A former Meta employee accused Facebook of using the network app to drain cell phone battery in order to secretly test new features. A report by the New York Post website gave voice to data scientist George Hayward who, after the dismissal, filed a lawsuit against the company accusing it of purposely reducing cell phone autonomy to run secret tests.
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Called “Negative Testing” (or “Negative Testing”, in free translation), the practice is known in the segment for testing applications. The idea is to make the app run demanding more of the hardware in certain resources to check the overall performance of the program, for example.
The scientist Hayward worked on Facebook Messenger, a messaging app integrated into Meta’s main social network. The program is one of the main chat platforms in the United States.
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“I said to the manager, ‘This could hurt someone,’ and he said that hurting a few can help the broad masses,” Hayward told the New York Post. “I have never seen such a horrible document in my career,” he added.
The programmer, who had been working at Facebook since 2019, claims to have refused to collaborate with the tests and that would have been the reason for his resignation. The report does not give details about the document mentioned by Hayward.
secret tests
In the lawsuit filed by the developer against Meta, he mentions that draining a user’s battery can put them at risk. By itself, reducing the battery life of a device does not cause problems, but in circumstances where the cell phone is needed to communicate, such as contacting the authorities, having the device turned on is crucial.
It is not known how many people were affected by Facebook’s alleged “secret tests” and Hayward did not specify how users were targeted.
The former Facebook employee’s lawsuit has been dropped as Hayward is required to go to arbitration, the developer’s lawyer said. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and, so far, Meta has not commented on the matter.
Read the article on Canaltech.
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