Meta scales back employee monitoring plan after staff protest keylogging for AI training

Benevolent dictator Zuck will give Meta staff 30-minute breaks from keylogging privacy assault

Meta is reportedly backtracking on, or at least weakening, its plans to implement enhanced employee workplace monitoring following staff protests. According to the latest internal memo on the matter, first reported by Reuters, Meta is still planning to capture employees' keystrokes as previously understood, but it will allow Metalings to switch off the monitoring for 30-minute periods, and request a total exemption. The memo was distributed to staff on Tuesday by Stephane Kasriel, veep at the company's Superintelligence Labs AI division. Kasriel said that, in addition to allowing staff to take half-hour privacy breaks, when the software is hoovering up their data, it will at least do it in a less resource-demanding manner. Some staffers were complaining about the battery drain on their devices incurred by the initiative, while remote workers reported undue strain on their home internet usage. The Register contacted Meta for a response but it did not reply, as was the case when we previously asked it to comment on the scheme around six weeks ago. According to reports in late April, the software now running on employee machines is part of what Meta calls the Model Capability Initiative. The program's goal is to capture workers' keystrokes, mouse movements and screenshots of their devices at various points, all so Meta can build AI agents that better understand how humans use computers. The irony of the people who help one of the internet's most prolific data gluttons now being snooped on themselves is not lost on us. Leaked audio recordings of an internal Meta meeting from April 30 revealed CEO Mark Zuckerberg's attitude toward capturing all this information when he said it was in pursuit of building advanced AI models quicker than competitors. "We are using this to feed a very large amount of content into the AI model, so that way it can learn how smart people use computers to accomplish tasks," Zuckerberg purportedly said, per the recording leaked by worker advocacy group More Perfect Union. "I think that this is going to be a very big advantage if we can do it." Throughout Zuck's six-minute monologue, he repeatedly referred to Meta staff as "smart people". Whether this was to soften the blow of constant monitoring, to seem personable amid mass layoffs, or both, is anyone's guess. Zuck said Meta chose to capture data from its own people rather than outside contractors because they were smarter than the workers they could bring in on a temporary basis. The CEO confirmed Meta had no intention of using the data captured by the monitoring software to surveil employees' activity or productivity, although he didn't commit to saying the data would be anonymized. ®

Exclusive: Meta scales back AI mouse clicks tool, citing employee concerns

NEW YORK, June 2 (Reuters) - Meta (META.O), opens new tab is dialing back elements of its plan to collect employee mouse movements, keystrokes and other actions for use as AI training data, ⁠it said in an internal memo on Tuesday, following weeks of angry pushback from staffers. "While we remain confident in the privacy protections we put in place at ⁠launch, which went through several layers of risk review, we have heard your concerns ⁠about personal data on work devices, battery life, and wanting more ⁠control over when capturing happens," the company ⁠said in the memo. Reporting by Katie Paul in New York, Editing by Franklin Paul Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Meta will reportedly let employees take 30-minute breaks from its tracking program - Engadget

Workers can pause the all-seeing eye when they need to "check something personal." Meta is making some minor concessions in its extremely dystopian plan to track employees' mouse clicks and keystrokes in the name of AI training. The company has reportedly made some changes to the controversial project known internally as the Model Capability Initiative (MCI), according to a report in The Information. Meta now plans to allow employees to "pause" the tracking for up to 30 minutes in the event they need to "check something personal," the company told workers in a memo. A subset of employees will also be able to request to opt out of the program altogether, though this will be limited to remote workers with bandwidth concerns, people who deal with "sensitive" material and those who often work in spaces where they can't easily keep laptops connected to a power source. In other words, it sounds like the vast majority of Meta employees will still be required to allow their (nearly) every move to be tracked and recorded in the name of improving Meta's AI models. However, the company did say that it had improved the software's battery usage to address some employee complaints, Reuters reports. The company has faced protests from employees over MCI, which was announced last month just before the company laid off 8,000 workers and reshuffled thousands of others into AI-focused roles. CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently defended the program to employees, telling them that "watching really smart people do things" is the best way for AI models to improve quickly. "The average intelligence of the people who are at this company is significantly higher than the average set of people that you can get to do tasks," he said in leaked audio from a company-wide meeting last month. "None of the data is being used for, like, looking at what people are doing, or surveillance, or performance track[ing], or anything like that. It's purely just, like, we are using this to feed a very large amount of content into the AI model, so that way it can learn how smart people use computers to accomplish tasks. I think that this is going to be a very big advantage if we can do it." He also added that if it works, "we'll probably do more things like it" in the future.

