Meta relaxes employee surveillance program

According to Reuters, in a letter sent to staff, the company said data collection can now be paused for up to 30 minutes, as well as opt-out of the program entirely.

When the program was initially announced, the company emphasized that the data collected “would not be used for purposes other than training models,” and that the tool itself contained security mechanisms to protect “sensitive content,” but employees were not convinced.

In an updated email, Steven Casriel, vice president of Meta AI’s Superintelligence Labs division, said improvements have been made to the tool to “reduce battery load” in response to complaints that data collection slows down the Internet when working remotely.