A developer has sued Facebook or its parent company for claiming that Meta is capable of so-called “negative testing”. According to the plaintiff, the battery of a user is completely drained from a distance .
Data scientist George Hayward says he worked on Facebook Messenger but has now sued his former employer in Manhattan Federal Court. As the New York Post reports, Hayward accuses Meta of practicing an illegal and potentially dangerous tactic without the knowledge of users.
According to this, technology companies can use such “negative tests” to “secretly” drain a person’s mobile battery to test functions or problems, such as how fast their app runs or how an image can be loaded.
“I said to my manager, ‘This can hurt someone,’ and he said if we hurt a few, we can help the masses,” Hayward said. And with that, the company has crossed a line. “Any self-respecting data scientist knows, ‘Don’t hurt people’.”
According to Hayward, intentionally draining the battery is risky to dangerous because there are situations where “you need to communicate with others, including but not limited to the police or other emergency responders,” according to the lawsuit.
According to the developer, he refused and that had consequences: “It turned out that it doesn’t go down well when you tell your boss: ‘No, that’s illegal’.” According to Hayward, there is also an internal document that describes exactly how to carry out such tests, which should describe exactly how to carry out such negative tests with the help of examples.
Whether that’s true remains to be seen or the court will have to clarify, but some users on Reddit refer to the fact that this could be a developer who is frustrated after his dismissal.
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