago||||
Ahh the olde Nuremberg Defense - Befehl ist Befehl ... “an order is an order”
whateveracct 3 hours ago|||
i have like 5 companies in my rolodex who would hire me to be fully remote tomorrow

get with the times

otterley 3 hours ago|||
Knock it off. Nobody wants to read your braggadocio, and it’s insulting to people who are having real challenges finding work.
bluefirebrand 3 hours ago|||
There's some kind of irony using outdated terminology like "rolodex" and telling someone else to get with the times. :)
adamors 52 minutes ago||
It’s almost as if they were making a joke.
dxxmxnd 4 hours ago||
Binning 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.
claaams 5 hours ago||
If 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 3 hours ago|
For context, Zuckerberg once said about early Facebook users, “They trust me. Dumb fucks.”

https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/2010/05/14/facebook-foun...

chopete3 6 hours ago||
If 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.

Lio 2 hours ago||
For 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.

daft_pink 4 hours ago||
That system is going to be a nightmare in discovery
neilv 4 hours ago|
That 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.

albatross79 5 hours ago||
Garbage company going into a death spiral.
techterrier 14 minutes ago||
panopticon for me and for thee!

seems fair enough

darth_avocado 6 hours ago||
They 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.

sidcool 3 hours ago||
Meta must really be paying a lot!
guessmyname 3 hours ago|
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.

mdavid626 2 hours ago|||
Crying in Germany with 60-85k average SW engineer salary.
delis-thumbs-7e 2 hours ago|||
Yeah, but you don’t have to have to pay SF mortgage prices, have a working public healthcare, no hordes of homeless on your doorstep etc. etc.

One might argue that we get more for our sille euro wages. Also if we decide to leave the company, we are not completely f_ckd, since our families don ’t suddenly drop out of healthcare and other services.

lnsru 1 hour ago|||
What you ignore is the thing that with meta’s salary you can retire in 10 years back to Europe. With silly wages in Germany you can retire on your 75th birthday. Feel the difference? Germany’s economy is stagnating, there will be no higher salaries anymore. Just higher taxes. If I were younger I would pick SF and hordes of homeless over declining Germany. If you follow political discussions it will not get better: planed VAT increase, retiremeNt and health insurance getting continuously more expensive. Even if I can get 3% yearly salary increase it will be eaten up by rising taxes and inflation making my poorer every year.
delis-thumbs-7e 30 minutes ago|||
I think this reduces to a simple question of preference, but you understand that in order to get those salaries you work around the clock in a work environment so toxic, that there’s several books written about it. There’s a reason why they dev’s can order food and have free laundry service there, and it’s not zuck just loving his employees more. So yeah if you don’t get ill or burnout you get to retire earlier, and then move back to Europe. I’d rather stay in Europe, have spare time, live my life in nicer society and perhaps even make products that help society, or somebody, some way.

As of Germany, I don’t follow currenct politics over there (not a German here, Finnish), but you guys have time and time again show that you can produce pretty much anything for the global markets as well or better than anyone else. Your problems are political, and you are your own worst enemy. Germany has enormous possibilities as a society, if you just get your shit together.

intended 1 hour ago|||
But you would have gotten to live in Germany for those ten years.

SF and Meta make sense if you are going to try to be the cutting edge of conversations and tech.

If you just want to live your life?

hparadiz 56 minutes ago||
I have family there and have stayed with them for several weeks at a time. Why do you think Germany is automatically better?
breppp 1 hour ago|||
There are countries with universal healthcare and SV comparable wages
rsynnott 1 hour ago||||
Facebook doesn't pay an average US salary, either (which is presumably why anyone stays). Based on levels.fyi, you'd be looking at 300-400k eur for an E5 in Berlin all-in.

Not sure I'd recommend it; there are less cartoonishly evil companies who still pay silly money in Europe available.

lostglass 2 hours ago|||
Hey, if you can handle a dystopian Kafka inspired shit show all major tech companies have an office in Berlin.
hparadiz 51 minutes ago||
How? Any world wide company will have local offices for local operations. They are big enough that they have whole data centers there. Of course they'll hire some locals.
fergie 24 minutes ago|||
Wait- wut!?
mbf1 3 hours ago|
They probably wrote the utility with AI - it's not that big a surprise that AI can't secure stuff.
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