Roughly 45,000 internal tables holding data Meta collected from employees—including keystrokes and mouse movements—for AI training were inadvertently left accessible to other staff, a problem that surfaced in June 2026. The discovery came after workers had already voiced privacy concerns about the program.
April 2026 · Meta
Meta Tracked Its Own Employees' Keystrokes to Train AI — Then Backed Off
Under the Model Capability Initiative (MCI), Meta captured U.S. staff mouse movements, keystrokes and screenshots as training data for AI agents. After fierce internal and external backlash, it partially scaled the program back in June.
~20K
Views on internal forum posts objecting to the program
1,600+
Signatures on the employee petition against the data capture
~10%
Global layoffs underway at the same time — deepening distrust
What was being captured
Tracking software on work computers of U.S. full-time and contingent staff
Mouse movements
Click locations
Keystrokes
Screen content
Occasional screenshots
Across hundreds of apps & sites , including:
Gmail
Google Chat
VS Code
LinkedIn
GitHub
Slack
Salesforce
Wikipedia
Not covered: phones. Initial scope: United States only.
How it unfolded
April 2026
MCI launches; tracking software installed on U.S. staff machines
→
Backlash
Forum protests, 1,600+ petition signatures, UK unionization push, passive resistance
→
Early June
Internal memo: Meta partially scales the plan back
Meta's framing
Staff can help improve AI agents through everyday work — teaching agents real human patterns like menu choices and keyboard shortcuts. Data is said to be used only for model training, not performance reviews.
The objections
"Invasion of privacy" and a "worldview that exploits humans as training data." Applied to employees on an effectively mandatory basis — amid layoffs, it felt like handing over data to replace one's own job.
The unresolved question — prioritize privacy, or AI capability? — is likely to shape future debates over workplace data use.
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