Meta is changing parts of its workplace tracking software after employee objections, Reuters reports. The company’s system—installed on employees’ work computers and designed to collect activity such as mouse movements, clicks, keystrokes, and other on-screen actions for AI training—previously offered limited or no ability to opt out. Under the updated approach, workers can pause data collection for up to 30 minutes and can request exemptions. Meta also says the software team made changes intended to reduce the system’s impact, including “optimizations” meant to lower battery consumption after complaints that it used so much data it caused home internet usage to spike.
In internal messaging cited by Reuters, a vice president in Meta’s Superintelligence Labs unit says Meta remains confident in the privacy protections it put in place at launch and that the change reflects concerns about personal data handling, battery life, and gaining more control over when capturing happens. The Next Web notes that earlier Meta statements indicated employees could not opt out when the tracking was announced in April.
