30 minutes without data collection: in response to protests, Meta gives its employees a break

While Meta tracks its employees' mouse clicks and keystrokes, a measure has been taken to calm the protests internally. What is this measure? A 30-minute break during which employees will not be tracked by the company.Mark Zuckerberg also explained that he monitors his employees’ work because they are « intelligent ».

A pause in the Model Capability Initiative program

Meta’s Model Capability Initiative (MCI) program aims to collect mouse clicks and keystrokes from the company’s employees. The objective is clear: to use this collected data to train Meta’s various artificial intelligence models. AI must continually learn, and who is better suited to train it than the company’s employees? Nevertheless, this somewhat intrusive program has sparked employee dissatisfaction. And in response to this wave of protest, Mark Zuckerberg has decided to make a concession: employees now have the right not to be tracked for 30 minutes if, for example, they need to access personal information, as an internal memo explains.

Furthermore, some employees will be allowed to opt out of the program. This possibility will, however, be limited to teleworkers facing bandwidth problems, employees handling sensitive data, and those who regularly work in environments where powering their laptop is difficult. In reality, the number of people who can opt out of the program is expected to be minimal.

Mark Zuckerberg flatters his employees to track them

To make it easier to swallow, Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t hesitate to flatter his employees by calling them “intelligent.” In an audio recording made during an internal meeting, the Meta executive explains: “AI models learn by watching really intelligent people do things… The average intelligence of the people in this company is significantly higher than that of the average group of people you can hire to perform tasks.” He also clarifies that “none of this data is used to observe people’s activities, nor for surveillance, nor to evaluate their performance, nor for anything of that kind,” while announcing his intention to do “other things of that kind” in the future.

Mark Zuckerberg therefore explains that he tracks his employees’ work because they are intelligent. Employees, meanwhile, are more likely to fear training their future replacement by using their intelligence. For reference, Meta recently laid off 8,000 employees and reassigned 7,000 others to AI.

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Source: The Information