Exclusive-Meta employees protest against mouse tracking tech at US offices


FILE PHOTO: Cars drive past a sign of Meta at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California, U.S. October 28, 2021. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

NEW ⁠YORK, May 12 (Reuters) - Meta employees distributed flyers ⁠at multiple U.S. offices on Tuesday to ‌protest against the company's recent installation of mouse-tracking software on their computers, according to photos of the pamphlets ​seen by Reuters.

The flyers, which ⁠appeared in meeting rooms, ⁠on vending machines and atop toilet paper dispensers ⁠at ‌the offices, encouraged staffers to sign an online petition against the move.

"Don't ⁠want to work at the Employee Data ​Extraction Factory?" ‌they asked, according to the photos seen ⁠by Reuters.

Meta ​spokesperson Andy Stone, asked for comment on the matter, pointed Reuters to an earlier comment the ⁠company had issued on the mouse-tracking ​technology.

"If we're building agents to help people complete everyday tasks using computers, our models need real ⁠examples of how people actually use them — things like mouse movements, clicking buttons, and navigating dropdown menus," it said.

The pamphlets and the petition, ​citing the U.S. National ⁠Labor Relations Act, said: "Workers are legally protected when ​they choose to organize for ‌the improvement of working conditions."

(Reporting ​by Katie Paul in New York; Editing by Mark Porter and Edmund Klamann)

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