Meta scales back plan to track workers' clicks and keystrokes to train AI

Meta is scaling back its plan to start tracking its employees' computer activity, according to an internal memo sent on Tuesday. In April the company received criticism from its own staff after it announced a new tool would log their keystrokes and mouse clicks to train its AI models. Now, according to Reuters, new controls will allow employees to pause the data collection for "up to 30 minutes at a time" as well as request exemptions from the initiative altogether. Meta declined to comment on the record. It follows weeks of backlash from employees, including some who started a petition against the move which now has more than 1,500 signatures. During the initial announcement of the tool, called the Model Capability Initiative (MCI), Meta told the BBC: "If we're building agents to help people complete everyday tasks using computers, our models need real examples of how people actually use them." It added that the data was "not used for any other purpose," and the tool had "safeguards in place to protect sensitive content". But workers were not impressed, with one Meta employee, who asked not to be identified, telling the BBC that having their actions train AI models felt "very dystopian" - as workers expected a slew of additional job cuts. Meta has laid off around 2,000 employees this year. In April the company told employees it planned to cut 10% of its workforce - roughly 8,000 staff. Another person who recently left the company told the BBC the tracking tool was "just the latest way they're shoving AI down everyone's throat". An internal memo - seen by Reuters - was reportedly authored by Stephane Kasriel, a vice president in Meta's Superintelligence Labs unit. In it, he said the team behind the MCI had introduced "several optimizations" to reduce its impact on laptop battery life. This change came after reports that employees were finding the tool consumed so much data it was causing their internet usage to surge when working from home. "While we remain confident in the privacy protections we put in place at launch, which went through several layers of risk review, we have heard your concerns about personal data on work devices, battery life, and wanting more control over when capturing happens," Kasriel said in the memo. Sign up for our Tech Decoded newsletter to follow the world's top tech stories and trends. Outside the UK? Sign up here.

Meta's AI training effort is capturing employee emails and browsing history, not just mouse clicks

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. What we know so far: Meta's latest AI push appears to be built on something broader than it initially suggested: a detailed, ongoing log of how its employees use their work computers. How this plays out - whether as a win for Meta's AI ambitions or a regulatory headache - will depend on whether regulators accept Meta's distinction between behavioral data and personal information. Internal documents reviewed by Reuters show that the company's Model Capability Initiative (MCI) is collecting interaction data across more than 200 apps and websites. The goal is to train AI systems to perform routine digital tasks autonomously. But exactly what the tool is collecting - and how far that collection extends - is drawing scrutiny both inside Meta and from privacy advocates. At a basic level, MCI tracks how employees move through software: mouse movements, clicks, and navigation patterns. This kind of telemetry is useful for building AI agents that can replicate common workflows. Over time, these patterns could help train systems that don't just respond to prompts but also carry out multi-step tasks within standard workplace software. What Meta did not initially emphasize is how much additional data may be pulled into that process. According to internal materials, the system also captures the contents of emails and messages sent to US-based employees, even when those messages originate from colleagues overseas. In practice, that creates a potential backdoor flow of international data into the training pipeline. Meta acknowledged this in an internal FAQ, stating: "If a US-based colleague has the tool enabled while GChatting or emailing with someone outside the US, that activity would be captured." The company maintains that the tool is installed only on US devices and is designed to analyze interaction behavior rather than the substance of communications. "In the interest of transparency, we notified non-US employees that it was deployed on the computers of US colleagues they may email or chat with in the normal course of business," said Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold. He added that Meta had weighed privacy risks during development and rollout and remained committed to complying with applicable laws and regulations. Still, internally, some employees say the system behaves less like a narrow research tool and more like a broad data-capture layer embedded within existing monitoring software. Analyses shared within the company suggest MCI logs a wide range of activity, including code changes, browsing history, device sleep cycles, and clipboard actions. If accurate, that would give Meta a near end-to-end view of how knowledge workers actually operate across tools - far more detailed than simple usage metrics. One employee described the distinction this way: "Not 'an AI that clicks a dropdown for you' but 'an AI that knows which dropdown to click, what to select, which document to paste it into, and what to do next.'" The post containing that analysis was later removed, according to other employees. Arnold disputed those claims, calling them "fundamentally inaccurate," but did not address the specific technical points raised. There are also practical concerns about how the system operates. Employees have reported sharp increases in data usage after MCI was installed, with some saying it consumed an entire month's home internet allowance in just a few days. That kind of spike suggests the tool may be logging and uploading data continuously rather than sampling at wider intervals. Outside the company, attention is turning to how this kind of data collection fits within existing privacy frameworks - particularly in Europe. Even if Meta's systems are technically limited to US infrastructure, the incidental capture of communications involving European employees could trigger obligations under the EU's General Data Protection Regulation. Kleanthi Sardeli, a legal expert at privacy group NOYB, said the issue comes down to how that data is being repurposed. "This data was originally collected for the purpose of work communication and fulfilling an employment contract. Taking an employee's chat and ingesting it into an AI model is incompatible with that initial purpose," she told Reuters. Meta has told Ireland's Data Protection Commission that collecting EU employee data is not the tool's primary objective, though it has not publicly detailed how incidental collection is handled. The broader context is a company increasingly organized around automation. MCI is one piece of a larger effort to build AI agents that can take over routine digital work, from navigating internal tools to executing repetitive tasks. That shift has already sparked internal resistance, with some employees describing the initiative as an aggressive attempt to convert human workflows into machine-readable systems. For privacy advocates, the implications extend well beyond Meta. Johnny Ryan of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties said the project reflects a wider shift in how work itself is being modeled. "This situation, this case, is not limited to Meta employees. It relates to every employee in every sector where they could be replaced. Everybody cares about this if they understand what it is," he said.

