Meta Accused of Working with China on Censorship, Endangering US Security
In explosive testimony before a US Senate subcommittee, a former Meta executive has alleged that the tech giant worked “hand in glove” with the Chinese government on censorship and compromised American national security in pursuit of business growth.
Sarah Wynn-Williams, who served as Meta’s global public policy director, told lawmakers during a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism hearing on Wednesday that the company, formerly known as Facebook, prioritised profits over public safety and betrayed American values.
“I saw Meta executives repeatedly undermine US national security and betray American values,” Wynn-Williams said in her opening statement, according to CBS News.
She alleged that Meta granted the Chinese Communist Party access to user data, including information belonging to American users. Despite internal concerns raised by engineers about potential data security risks, top leadership, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, reportedly dismissed those warnings.
Wynn-Williams also claimed that Meta actively helped the Chinese government build censorship tools to silence dissent on its platforms, including Facebook and Instagram.
“Mark Zuckerberg pledged himself a free speech champion. Yet I witnessed Meta working hand in glove with the Chinese Communist Party to construct and test custom-built censorship tools that silenced and censored their critics,” she testified. “One thing the Chinese Communist Party and Mark Zuckerberg share is that they want to silence their critics.”
Wynn-Williams’s testimony follows the publication of her memoir, Careless People, in March, which documents her experiences during her seven-year tenure at Meta. The company filed a legal challenge to block the book’s promotion, calling it “false and defamatory.”
Wednesday’s hearing was led by Republican Senator Josh Hawley, who accused Meta of attempting to suppress the whistleblower’s appearance. He also likened the company’s conduct to that of authoritarian regimes.
“Why is it that Facebook is so desperate to prevent this witness from telling what she knows?” Hawley questioned. “The evidence that we have in black and white is a company and leadership that is willing to do anything—work with America’s chief competitor, work with our chief adversary.”
Senator Hawley has since sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg requesting his testimony before the panel, stating that “The American people deserve to know the truth about your company.”
Meta, however, strongly denied the allegations. Company spokesperson Ryan Daniels dismissed Wynn-Williams’s statements as “divorced from reality and riddled with false claims.”
“While 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,” Daniels said.
The hearing comes just days before Meta’s high-stakes antitrust trial, where the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is seeking to break up the company’s dominant portfolio. The trial could force Meta to divest Instagram and WhatsApp, which have played key roles in its global expansion.
