If you feel that the Facebook and Facebook Messenger apps —a sentiment that has been shared by many users for years—, you might be right. At least, that’s what former Meta employee George Hayward, a data scientist who told The New York Post about the reason for this problem, suggests.
According to him, the company does this on purpose to run the so-called “negative tests”, so that the apps run, in addition to the normal interface, another layer of evaluations of other features in the app, such as the speed of the program or how an image can load. Hayward says that one of the reasons for his resignation was to refuse to maintain these tests, fearing that it could actually harm some users — under the excuse of continuing to advance in the company’s development.
Hayward was fired by Meta in November and originally filed a lawsuit against the company in Federal Court in Manhattan. The 33-year-old worked for the Facebook Messenger app.
In the lawsuit, his lawyer pointed out that draining the batteries of users’ smartphones puts people at risk, especially in emergency situations. Commenting on the practice of negative tests, the lawyer classified the process as illegal.
Originally signed in 2019, Hayward received a six-figure annual paycheck from big tech. But he recalled how he preferred to give up the position after realizing the problems of negative tests, which are institutionalized there. It even resembles a document that included examples of how to perform these assessments. “I’ve never seen a more horrible document in my career,” he says.