Meta offers 30-minute pause on employee tracking after backlash

Meta is scaling back its employee keystroke and mouse-click tracking programme after 1,500 workers signed a petition. New controls let employees pause tracking for 30 minutes at a time, but the programme itself continues. When Meta announced in April that it would install software on US employees' work computers to capture their keystrokes, mouse clicks, and screenshots for AI training, the company's head of technology Andrew Bosworth was blunt: "There is no option to opt out of this on your work provided laptop." Two months and more than 1,500 petition signatures later, there is an option. It lasts 30 minutes. In an internal memo seen by Reuters, Stephane Kasriel, a vice president in Meta's Superintelligence Labs unit, told employees that new controls will allow them to pause the tracking software for up to 30 minutes at a time. Staff can also request full exemptions from the programme, though the memo did not detail the criteria for approval. What the tool collects The Model Capability Initiative, or MCI, was designed to teach AI models how humans perform everyday computer tasks. Internal materials reviewed by Reuters showed the system collecting interaction data across more than 200 applications and websites, with possible capture of email contents, chat messages, browsing history, clipboard actions, code changes, and device activity. Meta has said the data is "not used for any other purpose" and that the tool includes "safeguards to protect sensitive content." But employees were not reassured. One told the BBC in April that having their actions train AI models felt "very dystopian," particularly given the expectation of further job cuts. Another described the tool as "just the latest way they're shoving AI down everyone's throat." The practical complaints The backlash was not purely philosophical. Employees reported that the tracking software drained laptop batteries and caused home internet usage to surge, a tangible cost for workers who were already being asked to train the AI systems that many believed would eventually replace them. Kasriel acknowledged these concerns in his memo, saying the team had introduced "several optimisations" to reduce the tool's impact on battery life. "While we remain confident in the privacy protections we put in place at launch, which went through several layers of risk review, we have heard your concerns about personal data on work devices, battery life, and wanting more control over when capturing happens," he wrote. A concession, not a retreat The 30-minute pause is a concession, but a carefully bounded one. Meta is not abandoning the programme. It is not making the opt-out permanent. It is offering employees a brief window of unmonitored work, then resuming collection. The framing suggests Meta views the tracking as operationally necessary and the pushback as a communication problem rather than a substantive one. The timing adds context. Meta has cut approximately 8,000 jobs this year, roughly 10% of its workforce, while simultaneously redirecting $135 billion into AI spending. The employees generating training data for Meta's AI agents are, in many cases, the same employees whose roles those agents are being built to automate. A separate concern has also emerged around European data. TNW reported that the MCI is collecting substantially more EU employee data than Meta has publicly acknowledged, raising potential GDPR compliance questions that the 30-minute pause does not address. Meta declined to comment on the record. The petition, with more than 1,500 signatures, remains active. The tracking, with a 30-minute pause button, does too.

