Facebook’s ‘rat-catching team’ spies on employees: report

The Facebook logo and emoticons are seen on a coffee mug at the reception of its new office in Mumbai, India May 27, 2016. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade/Files

Silicon Valley's tech giants are famously secretive – after all their proprietary products and services are worth billions – but a new report alleges that Facebook goes to Orwellian lengths to keep its workers from talking out of turn, even about their working conditions. 

One Facebook employee was told he was led to expect a promotion, but instead was taken into a room where members of the Menlo Park social media giant's “rat-catching team” were waiting to interrogate him over an “innocuous” leak to the media, according to the report.