Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn Williams told the senator in testimony at Capitol Hill on Wednesday that the social media company “groomed” the Chinese government Censor the platformamong other claims.
“We’ve seen Meta executives repeatedly weaken US national security and betray American values,” Wynn Williams said in her opening remarks obtained by CBS News before the hearing.
Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley chaired the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism and led a bipartisan hearing, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he “has made censorship his business model.”
“The evidence we have in black and white is anything, anything, a company, leadership, working with our chief enemy, whatever it is, whatever, it is, anything, it is a company, leadership, it is our leadership,” Holy said.
Holy wrote to Zuckerberg on Thursday, demanding testimony before the subcommittee, writing, “Americans deserve to know the truth about your company.”
Wynn-Williams began working at Meta, known as Facebook, as director of Global Public Policy in 2011. In almost seven years at the company, Wynn-Williams told the panel he had seen China’s Communist Party provide “custom-built censorship tools.” She said that the Chinese dissidents living in the US were removed from Facebook in 2017 after pressure from Chinese officials. Facebook said it was time to take action against administration critic Guo Wengui by sharing personal information from others.
Wynn-Williams described the use of a “virality counter,” which flagged posts with over 10,000 views for a review by the “Chief Editor,” which Connecticut Democrat Sen. Richard Blumental called “Orwell’s Censorship.” According to testimony from Wynn-Williams, these “viral counters” were used not only in mainland China, but also in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Wynn-Williams also said Chinese officials could “potentially access” the data of American users. When meta-engineers raised concerns about data security, Wynn-Williams testified that Meta’s leadership, including Zuckerberg, was indifferent.
Wynn-Williams testified that Zuckerberg was “invested personally” in Meta’s business relationship with China, committed to learning mandarins, and claimed that he “had a weekly mandarin session with his employees.”
Wynn-Williams claimed that Meta’s artificial intelligence model, known as “Llama,” was used to support Deepseek. Deepseek is a Chinese AI company This sent a shockwave through the American tech industry earlier this year when AI models were shown to be competitive with Openai’s ChatGpt at just a fraction of the cost.
In a statement on the llama last year, Meta spokesman Andy Stone wrote:
As Wynn-Williams continues his investigation into the social media company founded by Zuckerberg, he encouraged senators to continue to investigate the role of meta in the development of artificial intelligence in China.
“Mark Zuckerberg, the biggest trick he’d ever pulled, wrapped the American flag around him, calling himself a patriot, and said he didn’t provide services in China.
In response to her opening statement, Meta spokesman is called Winn Williams’ testimony, “divorced from reality and plagued by false claims.”
“Mark Zuckerberg himself is public about his interest in providing services in China, with details widely reported over a decade ago, but the facts are: We do not operate our services in China today,” Meta said in a statement.
Meta, which changed its name from Facebook in 2021, runs some of the most popular social media platforms in the United States, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and threads with its previous names.
Washington has taken a more positive attitude towards China, increasing the threat to America’s economic interests and national security. Trump administration The increase in tariffs on imports from China will be 125% on Wednesday. The administration has also continued to pursue American buyers to sell Tiktok, a short video platform owned by Chinese company Buitedan. Also at Capitol Hill in 2023, the House of Representatives established the Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the US and the Communist Party of China to investigate China’s challenges to American global power.
In March, Wynn-Williams published a memoir called “The Careless People: Greed, Greeding, Lost Idealism” about her time in the Meta.
