Facebook has not had a good run in recent years. Scandals concerning, among others user privacy has made many people lose confidence in the platform. Now, new accusations have come to light that could damage Facebook’s image even more.
The Facebook app is supposed to use excessive battery in the background
George Hayward, a former employee of the Meta conglomerate (Facebook’s parent company), claims he was fired in November 2022 for failing to comply with a controversial official order – Hayward, who dealt with data analysis at Meta, claims that the Facebook application excessively discharges the battery of users’ smartphones.
According to the analyst, the social network uses the practice of the so-called negative testing, which consists in testing various application functions in the background, e.g. loading images or the behavior of the application in the event of an error. This happens imperceptibly to the average user and most often without his knowledge.
The practice is aimed at improving the application or preventing failures before they even occur, but at the same time the program additionally loads the smartphone’s processor and consequently consumes the energy stored in the battery. Hayward claims that Meta uses negative testing methods in the Facebook app, and he was fired for refusing to participate in them.
A former employee claims to have been given a document on how to perform such a test, with examples. He allegedly tried to explain to his supervisor that testing the app in the background puts users at risk. Due to excessive energy consumption, it may run out in a critical situation, e.g. in the event of an emergency call. In response, he was told that it was possible to harm a small group of people to help the general user, according to the newspaper.
George Hayward initially filed a lawsuit against Meta in court demanding damages from his ex-worker, but later he was to withdraw it. According to the man’s lawyer, Hayward stands by all the charges, but the case is currently under arbitration.
For now, it is not known how the Meta conglomerate sees the whole situation, because the owner of Facebook has not yet commented on the matter.
Source: Gazeta
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