Exclusive: Meta tool to track employee mouse clicks on collision course with EU privacy rules

NEW YORK/AMSTERDAM, May 29 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms' (META.O), opens new tab plan to collect detailed records of U.S. employees' computer usage for training its AI models is more extensive than initially described and set to capture non-U.S. data in the process, according to internal documentation seen by Reuters. The documents introduce fresh complications for the project -- a key component of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's broader plan to transform how the company operates around AI agents -- that could draw Meta into a new European privacy fight, rights groups told Reuters. The Facebook and Instagram owner told staff last month it was launching the tool to capture how people use computers, including mouse movements, clicks and navigation through dropdown menus, in order to build AI agents that can perform everyday software tasks autonomously. The tool, called Model Capability Initiative, or MCI, is pulling in data from more than 200 apps and websites, according to a list Meta shared with staffers. The company said it would impact only U.S. employees and that safeguards were in place to protect sensitive information. In the weeks since its launch, however, Meta employees have complained that MCI was consuming so much data that it was causing their home internet usage to spike, in some cases using up an entire month's quota within days, according to internal posts seen by Reuters. Meta also acknowledged in a question-and-answer document provided to employees that the tool would capture the contents of any emails or direct messages sent to U.S. personnel, regardless of the sender's ⁠location. In a statement, Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold said MCI was installed only on U.S. employees' devices and that its focus was on how people interact with computers, not the content on their screens. "In the interest of transparency, we notified non-U.S. employees that it was deployed on the computers of U.S. colleagues they may email or chat with in the normal course of business," said Arnold. He confirmed the approximate number of apps and websites the tool is tracking, but declined to answer detailed questions about how much data it is ingesting and its legality. "We carefully considered and mitigated potential privacy risks in both the development and deployment of this tool, and we are committed to complying with applicable laws and regulations," he said. GDPR COMPLIANCE QUESTIONS EMERGE The findings could deepen Meta's regulatory troubles in the European Union, where tech companies are facing heated legal clashes over how they collect and deploy data. While U.S. workers have few protections against employer surveillance, companies operating under the EU's General Data Protection Regulation must have a legal basis for processing personal data, disclose what is collected and meet strict conditions for especially sensitive data like health information. In Meta's FAQ document on MCI, one entry addressed the tracking from the perspective of a non-U.S. employee: "I'm based outside the U.S. Will my conversations or data be captured if I'm communicating with a U.S.-based colleague who has the tool enabled?" The company's response: "If a U.S.-based colleague has the tool enabled while gchatting or emailing with someone outside the U.S., that activity would be captured." Meta also said in the FAQ that data collected by MCI would be "dissociated" from identifying employee information and ⁠therefore could not be looked up or deleted for individuals, a requirement in Europe. Kleanthi Sardeli, a legal expert at privacy advocacy group NOYB ("none of your business"), told Reuters that even limited or indirect capture of EU employee data could put Meta in violation of GDPR rules. Key sticking points could include whether the tool's collection of European data is considered "incidental" or counted as monitoring under the GDPR, and whether the initiative can pass a "purpose limitation" test, she added. "This data was originally collected for the purpose of work communication and fulfilling an employment contract. Taking an employee's chat and ingesting it into an AI model is incompatible with that initial purpose," said Sardeli. Meta told the Irish Data Protection Commission, its lead EU privacy regulator under GDPR, that neither EU employee data nor the recording of screen content "falls within the primary purpose of the tool," a DPC spokesperson told Reuters, ⁠without elaborating. Arnold, the Meta spokesperson, declined to comment on the company's exchanges with regulators. EMPLOYEE BACKLASH OVER DATA SCOPE The MCI project is part of a far-reaching restructuring at Meta aimed at handing large swaths of work over to AI agents, which has prompted an angry backlash among employees, who have likened Meta to an "Employee Data Extraction Factory." In an internal post, one employee shared findings of a detailed analysis of MCI log files performed with the aid of Anthropic's Claude, the type of AI tool Meta has been pushing staffers to incorporate into their workflows. According to the analysis -- replicated by others -- MCI was ⁠tacked on to the company's existing data security software, giving it access to additional details including employees' code changes, their computers' sleep and wake cycles, URLs visited and any clipboard content they copy and paste, which it then stored less securely in unencrypted form. Compiling that volume of data would make it possible to build "a complete behavioral model of how a knowledge worker does their job," the employee wrote. "Not 'an AI that clicks a dropdown for you' but 'an AI that knows which dropdown to click, what to select, which document to ⁠paste it into, and what to do next,'" she wrote. The employee's post later vanished, two other employees told Reuters. Arnold, the Meta spokesperson, called the post's conclusions "fundamentally inaccurate," but declined to address questions about its claims or say whether the company had removed it. Johnny Ryan, director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties' Enforce unit, said the exchanges inside Meta reinforced why he considers it "essential" that the DPC investigate the initiative. "This situation, this case, is not limited to Meta employees. It relates to every employee in every sector where they could be replaced. Everybody cares about this if they understand what it is," he said. Reporting by Katie Paul in New York and Toby Sterling in Amsterdam; Editing by Kenneth Li and Matthew Lewis Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Meta's employee mouse tracking program could reportedly violate EU privacy laws - Engadget

