Whistleblower testimony at an explosive Senate hearing uncovered Meta’s allegedly cozy relationship with the Chinese Communist Party, which reportedly aided China’s censorship regime and included AI briefings for CCP officials.
Whistleblower testimony at an explosive Senate hearing uncovered Meta’s allegedly cozy relationship with the Chinese Communist Party, which reportedly aided China’s censorship regime and included AI briefings for CCP officials. Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former global public policy director-turned-whistleblower, testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism on Wednesday, where she told lawmakers: “Throughout those seven years, I saw Meta executives repeatedly undermine U.S. national security and betray American values. They did these things in secret to win favor with Beijing and build an $18 billion business in China.”
The former Meta executive pointed specifically to Facebook’s implementation of censorship tools designed for the CCP to use on its own citizens and the company’s efforts to allow China to learn from its AI model during an international AI race.
“Mark Zuckerberg pledged himself a free speech champion, yet I witnessed Meta work hand and glove with the Chinese Communist Party to construct and test custom-built censorship tools that silenced and censored their critics,” Wynn-Williams added.
She also alleged that the development of censorship tools to be used in China was done in partnership with the CCP: “Those Chinese Communist Party officials tested the censorship tools and would give feedback and say, ‘This needs to change,’ or ‘We need this,’ or ‘We need confidence that you can capture images and filter images we don’t want seen.’”
Wynn-Wiliams also noted a “virality counter” that Facebook allegedly created, which would send viral posts in China—and perhaps eventually Hong Kong and Taiwan—to be reviewed by a “chief editor.” Wynn-Williams described the chief editor as having “extensive power,” adding that this individual “would be able to turn off the entire service in specific regions—for example, Xinjiang—or would also be able to turn off or manage the service on specific anniversaries like the anniversary of Tiananmen Square.”
Perhaps even more concerning is Facebook’s apparent cavalier attitude toward giving up Americans’ data. Wynn-Williams explained that to serve the large Chinese market without the technologies being slow to load, there was a discussion about creating a “pop server” in China. However, this pop server could not fully separate American’ data from Chinese data.
Facebook similarly leveraged data from Hong Kong to continue accessing the Chinese market. Subcommittee chairman Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) shared internal communications at the company, which revealed that the China team “flagged a potential complication arising from the likely course of our negotiations with the Chinese government.” The message continued, “In exchange for the ability to establish operations in China, FB will agree to grant the Chinese government access to Chinese users’ data— including Hongkongese users’ data.”
Wynn-Williams also alleged that Facebook “briefed” members of the CCP. “These briefings focused on critical emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence. The explicit goal being to help China outcompete American companies,” she said. “There’s a straight line you can draw between from these briefings to the recent revelations that China is developing AI models for military use, relying on Meta’s Llama model.”
Hawley aptly reminded the committee and Americans of the full picture of what Meta was doing. “All of this, let’s be clear, for a murderous regime in China, the most barbaric, most evil regime on the face of the planet, and our free speech champion, Mark Zuckerberg, is here with his team of engineers actively working to make Facebook censor on [China’s] behalf.”
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment and provide an equal platform for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using MRC Free Speech America’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
