Meta has worked “hand in glove” with the Chinese Communist Party and taken steps to “undermine American interests to build its China business,” a Facebook whistleblower said in a Wednesday Senate subcommittee hearing.
Sarah Wynn-Williams, who worked for Facebook from 2011 to 2017 and served as the company’s director of global public policy, told the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism that Meta, which owns Facebook, has accommodated the CCP in an attempt to break into the Chinese market and misrepresented its operations before Congress.
She was called to testify before the panel, chaired by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., as part of an effort to investigate, publicize and regulate the potentially harmful inner workings of tech giants like Meta. Congress for years has sought ways to regulate Big Tech, although free speech concerns and powerful lobbying efforts from highly influential companies have served as past roadblocks.
In her memoir “Careless People,” published in March, Wynn-Williams alleged misconduct and sexual harassment at the company, and many of her statements to the Senate subcommittee were also detailed in the book.
She was the lone witness at the hearing. Meta has disputed her claims and the company also took legal steps against Wynn-Williams earlier this year, with an arbitrator deciding that Wynn-Williams should stop promoting the memoir.
“This is a hearing that Facebook tried desperately to prevent,” Hawley said at the hearing. “Facebook is one of the most powerful companies in the world. It is one of the most powerful companies in the history of the world, and they have stopped at absolutely nothing to prevent today’s testimony.”
Data privacy and AI
Wynn-Williams testified that Meta has previously considered actions, such as building data centers in China, that would have compromised Americans’ data as well. The Chinese government would have access to data centers built in China, for example, and Americans’ data could be compromised if they interacted with Chinese Facebook users as a result, she said.
Wynn-Williams also said Meta employees briefed the Chinese government on artificial intelligence technology.
“There’s a straight line you can draw from these briefings to the recent revelations that China is developing AI models for military use,” she said, seemingly referencing a Reuters report from last fall that Chinese researchers have developed an AI model for military use, building off of Meta’s open-source Llama model.
A Meta spokesperson at the time emphasized China’s extensive investments in expanding AI research, as well as the wide range of open-source AI models from both American and Chinese companies on the market.
All of this, Wynn-Williams said, was done “to win favor with Beijing and build an $18 billion business in China.”
“Sarah Wynn-Williams’ testimony is divorced from reality and riddled with false claims,” Meta spokesperson Ryan Daniels said in a statement. “While [Meta CEO] 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.”
The hearing also comes as Big Tech companies have changed their relationships with the GOP. Since President Donald Trump was elected last year, tech leaders like Zuckerberg have taken steps to endear themselves to the new administration.
Both Zuckerberg and Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, for example. And Meta has also announced the end of its third-party fact-checking program, which included a focus on political disinformation.
But even as Big Tech tries to endear itself to the new administration, Republicans and Democrats alike are indicating they plan to continue to take steps to hold tech giants accountable for their use of and potential risk to Americans’ data, alleged harms to children and alleged censorship efforts.
Republicans are drilling down on concerns of censorship in the wake of what they viewed as a cozy relationship between tech industry leaders and the Biden administration.
“Mark Zuckerberg, he said he’s turned over a new leaf,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said. “My response to that was, leaves change color with the seasons of the year. And I am curious as to whether this is a season for him.”
Dissident controversy
One point of concern for some lawmakers was the shutdown of a Facebook profile for Chinese dissident Guo Wengui. Documents shown at the hearing include an internal Meta conversation, shown by Hawley, regarding a CCP push to get Guo’s page taken down. Hawley cited the matter as an example of Facebook implementing censorship on behalf of China.
“One thing the Chinese Communist Party and Mark Zuckerberg share is that they want to silence their critics,” Wynn-Williams said.
Meta, for its part, has maintained that Guo’s page was taken down due to the publication of others’ personal information without consent.
Guo was convicted of fraud and related charges by a U.S. jury in 2024.
Multiple times throughout the hearing, senators asked Wynn-Williams about the accuracy of previous congressional testimony from Zuckerberg. She maintained that Zuckerberg was misleading lawmakers and misrepresenting the company’s relationship with China.
“This is a project unlike any other project I worked on during my time at Meta in that it was so centrally led by Mark Zuckerberg and he was so personally invested in this project,” Wynn-Williams said of Zuckerberg’s involvement and knowledge regarding talks with the Chinese government. “He learned Mandarin. He traveled to China more than any other country. He had weekly Mandarin sessions with employees. It’s hard to overstate how different this project was.”
Hawley told reporters after the hearing that he plans to probe further into the extent of potential misrepresentations in front of Congress, among other issues, and that he plans to review more documents provided by Wynn-Williams in the future. A referral to the Justice Department, he said, could be on the table.
He also said he expects revelations from Wednesday’s testimony will “strengthen the spines of my colleagues” with regards to legislation to regulate tech giants like Meta.
“It’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Hawley said. “We’ve got to learn what more is out there.”
This report was corrected to accurately reflect the subcommittee title.
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