'Reuters' says the tracking tool could capture emails and chats by non-US employees. Reuters says Meta's mouse tracking program for employees could run afoul of the EU's strict privacy rules. If you'll recall, the news organization reported back in April that the company will be capturing its US employees' keystrokes, mouse movements and clicks for the purpose of training its artificial intelligence models. Meta confirmed the program to Engadget, with a spokesperson telling us that the company is "launching an internal tool that will capture these kinds of inputs on certain applications" because it needs real examples of people completing everyday tasks on computers. Now, Reuters reports that the program may have a larger scope than what Meta had revealed and that it may capture non-US data in the process. The company has reportedly admitted in Q&A documents provided to employees that the tool called Model Capability Initiative (MCI) would capture the contents of emails or messages sent to or by its US personnel, no matter where the sender or recipient is from. "If a US-based colleague has the tool enabled while gchatting or emailing with someone outside the US, that activity would be captured," Meta wrote in the document. Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold told Reuters that the company notified non-US employees that the tool was deployed on the computers of the US colleagues they may email or chat with. Arnold also said that that company "carefully considered and mitigated potential privacy risks in both the development and deployment" of the tool, and that it's "committed to complying with applicable laws and regulations." A legal expert told Reuters, however, that even a limited capture of EU employee data "could put Meta in violation of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules." Under the GDPR, companies must have a legal basis for collecting personal data and must disclose what it's collecting. Reuters also says in its new report that MCI tracks data from over 200 apps and websites for Meta's program. Employees have reportedly been complaining to the company that the tool was using so much data that those with monthly quota have been seeing theirs consumed in just a few days. That's just one of their complaints against MCI. Meta's employees have been voicing out their disapproval for the program since it was launched, with some expressing concerns that they were helping train their eventual replacements. Some employees even distributed flyers, asking colleagues to sign a petition protesting the program.

Meta's employee mouse-click tracking tool is collecting EU data it said it would not collect

Internal documents show the Model Capability Initiative captures emails and chats US employees exchange with European colleagues, putting the AI-agent training programme on a collision course with GDPR. Meta's Model Capability Initiative, the surveillance programme it deployed across US employee workstations in April to capture keystrokes, mouse clicks and screen contents for AI-agent training, is collecting substantially more European employee data than Meta has publicly acknowledged, according to a Reuters exclusive on Thursday citing internal Meta documents. Privacy lawyers at the Vienna-based NOYB argue the architecture as documented puts Meta on a collision course with the GDPR. The structural problem is one of scope. Meta has consistently told staff, regulators and the public that MCI runs only on US-based work machines and does not surveil European employees. The Irish Data Protection Commission, Meta's lead EU privacy supervisor under GDPR, was told the same. The internal documents Reuters reviewed show, however, that MCI captures the contents of any email or message a US-based Meta employee sends or receives, regardless of where the other party is located. Every chat a Meta worker in California has with a Meta colleague in Dublin, Paris or Munich is therefore being ingested into the training pipeline. Every email a US-based account manager sends to a European customer is, on the same architecture, being captured. The legal frame is the part that matters. GDPR's purpose-limitation principle holds that personal data collected for one purpose, in this case workplace communication under an employment contract, cannot subsequently be repurposed for an unrelated end, in this case training a frontier AI model. NOYB's framing of the case, summarised in a statement to Reuters, is that "taking an employee's chat and ingesting it into an AI model is incompatible with the initial purpose" for which the message was sent. The repurposing argument does not require Meta to be actively monitoring European employees; the mere fact that European personal data is being incorporated into the training set is, on the NOYB reading, the GDPR violation. The case lands inside an already-tense Meta-EU relationship. The European Commission extracted user-consent commitments on targeted advertising from Meta last year. The Court of Justice of the EU ruled against Meta in an Italian publisher-pay case in 2024, and the company is currently challenging Ofcom in the UK High Court over Online Safety Act fees. NOYB has separately demanded that 11 European data protection authorities stop Meta from using personal data for AI training. The MCI case is therefore not Meta's first AI-training privacy fight in Europe, but it is the first in which the privacy fight runs through the company's own employees rather than its consumer-product users. The underlying commercial logic is also worth pausing on. MCI sits inside Meta's broader Agent Transformation Accelerator programme, run by Meta SuperIntelligence Labs and aimed at training the Muse Spark family of models to perform multi-step workplace tasks autonomously. The keystroke-and-mouse data is what teaches the models how human workers actually navigate Google Docs, LinkedIn, Wikipedia and the roughly 200 other apps MCI covers. The training corpus, in other words, is structurally dependent on observing real workers doing real workplace tasks. Meta's decision to use its own US employees rather than external paid workers is what gives the company its data advantage; it is also what creates the GDPR exposure. The internal documents also raise the question of whether MCI's European-data ingestion is incidental or systematic. Meta has positioned the European capture as accidental overflow, the unavoidable result of running the tool on US machines that communicate with European colleagues. The framing matters because GDPR does carve out exceptions for incidental processing in some contexts. NOYB's response is that the volume and routineness of the capture, every email, every chat, all the time, exceeds anything reasonably describable as incidental. The Irish DPC will have to rule on which framing applies. Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth has previously confirmed there is no opt-out for US employees. European employees are formally exempt because GDPR will not permit equivalent monitoring; the documents now suggest that exemption is operating more as a slogan than as an enforced boundary. The IDPC has not yet opened a formal investigation. Meta has not separately commented on the Reuters findings. The case will be one of the first material tests of how the GDPR's purpose-limitation principle applies to AI-training data flows that cross the Atlantic.

