Not that I am remotely interested in defending Meta, or optimistic that they would proactively address privacy issues. But I don't feel that sympathetic to the outsourcing company here either.

I don't know what happened behind the scenes. I'm just going off what is said and not said in the article. If I were whistleblowing about something like this, I would take pains to describe what measures I took internally before going public. I didn't see any of that here.

EDIT: Look, to be clear, I think it's bad that naive or uninformed people are buying video recorders from Meta and unintentionally having their private lives intruded on by a company that, based on its history, clearly can't be trusted to be a helpful, transparent partner to customers on privacy. I think it's good that the media is giving people a reminder of this. I think it's good that the sources said something, even though the consequences they suffered seem inevitable. But to me, there is nothing essentially new to be learned here, and I don't know what can or should be done to improve the situation. I think for now, the best thing for people to do is not buy Meta hardware if they have any desire for privacy. Maybe there are laws that could help, but what should be in the laws exactly? It's not obvious to me what would work. I suspect that some of the reason people buy these products is for data capture, and that will sometimes lead to sensitive stuff being recorded. What should the rules be around this and who should decide? Personally I don't know.

  A Kenyan workers' organisation alleges Meta's decision was caused by the staff speaking out.

  Meta says it's because Sama did not meet its standards, a criticism Sama rejects ...

OpenAI had them classify CSAM, so Sama fired them as a client back in 2022. https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/

We're 4 years on, 3 years since that report broke. Not a single thing has improved about how tech companies operate.

Name a more iconic duo.

I do not care which country the outsourcing company is in. When criminals go global, protection whistleblowers should go global too.

… although I really extend that to why are you wearing an internet connected camera that is obviously going to be monitored by Meta.

There was an example in the article where a user’s glasses kept recording the user’s wife after he took them off. That’s bad but on the user, not Facebook.

Seems similar to a situation where someone takes nudes of someone without their consent and then sends them off to a lab to be printed. The lab isn’t doing anything illegal or unethical printing them when they ask the user “are these legal” and the user replies “yes.” Unless you want to stop photo printers from ever printing nudes, I think the responsibility is on the user, not the firm.

So that when I say that they really do have a zero tolerance policy for anyone using their internal systems to violate user privacy, it's not because I'm eager to defend them. It's just true (at least, it was when I was there). There are internal systems dedicated to making sure you have access to what you need to do your job, and absolutely nothing else. All content you interact with through internal tools is monitored and logged. If you get caught trying to use whatever access your job gives you for anything other than doing your job, security immediately escorts you out of the building. This is drilled into new hires early and often.

There is no expectation of privacy in public.

> Am I reading this correctly?! This is probably the weirdest statement I've read on the internet in twenty years.

It's total fantasy. I've worked in big tech. Casually uploading and providing company/contractor access to non-redacted intimate photos or pictures of the insides of people's homes vaguely "for the purpose of improving the customer experience" would not pass even a surface-level privacy or data-protection review anywhere I've ever worked. Do Meta even read what they are saying?

Things like audio scanning your living space using those Alexa smart speakers with ultrasonics to get an image of not only everything in your space, but where you are in that space as well.

That technological use case only came out within the last five or so years, maybe closer to eight. Either way I could see that coming before it became a thing just because ultrasound imaging of your unborn child is a thing ultrasound imaging of the sea floor is a thing so why wouldn’t ultrasound imaging of your living space be a thing by a company who wants to know what you buy.

I never ever ever had Alexa I only ever had a Google home because I got it for free with GPM but I almost never used it because I hated the idea of it always listening.

I already regret Wi-Fi because they figured out now how to look through walls with that.