The flyers, which appeared in meeting rooms on Tuesday, on vending machines and atop toilet paper dispensers at the Facebook owner’s offices, ​encouraged staffers to sign an online petition against the move.

“Don’t want to work at the Employee Data ​Extraction Factory?” they asked, according to the photos seen by Reuters.

The pamphlet distribution comes ⁠about a week before Meta is set to lay off 10% of its workforce.

It is the most visible sign ​to date of a nascent labour movement brewing inside the social media giant, as at least some staffers begin ​to channel their rage over the company’s plans to reshape its workforce around AI into labour-organising efforts.

For months, Meta employees have seethed on internal platforms and online forums over the company’s plans for deep layoffs this year — which it confirmed to staffers ​more than a month after Reuters first reported them — and the introduction of mouse-tracking software that many employees see ​as tantamount to helping design their own bot replacements.

Meta defends software

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone asked for comment on the matter, ‌pointed ⁠Reuters to an earlier statement the company had issued on the mouse-tracking technology.

“If we’re building agents to help people complete everyday tasks using computers, our models need real examples of how people actually use them — things like mouse movements, clicking buttons, and navigating dropdown menus,” it said.

The pamphlets and the petition both cite the US National ​Labour Relations Act, saying “workers are ​legally protected when they ⁠choose to organise for the improvement of working conditions.”

In the UK, a group of Meta employees has started organising a drive for unionisation with United Tech and Allied ​Workers (UTAW), a branch of the Communication Workers Union.

The employees set up a website ​to recruit members ⁠using the URL “Leanin.uk,” a reference to former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg’s best-selling book encouraging women to seek equal footing in the workplace.

A UTAW representative confirmed the UK campaign to Reuters.

“Meta’s workers are paying the price for management’s ⁠reckless and ​expensive bets. While executives chase speculative AI strategies, staff are facing ​devastating job cuts, draconian surveillance, and the cruel reality of being forced to train the inefficient systems being positioned to replace them,“ said ​Eleanor Payne, an organiser with UTAW.