- 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.
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.
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