An Engineer’s Post Protesting Laptop Surveillance Is Going Viral Inside Meta
An Engineer’s Post Protesting Laptop Surveillance Is Going Viral Inside Meta
一位工程师抗议笔记本电脑监控的帖子在 Meta 内部疯传
Meta’s decision to track employee keystrokes and mouse data is causing an uproar within the company. “Selfishly, I don’t want my screen scraped because it feels like an invasion of my privacy,” wrote an engineer in an internal post seen by nearly 20,000 coworkers this week. “But zooming out, I don’t want to live in a world where humans—employees or otherwise—are exploited for their training data.”
Meta 决定追踪员工的键盘敲击和鼠标数据，这在公司内部引起了轩然大波。一位工程师在本周的一篇内部帖子中写道，该帖子已被近 2 万名同事阅读：“从私心来讲，我不希望我的屏幕被抓取，因为这感觉像是对我隐私的侵犯。但从宏观角度看，我不希望生活在一个人类——无论是员工还是其他人——被剥削以提供训练数据的世界里。”
The message aimed to rally support for a petition circulating inside the company since last Thursday that demands an end to what Meta calls the Model Capability Initiative. It’s a piece of mandatory software that Meta began installing on the laptops of US employees last month. The tool records employees’ screens when using certain apps with the goal of collecting “real examples of how people actually use” computers, including “mouse movements, clicking buttons, and navigating dropdown menus,” according to Reuters. Meta has yet to say whether the initial data is paying off.
这条信息旨在为自上周四以来在公司内部流传的一份请愿书争取支持，该请愿书要求终止 Meta 所称的“模型能力计划”（Model Capability Initiative）。这是一款强制性软件，Meta 上个月开始将其安装在美国员工的笔记本电脑上。据路透社报道，该工具会在员工使用特定应用程序时记录其屏幕，目的是收集人们“实际使用”电脑的“真实案例”，包括“鼠标移动、点击按钮和导航下拉菜单”。Meta 尚未说明初步数据是否已产生预期效果。
“I’m mixed on AI. On one hand, I really enjoy using it to write software. On the other hand, I’m really nervous about its impact on the world,” the engineer wrote in an internal forum for coders. “And what kind of norms are we establishing about how the technology is used, and how people are going to be treated?”
“我对人工智能的态度很复杂。一方面，我真的很喜欢用它来编写软件。另一方面，我对它给世界带来的影响感到非常紧张，”这位工程师在程序员的内部论坛上写道。“我们正在建立什么样的规范来约束这项技术的使用，以及人们将如何被对待？”
The petition, also seen by WIRED, states that “it should not be the norm that companies of any size are permitted to exploit their employees by nonconsensually extracting their data for the purposes of AI training.”
这份同样被《连线》（WIRED）杂志看到的请愿书指出：“任何规模的公司都不应被允许通过未经同意提取员工数据用于人工智能训练来剥削员工，这不应成为常态。”
In the US, employers generally have wide latitude to monitor workers’ devices for security, training, evaluation, and safety purposes. But using these tools to build datasets that instruct AI systems on navigating computers without human supervision appears to be a new tactic—and one that doesn’t sit right with many Meta workers. Over the past few years, several companies have jumped into the race to develop agentic AI models. But when gathering data, they have typically tapped volunteers, sometimes paid, who are willing to have their computer activity recorded.
在美国，雇主通常拥有广泛的自由度，可以出于安全、培训、评估和保障目的监控员工的设备。但利用这些工具构建数据集，以指导人工智能系统在无人监督的情况下操作电脑，这似乎是一种新策略——而且许多 Meta 员工对此感到不安。过去几年里，几家公司纷纷加入开发代理型人工智能（agentic AI）模型的竞赛。但在收集数据时，他们通常会招募志愿者（有时是有偿的），这些志愿者愿意让自己的电脑活动被记录下来。
Meta’s decision to move forward with its tracking tool despite weeks of protest from employees has become one of the leading reasons for what 16 current and former employees recently described to WIRED as record-low morale. It’s also the leading driver of an employee unionization effort at Meta’s UK offices.
