Meta faces employee backlash over tracking tool

In April, Reuters reported that Meta would track U.S. employees' mouse movements and keystrokes to train its AI agents. Weeks later, Meta laid off 8,000 employees, citing its AI push. Now, the company is facing backlash from remaining employees over the tracking tool, called Model Capability Initiative (MCI), which may also violate European Union privacy rules, Reuters reports.

Last month, the company apparently told U.S. employees that it launched MCI to track how they work — including clicks and dropdown menu navigation — to build AI agents that can perform software tasks, Reuters reported. They were also told this would only impact employees in the U.S. and that privacy safeguards were in place.

Some employees have already complained about MCI, calling Meta an "Employee Data Extraction Factory," Reuters reported. One complaint is that the tool is using so much data that workers' home internet usage has spiked, and in some cases, using a month's quota in days. Another complaint is that MCI is more over-reaching than Meta lets on, extending to code changes, a computer's sleep and wake cycles, and URLs copied to a computer's clipboard.

An internal post about this apparently disappeared, two Meta employees told Reuters. Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold told the outlet that the post was "fundamentally inaccurate."

In a document reviewed by Reuters, Meta stated that MCI would capture the contents of any email or direct message sent to U.S. employees, regardless of the sender's location. According to a legal expert who spoke to Reuters, this may violate the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The question is whether data collection of EU resident data is considered "incidental" and whether the tool can pass a "purpose limitation" test.

Arnold told Reuters that MCI was installed only on U.S. employees' computers and that, "In the interest of transparency, we notified non-U.S. employees ‌that it was deployed on the computers of U.S. colleagues they may email or ⁠chat with in the normal course of business."

"We carefully considered and mitigated potential privacy risks in both the development and deployment of this tool, and we are committed to complying with applicable laws and regulations," Arnold stated to Reuters.

Earlier this month, Mashable reported that Meta (along with Google and TikTok) faces complaints from the EU regarding protections against financial scams.

Layoffs at other major tech companies this year, including Snapchat, Amazon, and Pinterest, have been pinned on AI. In 2025, AI was linked to 50,000 job cuts.