What's happening? Former Facebook employee, Brennan Lawson, sued the social media giant's parent company, Meta Platforms, in California on July 6, for allegedly unfairly terminating his employment, Bloomberg reported. As per the court filing, he says he was fired for raising concerns about an invasive tool that he claims allows Facebook to retrieve and access deleted messages. Why was Lawson removed? According to Lawson's suit, a company policy change introduced in 2018 gave Facebook's Global Escalation team unrestricted access to users' deleted messenger data. Lawson, who used to work as a content screener at Facebook, has questioned its legal basis since then. He claimed that he was on "shaky ground" after he began speaking out against the new protocol at meetings and feared losing his job because of it. In 2019, Lawson was fired for "improper usage of a Facebook administrative tool," referring to an instance when he used his credentials to help restore his grandmother's Facebook account which had been hacked. However, he refuted these reasons, saying that it was merely a pretext, and that he was actually fired for speaking out against the protocol. He also claimed that the poor performance review he was given was "invalid" and part of the ploy to remove him. Lawson said that he remained unemployed for 18 months, afterwards. Now with Tuesday's suit, he is seeking $3 million in compensation and punitive damages. Why does it matter? Big tech companies, especially Meta, are always saying that our personal data and messages are safe…
