Former Employee Calls Social Media by Meta Can Drain User's Cellphone Battery, Here's The Reason!

Facebook can secretly drain the user's smartphone battery (photo: Roman Martyniuk / Unplash)

JAKARTA - A former Meta employee stated that Facebook can secretly drain a user's smartphone battery as a result of testing a new feature. I don't know how many users are affected by this.

The outrageous claim comes from former Meta employee George Hayward. He accused Facebook and Messenger, Meta's social media, of having the ability to intentionally drain their smartphone battery.

This process, known as Negative Testing, is where tech companies surreptitiously drain a user's phone battery to test features within an app.

Hayward was fired by Meta in November last year after he refused to test negative due to concerns about user safety, and initially filed a lawsuit against the company in Manhattan Federal Court, United States (US).

The 33-year-old works on the Facebook and Messenger apps that send texts, phone calls and video calls between users.

In the lawsuit, Hayward's lawyer Dan Kaiser points out that draining a user's smartphone battery puts people at risk especially in circumstances where they need to communicate with other people, such as police or other rescue workers.

Nor did he know how many people had been affected by the process. However, the suit had to be withdrawn because Meta's terms of employment forced Hayward to argue his case in arbitration. Kaiser said most people don't know Facebook and other social media companies can purposefully drain batteries.

Commenting on the practice of negative testing, Kaiser added, "This is definitely illegal. It really pissed off my phone, its battery can be manipulated by anyone," he said.

Initially Hayward was hired in 2019, and receives a six-figure annual salary from Meta. But when it came to the company's request to test negative, Hayward turned them down.

"I refused to do this test. Turns out if you tell your boss, It's illegal, it doesn't go well," explains Hayward.

At one point during his work at Meta, the company handed Hayward an internal training document entitled "How to run a discreet negative test".

The document includes an example of how to run the test. After reading the documents, according to Hayward, Facebook has used negative testing before.

"I have never seen a more horrific document in my career," said Hayward.

Meta has 2.96 billion users across its apps, including Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger, at last count, as quoted from the Evening Standard, Tuesday, January 31. All apps essentially put a strain on the phone's battery while the user is using them, with some continuing to run in the background when not in use.

However, the biggest culprits are those using other features on the user's device, such as the camera or location. This includes social apps like Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat and LinkedIn.

Users can check which apps are draining the phone's battery by going to settings and selecting battery or battery usage on iPhone and Android.

Some companies have even created light versions of their apps which don't put too much strain on the phone. This is specifically aimed at less powerful devices with smaller batteries. Notably, Facebook discontinued the Messenger Lite app in 2020 citing low user adoption.