Picture thousands of Meta employees logging into what should be a routine AI presentation, only to witness a colleague commandeer the audio and unleash a profanity-laced tirade against company leadership. That’s exactly what happened during a recent Applied AI division livestream, where a frustrated worker told organizers to contact a senior Meta AI executive and “tell him that he’s a piece of [Expletive]” according to Wired.

The outburst, witnessed by thousands, left presenters visibly shocked—one reportedly put their face in their hands before asking participants to mute themselves. After order was restored, employees filled the chat with comments about the unusually “spicy” start to their morning.

This wasn’t just one disgruntled worker having a public meltdown. It was the dramatic culmination of simmering revolt inside Meta’s massive AI reorganization.

The Soul-Crushing Reality of Meta’s AI Pivot

Six thousand engineers didn’t sign up to become glorified test writers for AI systems.

Meta created its Applied AI division earlier this year, reassigning around 6,500 engineers and product managers from other departments into what many describe as evaluation and testing work. These aren’t new hires excited about AI—they’re seasoned developers who found themselves involuntarily transferred into roles they call “literally the gulag.”

One employee told Wired the experience means “you have zero purpose in life all of a sudden, you barely interact with anyone, you just have these tasks every week.” The work involves creating coding challenges and evaluation tasks for AI models rather than building products customers actually use. Many staff refer to themselves as “draftees” or “conscripts,” since joining Applied AI was portrayed internally as essentially mandatory for staying at Meta. For those dealing with office productivity challenges, this kind of workplace frustration can be particularly draining.

Beyond Applied AI: Company-Wide Surveillance and Unrest

More than 1,600 employees signed a petition against keystroke tracking programs.

The livestream incident reflects broader tensions across Meta’s AI-focused restructuring. The company implemented a program tracking employee clicks and keystrokes to generate training data for its AI systems—prompting over 1,600 workers to sign a petition calling the monitoring intrusive.

Recent layoffs that eliminated roughly 8,000 positions have amplified anxiety around job security, while role reshuffles affected teams from Instagram to data center engineering. Chief product officer Chris Cox acknowledged the strain, telling employees the experience felt like “running a marathon in the middle of a hailstorm and then, like, your teammate gets replaced and then we’re recording you.”

CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted in an internal memo that Meta’s AI restructuring “has been messy,” promising no additional mass layoffs this year while defending Applied AI as a stepping stone for employees to contribute to the company’s AI future.

The hijacked livestream may be an isolated outburst, but it crystallizes a deeper question facing Big Tech: how do you transform your workforce for the AI era without crushing the people who built your success?