Overview
- Employees at several U.S. offices distributed protest flyers Tuesday, urging colleagues to sign a petition against new software that records mouse movements on work devices.
- Meta says the tool captures real examples of computer use to train AI agents, including cursor paths, clicks, and menu navigation, and it adds that safeguards protect sensitive content and limit the data to this purpose.
- Workers say the tracking feels like surveillance and fear the data will help automate tasks that could replace roles, with tensions rising as the company is expected to cut about 10% of jobs next week.
- The flyers and petition cite the National Labor Relations Act to remind staff of their right to organize, and a union drive has begun in the U.K. with United Tech and Allied Workers, which confirmed the campaign.
- Training AI to mimic on‑screen work often relies on fine‑grained interaction logs such as cursor traces, a practice that can boost model accuracy but raises privacy and workplace power concerns when gathered from employees.