Meta Ends Token-Based AI Evaluations

The policy reversal comes nearly a year after Meta said workers would be graded on their 'AI-driven impact,' a practice that in effect evaluated how much they used chatbots. That approach led to tokenmaxxing, where employees prompted AI tools repeatedly to maximize internal usage metrics. The era peaked when an employee created an internal leaderboard tracking AI usage with labels like 'Token Legend,' which was taken down in April; a few months later, Meta moved to ration employees' AI usage.

Meta's shift also follows a July lawsuit by about two dozen employees who argue the company violated US antidiscrimination laws when laying them off in May. Workers on health and family leaves say they couldn't accumulate usage and were unfairly penalized, allegations Meta has denied.

The company now promotes Hatch, an agentic AI tool, but employees' trust has been eroded by a paused project that tracked keystrokes. Some worry about environmental and economic trade-offs of using large amounts of tokens. Reports indicate Meta called off another round of major layoffs due to software bugs linked to AI reliance, and while some employees fear future cuts if Hatch boosts productivity, Zuckerberg has stated further mass layoffs are not expected this year.