尽管员工抗议了数周，Meta 仍决定推进其追踪工具，这已成为导致员工士气降至历史最低点的主要原因之一，16 名现任和前任员工最近向《连线》杂志描述了这一情况。这也是 Meta 英国办公室员工工会化努力的主要推动力。
“The workplace surveillance and training AI models is the one thing,” says Eleanor Payne, a representative of United Tech and Allied Workers, which is helping organize Meta employees. She declined to specify the number of employees seeking to form a labor union but called it “significant” and unprecedented.
“工作场所监控和训练人工智能模型是首要问题，”正在协助组织 Meta 员工的“联合科技与盟友工会”（United Tech and Allied Workers）代表埃莉诺·佩恩（Eleanor Payne）表示。她拒绝透露寻求组建工会的员工人数，但称其规模“巨大”且前所未有。
While only US employees are currently subjected to tracking, UK employees are concerned for their colleagues and the potential for expansion of the program. “I think of it pretty much as a breakdown of trust,” Payne says. New laws that eased unionization in the UK have encouraged employees about the chances of success, she adds.
虽然目前只有美国员工受到追踪，但英国员工对他们的同事以及该计划可能扩展的范围感到担忧。“我认为这基本上是信任的破裂，”佩恩说。她补充道，英国放宽工会化限制的新法律增强了员工对成功机会的信心。
In Meta offices in California and New York, workers have been posting flyers in cafeterias and other communal areas pointing colleagues to the petition. Two employees, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, say the company has removed some posters, with those on bathroom walls seemingly staying up longer.
在加利福尼亚州和纽约州的 Meta 办公室里，员工们一直在食堂和其他公共区域张贴传单，引导同事签署请愿书。两名因未获授权向媒体发言而要求匿名的员工表示，公司已经撤下了一些海报，但贴在洗手间墙上的海报似乎保留的时间更长。
Meta declined to comment on the allegation.
Meta 拒绝就此指控发表评论。
Petition organizers have called on Meta to respect their legal right “to discuss, organize, and advocate for better working conditions.” So far, organizers have declined to comment on the number of signatories and whether they may pursue other legal or regulatory actions to push back on the tracking program.
请愿组织者呼吁 Meta 尊重他们“讨论、组织和倡导改善工作条件”的合法权利。到目前为止，组织者拒绝就签名人数以及他们是否可能采取其他法律或监管行动来抵制该追踪计划发表评论。
The engineer’s internal post this week chronicled what they believe to be a degradation in Meta’s culture over the past 11 years, with much of the shift happening in the past five. “Layoffs, budget cuts, years of efficiency and intensity—all of it contributed to a growing sense of dread,” the employee wrote. They described growing apathetic about their work and workplace, until the rollout of the tracking software stunned them.
这位工程师本周的内部帖子记录了他们认为 Meta 在过去 11 年中企业文化的退化，其中大部分转变发生在过去五年。“裁员、削减预算、多年的效率和强度要求——所有这些都导致了一种日益增长的恐惧感，”该员工写道。他们描述了自己对工作和职场变得越来越冷漠，直到追踪软件的推出让他们感到震惊。
“MCI is a microcosm for the AI movement,” the engineer added. “Yes, it’s just a small turn of the temperature knob, but it’s representative of the types of systems that people will be compelled to build.”
“MCI（模型能力计划）是人工智能运动的一个缩影，”这位工程师补充道。“是的，这只是温度旋钮的一个小转动，但它代表了人们将被迫构建的那类系统。”
They addressed skepticism and fear about the petition drive by underscoring the value of collective action: “Your voice matters. Moments like this are why I was drawn to Facebook in the first place.”
他们通过强调集体行动的价值，回应了对请愿活动的怀疑和恐惧：“你的声音很重要。像这样的时刻，正是我当初被 Facebook 吸引的原因。”
Some workers reluctant to sign the petition are quietly staging their own form of protest by delaying installation of the screen recording tool, sources say. It means dealing with a nagging notification. How long Meta will accept the maneuver is unclear to employees. But after layoffs hit next week, the company will have 10 percent fewer people to try and wrangle.
据消息人士称，一些不愿签署请愿书的员工正在悄悄进行自己的抗议，即推迟安装屏幕录制工具。这意味着他们必须应对不断的通知提醒。Meta 会容忍这种行为多久，员工们尚不清楚。但在下周裁员之后，公司将减少 10% 的员工，管理难度也会随之增加。