A former employee claims that Facebook purposefully destroys smartphone batteries

It goes without saying that some smartphone apps use more power than others, thus affecting the battery life of your device.

A former Facebook employee now alleges that the social media platform purposefully drains the batteries of cell phones. George Hayward, a data scientist who once worked for Facebook, claims that the social media giant engages in a process known as “negative testing” that discreetly drains a user’s smartphone’s battery.

“I said to the manager, ‘this could harm somebody,’ and she said by harming a few we can help the greater masses,” Hayward said. The 33-year-old ex-employee filed a lawsuit against Facebook in Manhattan’s federal court. In the lawsuit, he revealed that he was fired for refusing to participate in negative testing. He worked on Facebook’s Messenger app, which is used like any other messaging platform.“I refused to do this test,” he said, adding, “It turns out if you tell your boss, ‘No, that’s illegal,’ it doesn’t go over very well,” he said.

The number of users who were negatively affected by Facebook’s negative tests is unknown, according to Hayward, who told the outlet.

He adds that the business has begun doing negative testing after receiving a training manual titled “How to execute meaningful negative tests” that included actual examples of such experiments being conducted. In all my professional experience, I have never seen a more appalling document, he stated. The parent company of Facebook, Meta, has not yet commented on the accusations made by the former worker.