Meta pauses employee tracker for AI training amid privacy concerns

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has paused a program that tracked employees’ computer activity amid data privacy concerns and a staff backlash. The owner of Facebook , Instagram and WhatsApp had introduced a tool that tracked staff keystrokes, mouse clicks and content displayed on computer screens in order to collect data for training its AI models. More than 1,600 Meta workers signed a petition against the tool, called the Model Capability Initiative, demanding the company does not harvest “employee ‘computer use’ data”. The petition said : “Collecting and repurposing this kind of data raises serious concerns around privacy, consent, and trust in the workplace.” The tech publication Wired reported this week that MCI data collected from corporate laptops had been accessible to anyone inside the company. It cited an internal security notice that referred to the exposure of data tables including “full prompts and transcriptions, private conversations, people and performance data”. Meta confirmed the program has been paused. “We have carefully designed this program with privacy safeguards and while we have no indication at this time that any data was improperly accessed by Meta employees, we’re pausing it while we investigate,” the company said in a statement. …