News JVTech The battery of your smartphone goes down very quickly? Maybe it’s the fault of this social network
Published on 01/31/2023 at 17:55
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A long-standing rumor about social network Facebook seems to have been confirmed by a lawsuit filed against Meta by one of its former employees. The platform would use its mobile applications to perform tests behind the backs of its users, which would quickly drain the battery. However, for now, nothing has been officially confirmed.
Who has never noticed that, suddenly, the autonomy of his smartphone suddenly plummeted, a priori without reason? It’s a safe bet that this situation has affected everyone at least once. If your terminal is equipped with the Facebook mobile application, you may hold the program responsible for this observation.
This is, in any case, what one can think when discovering the revelations made by George Hayward, a 33-year-old American data scientist. This is a former Meta employee: he was dismissed last November by the company. But George Hayward decided not to stop there and to sue Meta to settle accounts with his former employer.
Facebook: “negative tests” without the knowledge of users
Former Meta employee says he was fired because he refused to take part in a practice called “negative testing”, used, according to him, by the company. This approach consists of test functionalities on the smartphones of people who use the applications concerned, without notifying them . This may concern, for example, the operating speed of an application, the loading of images or the resolution of certain problems. The direct consequence of a “negative test” would be the draining of the battery from the user’s terminal.
Asked by the New York Post, George Hayward explains that he refused to participate in this activity within Meta “I told the director that it could harm someone,” he explains. To which we would have replied “By harming a few, we can help a large number” of users. An unsatisfactory answer for him“I refused to take the test, but it turns out that when you tell your boss he’s doing something illegal, it often doesn’t go down very well.”
Facebook and Messenger would be concerned, but nothing is confirmed
The data specialist has worked on Facebook applications, but also Messenger. He says today that both services are affected by “negative tests”, and believes that this practice is dangerous because it can prevent users from accessing some important features of their smartphone due to lack of battery.
George Hayward’s complaint, filed in Manhattan, has been withdrawn: the former Meta employee is required to go through arbitration.The company, for its part, did not comment on the matter. It is difficult to know if the truth about this will ever be known.
