Meta pauses employee keystroke-tracking program after data breach

What happened

Meta has paused its controversial 'Model Capability Initiative' employee surveillance tool after an internal security flaw exposed sensitive data company-wide. The program was meant to train AI agents to use software the way humans do.

Context and impact

The incident reveals how far companies are willing to go to collect 'expert' demonstrations for RLHF and computer-use models. More than 1,600 employees signed an internal petition against the program. Per a leaked recording, Zuckerberg defended it by saying staff outperform contractors as training data.

Details

• Leak exposed 45,000 internal database tables
• Exposed data included private chats, transcripts, performance reviews, tax and medical records
• 1,600+ employees signed a petition
• Meta says it has no evidence of misuse
• Program started in April 2026, paused June 23