'We have heard your concerns': Meta workers can request pauses in computer activity tracking, but only in temporary, half-hour increments

* Meta's MCI program rolling out, but workers are still unhappy about it * Concerns raised over potential impacts on job prospects * Temporary 30-minute pauses can be requested Facebook parent company Meta has started rolling out a new workplace monitoring system that tracks employees' activity, including keyboard activity and total time spent on work devices. Though the company cited security and data privacy as core drivers for the tracking, Meta faced backlash from workers over, ironically, their privacy. However, in response to complaints, workers can temporarily disable monitoring in 30-minute increments. Meta will grant exemptions to workplace monitoring software Under the policy, workers must actively request an exemption, but only when they're handling activities they believe shouldn't be monitored. While this may provide momentary respite, workers are still unhappy about the extent of employee monitoring and whether all workers fully understand what data is being collected. Beyond that, there's also concern that productivity metrics could be incorporated into performance reviews, potentially impacting workers' chances of promotions and pay rises. Meta instead framed it as a chance to monitor any potential data exfiltration, particularly with the rising use of AI within the company. "While we remain confident in the privacy protections we put in place at launch, which went through several layers of risk review, we have heard your concerns about personal data on work devices, battery life, and wanting more control over when capturing happens," Superintelligence Labs VP Stephane Kasriel said in an internal memo. The tool will also be used to provide real-time data and use case examples to the AI systems Meta is developing itself, too - Model Capability Initiative (MCI) is the name being given to the program. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.

Meta faces employee backlash over tracking tool

In April, Reuters reported that Meta would track U.S. employees' mouse movements and keystrokes to train its AI agents. Weeks later, Meta laid off 8,000 employees, citing its AI push. Now, the company is facing backlash from remaining employees over the tracking tool, called Model Capability Initiative (MCI), which may also violate European Union privacy rules, Reuters reports. Last month, the company apparently told U.S. employees that it launched MCI to track how they work -- including clicks and dropdown menu navigation -- to build AI agents that can perform software tasks, Reuters reported. They were also told this would only impact employees in the U.S. and that privacy safeguards were in place. Some employees have already complained about MCI, calling Meta an "Employee Data Extraction Factory," Reuters reported. One complaint is that the tool is using so much data that workers' home internet usage has spiked, and in some cases, using a month's quota in days. Another complaint is that MCI is more over-reaching than Meta lets on, extending to code changes, a computer's sleep and wake cycles, and URLs copied to a computer's clipboard. An internal post about this apparently disappeared, two Meta employees told Reuters. Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold told the outlet that the post was "fundamentally inaccurate." In a document reviewed by Reuters, Meta stated that MCI would capture the contents of any email or direct message sent to U.S. employees, regardless of the sender's location. According to a legal expert who spoke to Reuters, this may violate the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The question is whether data collection of EU resident data is considered "incidental" and whether the tool can pass a "purpose limitation" test. Arnold told Reuters that MCI was installed only on U.S. employees' computers and that, "In the interest of transparency, we notified non-U.S. employees that it was deployed on the computers of U.S. colleagues they may email or ⁠chat with in the normal course of business." "We carefully considered and mitigated potential privacy risks in both the development and deployment of this tool, and we are committed to complying with applicable laws and regulations," Arnold stated to Reuters. Earlier this month, Mashable reported that Meta (along with Google and TikTok) faces complaints from the EU regarding protections against financial scams. Layoffs at other major tech companies this year, including Snapchat, Amazon, and Pinterest, have been pinned on AI. In 2025, AI was linked to 50,000 job cuts.

