Facebook secretly killed users batteries, worker claims in lawsuit:
The practice, known as "negative testing," allows tech companies to "surreptitiously" run down someone's mobile juice in the name of testing features [...]
"I said to the manager, 'This can harm somebody,' and she said by harming a few we can help the greater masses," said Hayward, 33, who claims in a Manhattan Federal Court lawsuit that he was fired in November for refusing to participate in negative testing. [...]
"Any data scientist worth his or her salt will know, 'Don't hurt people,'" he told The Post.
Killing someone's cellphone battery puts people at risk, especially "in circumstances where they need to communicate with others, including but not limited to police or other rescue workers," according to the litigation filed against Facebook.
"I refused to do this test," he said, adding, "It turns out if you tell your boss, 'No, that's illegal,' it doesn't go over very well." [...]
He said he doesn't know how many people have been impacted by Facebook's negative testing but believes the company has engaged in the practice because he was given an internal training document titled, "How to run thoughtful negative tests," which included examples of such experiments being carried out.
"I have never seen a more horrible document in my career," he said.
We don't know much else, because Hayward's employment contract included a non-negotiable binding arbitration waiver, which means that he surrendered his right to seek legal redress from his former employer. Instead, his claim will be heard by an arbitrator -- that is, a fake corporate judge who is paid by Facebook to decide if Facebook was wrong. Even if he finds in Hayward's favor -- something that arbitrators do far less frequently than real judges do -- the judgment, and all the information that led up to it, will be confidential, meaning we won't get to find out more.
WTF? Can't they just lab test this?
that loops back nicely to one of our disagreements ;-)
well, yeah, but we were talking about UI changes then, not discharging peoples' phones.
Details matter.
if we were talking about reasonable people with sensible priorities and incentives, yes. i could bet though that this was sold internally as part of ux testing.
lots of assumptions here
wtf
Can any attorneys explain to us layfolk how this is not a crime?
https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/penal-code/pen-sect-502/
because they typically bury shit like this in the fine print of page 1027 of the click wrap license.
"If you didn't want to give us permission to set your baby on fire you shouldn't have agreed to it!"
IANAL, but that law seems to have a "not illegal if it's profitable" exception:
"(h)(1) Subdivision (c) does not apply to punish any acts which are committed by a person within the scope of lawful employment. For purposes of this section, a person acts within the scope of employment when the person performs acts which are reasonably necessary to the performance of their work assignment."
So if you do it as a private individual, it's illegal; but if a corporation pays someone to do it, it's legal. Of course an argument could be made about what is "reasonably necessary"...but I imagine that would be a hard case to win, ESPECIALLY if you can't point to specific and reasonably significant harm caused by these actions.
Perhaps that only absolves the employees and not the corporation...but the law does say that it only applies to "people"...not sure if corporations are considered people in this context. Probably not, 'cause if they were they'd be lobbying to change that lol
wow, this should be so illegal.
I guess it's not confirmation bias if they're actually shittier than you could've possibly imagined.
Add it to the long lists of reasons why #capitalism is an actively #malicious #system and why anyone who even wants to remotely work near any #programmer or #technology #development needs to finish at least one course on #morals and #ethics.
#CapitalismWillKillUsAll
How do people continue to accept this kind of behavior?
Also previously.
this is crazy, they could have surely tested using their own phones
wait... What!?
About six months ago we found we'd exceeded our mobile data limit and couldn't use the net outside of the house. This never happens; we have an enormous plan.
We tracked it down to my wife's Facebook app. She reinstalled and the problem went away.
Now it seems we might have an explanation…
What kind of things could Facebook have been testing for that would require this kind of test?
That’s not cool. Also, I learned something new from this. I always thought “negative testing” was testing against user mistakes (nonsensical or missing inputs, attempting to advance without completing necessary steps, things like that). It seems to mean something different here
I don't think "do no evil" exists in Meta's lexicon.
It was a lie when Google said it too
Does this explain why for exactly one Android release cycle my phone was discharging much faster than before or since? No FB, but if they are doing so are others.
Normally I try to go with "don't assume malice when incompetence explains it" but these days there's so much malice to go around, so who knows!
In the W era, we called that "malcompetence". Sort of incompetence, but they declined to fix it for malicious reasons. This also explains why it's easy to buy things but hard to return them. Nobody is user-testing that pathway.
This is a different definition of negative testing. I thought it meant ensuring that the system responded reasonably to bad input.
I wonder how this overlaps with companies like Uber that charge more when users batteries are low.
Yet another reason to never install the app when there is a functioning website you can use instead.
Better yet, don't use Facebook at all, and actively block all their servers and services. PiHole provides lists.
New era, new killfiles, sure. Is Mastodon 'invert the killfile'?
k3n.
Jesus Christ
wow!