A former Facebook executive alleges the social media platform partook of “illegal and dangerous activities” with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at the expense of America’s national security.
Former Facebook Director of Global Public Policy Sarah Wynn-Williams is slated to testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday about Facebook’s alleged ties to China in a prepared opening statement obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Meta has been willing to compromise its values, sacrifice the security of its users, and undermine American interests to build its China business,” Wynn-Williams’ opening statement reads. “It’s been happening for years, covered up by lies, and continues to this day.”
“I am here at considerable personal risk because you have the power and the authority to hold them accountable,” she wrote to lawmakers.
Meta’s press team told the DCNF that her “testimony is divorced from reality and riddled with false claims.”
“While [Facebook founder] Mark Zuckerberg himself was public about our interest in offering our services in China and details were widely reported beginning over a decade ago, the fact is this: we do not operate our services in China today,” Meta said.
Meta pointed to a 2019 speech in which Zuckerberg said Meta does not operate Facebook or its other services in China.
Meta also disputed a claim from Wynn-Williams that the company “built a physical pipeline connecting the United States and China.” Meta noted that it cancelled a project in 2020 involving a data cable connecting the two countries due to the U.S. government’s concerns.
The DCNF could not independently verify Wynn-Williams’ entire set of claims, specifically her assertion that China was Meta’s biggest second-biggest market in the company’s 2024 filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). However, other outlets have reported that Meta makes billions of dollars from business in China without having a physical presence there.
Wynn-Williams also said she is defying a legal gag order Facebook won against her to “set the record straight” about the influence the CCP allegedly has over Meta, Facebook’s parent company. However, Republican Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism Chairman Josh Hawley of Missouri has denied that any legal order exists to prevent Wynn-Williams’ testimony.
“There is a clear exception for congressional investigations and that’s what we’re doing,” Hawley told the New York Post. “My committee has opened a formal investigation. She will testify pursuant to that investigation. And there’s no agreement, no arbitration clause that could possibly stop that.”
In March, Meta convinced a legal arbitrator to order Wynn-Williams to halt publication of her memoir detailing alleged sexual harassment at Facebook and to cease all disparaging remarks about Meta, the Verge reported. She’s set to tell the Senate under oath about her seven years at Facebook anyway.
Wynn-Williams wrote that Meta betrayed Zuckergerg’s recent “free speech” promises for his platforms by working “‘hand in glove’ with [China] to construct and test custom-built censorship tools that silenced and censored critics of the Chinese Communist Party.”
Wynn-Williams alleged that Facebook censored “the account of a prominent Chinese dissident living on American soil” after the CCP asked it to, but she did not specify who the user was. Facebook provided materials to the DCNF acknowledging that it removed the account of Chinese dissident Guo Wengui — which happened after a CCP request — but Facebook testified to the Senate in 2017 that Wengui’s account violated Facebook’s community guidelines and that it “took action solely based on our policies.”
“The willingness to censor was not the only troubling thing I witnessed,” Wynn-Williams wrote. “I watched as executives decided to provide the Chinese Communist Party with access to Meta user data – including that of Americans.”
She also claimed it’s a “lie” that Meta does not “operate services in China” and she has “the documents” to bolster her case.
“The measure of how important these truths are is directly proportional to the ferocity of Meta’s efforts to censor and intimidate me,” Wynn-Williams wrote.
Editor’s note: This piece has been updated with additional information on the legality of Wynn-Williams’ testimony.
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