Wow Meta thanks for 30 whole minutes off the surveillance leash

Meta is throwing its heavily monitored workforce an absolute bone. According to The Information, the tech giant is modifying its employee tracking program, euphemistically named the Model Capability Initiative (MCI), to allow workers a breathtaking 30-minute pause from digital surveillance to attend to "personal matters." Don't get too excited though, because opting out entirely remains a luxury reserved for a limited few, like remote workers with terrible internet bandwidth or those stuck in locations without reliable electricity. For the rest of the company, the eye of Zuckerberg remains wide open. Most Meta employees will continue to have their daily activities logged to train the company's artificial intelligence models. But credit where credit is due: Meta actually listened to staff complaints about the tracking software aggressively draining their laptop batteries. Instead of turning the tracker off, they just upgraded its code so it siphons user data much more efficiently. Unsurprisingly, the MCI rollout has faced fierce internal protests and heavy scrutiny. According to Reuters, the program was introduced right on the heels of Meta laying off 8,000 workers and reassigning others to high-pressure AI roles. CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended the data-harvesting initiative during a company-wide meeting, insisting that tracking employees' every move is the only way to rapidly improve AI development. In a classic tech-billionaire move, he justified the invasive tracking by aggressively complimenting his staff, stating that the average intelligence of Meta employees is "significantly higher than the average set of people that you can get to do tasks." Zuckerberg also wants everyone to know this definitely isn't performance tracking or corporate spying. Instead, the company is simply vacuuming up a vast amount of internal data so the AI can study exactly how highly skilled human employees use computers. If this trial goes well, Zuckerberg promised that employees can expect plenty of similar initiatives in the near future.

Exclusive-Meta Scales Back AI Mouse Clicks Tool, Citing Employee Concerns

NEW ⁠YORK, ⁠June 2 (Reuters) - ⁠Meta is dialing back elements of its plan to collect employee mouse movements, ⁠keystrokes ⁠and other actions for use as AI training data, it said in an internal memo on Tuesday, following ⁠weeks ⁠of angry pushback ⁠from staffers. "While we remain confident in the privacy ⁠protections we put in place at launch, which ⁠went through several layers of risk review, ⁠we have heard your concerns about personal data on work devices, battery life, and wanting more control over when capturing ⁠happens," the company said in the memo. (Reporting by Katie Paul in New York, Editing by Franklin Paul)

Meta tool to track employee mouse clicks on collision course with EU privacy rules

