Meta employees handed out leaflets at several US headquarters on Tuesday to protest the company's recent deployment of software that monitors mouse movements on their computers, Reuters reports.
The flyers, which appeared in boardrooms, on vending machines and above toilet paper dispensers at the offices of the Facebook operating giant, encouraged employees to sign an online petition against the move.
“You don't want to work at the Employee Data Extraction Factory?” reads the text of the flyer, seen by Reuters.
The flyer distribution comes about a week before Meta lays off 10 percent of its workforce. In recent months, Meta's focus has shifted heavily towards the development of AI models and tools.
The protest is also a visible sign that a union movement is beginning to take shape within Meta, as some employees begin to channel their anger over the company's plans to revamp its workforce around AI into union organizing efforts.
What the Meta is after
For several months, Meta employees have been expressing their displeasure on internal platforms and online forums about the company's plans to make massive layoffs, as well as the introduction of the mouse movement monitoring system. The purpose of this software, they say, is to help Meta design its own robot replacements.
Moreover, Meta confirmed that the collected data serves as training material for artificial intelligence models.
“If we're developing agents to help people perform everyday computer tasks, our models need real-world examples of how people actually use them — things like mouse movements, button clicks, and menu navigation,” the company said in a statement about its mouse tracking technology.
