Facebook Messenger users have suspected for years that the app was draining smartphone batteries, and now a lawsuit filed by a former employee of the company confirms that suspicion.
In an interview with The New York Times, former Facebook data scientist George Hayward said he was commissioned by the company to do it, and when he refused to do it, he was fired from the company.
In his lawsuit, filed in federal court in Manhattan, Hayward said he was fired from the company when he refused to comply with a practice known as “negative testing” that tech companies do to identify limitations on users’ devices.
In the case of Facebook Messenger, the company ran a test to see how much data users’ phones can handle, and the process drains phone batteries.
Hayward said in an interview with The New York Times, “I told the director, this might hurt somebody. Her answer was: by hurting a few, we can help many.” “Any data scientist who does their homework believes in harming people,” he added.
But a spokesman for Facebook’s parent company, Meta, denied the allegations, saying only, “Mr. Hayward’s allegations are groundless.”
Hayward said he believed the company had already tested negative based on a document provided to him by his supervisor titled “How to Conduct Informed Negative Tests,” which included what appeared to be real examples.
“I have never seen a more egregious document in my career,” Hayward said.
Hayward’s attorney, Daniel Kaiser, told Futurism that the complaint is now going to META’s internal arbitration.
However, Hayward remains adamant about his claims in the lawsuit, including that the company could harm people who rely on Messenger “in circumstances where they need to communicate with others, including but not limited to the police or other rescuers.
Kaiser told the New York Post that he considers Facebook’s practice, which Hayward claims is “furious” and “clearly illegal,” and depending on how far the case goes in Meta’s internal arbitration process, it could end up being dropped or at least get out of it. details to be revealed.