Meta's AI training tool, Model Capability Initiative (MCI), is reportedly capturing extensive U.S. employee computer usage, including non-U.S. data from communications. This extensive data collection could lead to new European privacy violations under GDPR, as employees express concerns about the tool's scope and impact on their internet usage and sensitive information. Meta Platforms' plan to collect detailed records of U.S. employees' computer usage for training its AI models is more extensive than initially described and set to capture non-U.S. data in the process, according to internal documentation seen by Reuters. The documents introduce fresh complications for the project - a key component of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's broader plan to transform how the company operates around AI agents - that could draw Meta into a new European privacy fight, rights groups told Reuters. The Facebook and Instagram owner told staff last month it was launching the tool to capture how people use computers, including mouse movements, clicks and navigation through dropdown menus, in order to build AI agents that can perform everyday software tasks autonomously. The tool, called Model Capability Initiative, or MCI, is pulling in data from more than 200 apps and websites, according to a list Meta shared with staffers. The company said it would impact only U.S. employees and that safeguards were in place to protect sensitive information. In the weeks since its ⁠launch, however, ⁠Meta employees have complained that MCI was consuming so much data that it was causing their home internet usage to spike, in some cases using up an entire month's quota within days, according to internal posts seen by Reuters. Meta also acknowledged in a question-and-answer document provided to employees that the tool would capture the contents of any emails or direct messages sent to U.S. personnel, regardless of the sender's location. In a statement, Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold said MCI was installed only on U.S. employees' devices and that its focus was on how people interact with computers, not the content on their screens. "In the interest of transparency, we notified non-U.S. employees that it was deployed on the computers of U.S. colleagues they may email or chat with in the normal course of business," said Arnold. He confirmed the approximate number of apps and websites the tool is tracking, but declined to answer detailed questions about how much data it is ingesting and its legality. "We carefully considered and mitigated potential privacy risks in both the development and deployment of this tool, and we are committed to complying with applicable laws and regulations," he said. GDPR compliance questions emerge The findings could deepen Meta's regulatory troubles in the European Union, where tech companies are facing heated legal clashes over how they collect and deploy data. While U.S. workers have few protections against employer surveillance, companies operating under the EU's General Data Protection Regulation must have a legal basis for processing personal data, disclose what is collected and meet strict conditions for especially sensitive data like health information. In Meta's FAQ ⁠document on MCI, one entry addressed the tracking from the perspective of a non-U.S. employee: "I'm based outside the U.S. Will my conversations or data be captured if I'm communicating with a U.S.-based colleague who has the tool enabled?" The company's response: "If a U.S.-based colleague has the tool enabled while gchatting or emailing with someone outside the U.S., that activity would be captured." Meta also said in the FAQ that data collected by MCI would be "dissociated" from identifying employee information and therefore could not be looked up or deleted for individuals, a requirement in Europe. Kleanthi Sardeli, a legal expert at privacy advocacy group NOYB ("none of your business"), told Reuters that even limited or indirect capture of EU employee data could put Meta in violation of GDPR rules. Key sticking points could include whether the tool's collection of European data is considered "incidental" or counted as monitoring under the GDPR, and whether the initiative can pass a "purpose limitation" test, she added. "This data was originally collected for the purpose of work communication and fulfilling an employment contract. Taking an employee's chat and ingesting it into an AI model is incompatible with that initial purpose," said Sardeli. Meta told the Irish Data Protection Commission, its lead EU privacy regulator under GDPR, that neither EU employee data nor the recording of screen content "falls within the primary purpose of the tool," a DPC spokesperson told Reuters, without elaborating. Arnold, the Meta spokesperson, declined to comment on the company's exchanges with regulators. Employee backlash over data scope The MCI project is part of a far-reaching restructuring at Meta aimed at handing large swaths of work over to AI agents, which has prompted an angry backlash among employees, who have likened Meta to an "Employee Data Extraction Factory." In an ⁠internal post, one employee shared findings of a detailed analysis of MCI log files performed with the aid of Anthropic's Claude, the type of AI tool Meta has been pushing staffers to incorporate into their workflows. According to the analysis - replicated by others - MCI was tacked on to the company's existing data security software, giving it access to additional details including employees' code changes, their computers' sleep and wake cycles, URLs visited and any clipboard content they copy and paste, which it then stored less securely in unencrypted form. Compiling that volume of data would make it possible to build "a complete behavioral model of how a knowledge worker does their job," the employee wrote. "Not 'an AI that clicks a dropdown for you' but 'an AI that knows which dropdown to click, what to select, which document to paste it into, and what to do next,'" she wrote. The employee's post later vanished, two other employees told Reuters. Arnold, the Meta spokesperson, called the post's conclusions "fundamentally inaccurate," but declined to address questions about its claims or say whether the company had removed it. Johnny Ryan, director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties' Enforce unit, said the exchanges inside Meta reinforced why he considers it "essential" that the DPC investigate the initiative. "This situation, this case, is not limited to Meta employees. It relates to every employee in every sector where they could be replaced. Everybody cares about this if they understand what it is," he said.

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta scales back plan to track keystrokes, mouse movements after staff uproar

Meta is dialing back elements of its plan to collect employee mouse movements, keystrokes and other actions for use as AI training data, it said in an internal memo on Tuesday, following weeks of angry pushback from staffers. New controls will allow employees to pause the data collection for up to 30 minutes at a time and request exemptions from the initiative, according to the memo, authored by Stephane Kasriel, a vice president in Meta's AI model-building Superintelligence Labs unit. Kasriel said the team behind the software had also introduced "several optimizations" to reduce its impact on computer battery life, after employees complained it was consuming so much data that it was causing their home internet usage to spike. "While we remain confident in the privacy protections we put in place at launch, which went through several layers of risk review, we have heard your concerns about personal data on work devices, battery life, and wanting more control over when capturing happens," Kasriel said in the memo. The company, headed by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, announced last month that it was installing new tracking software on US-based employees' computers to capture mouse movements, clicks and keystrokes for use in training its artificial intelligence models, part of a broad initiative to build AI agents that can perform work tasks autonomously. The launch came in the context of a far-reaching restructuring at Meta and prompted an angry backlash among staffers, who have likened Meta to an "Employee Data Extraction Factory."