The former Facebook executive accused China of working to help US businesses “compete.”
A former Facebook executive told Congress on April 9 that he was seeing his former colleague “repetitively weaken US national security and betray American values” in his dealings with China.
“They kept these things secret and won a favor in Beijing, building a $18 billion business in China,” Sarah Wynn Williams testified before a panel in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Meta denied the charges.
Wynn-Williams was now Director of Global Public Policy at Meta from 2011 to 2017. Meanwhile, she said that Meta executives “lied about what they were doing to the Communist Party of China and their employees, shareholders, Congress and the American people.”
Wynn-Williams’ allegations of meta, detailed in her memoir, “The Careless People,” includes claims that the company will work “hold hand” with the CCP and custom-built and equip censorship tools for administration critics.
“When Beijing demanded that Facebook remove the accounts of prominent Chinese dissidents living in American soil, they did that and then lied to Congress when asked about the incident at a Senate hearing,” she said.
Panel chairman Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said the move would remove the page following documented pressure from the CCP.
Wynn-Williams also argued that Meta provides CCP with access to user data, including American user data, and briefings on artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies “competitive American companies to support China.”
Wynn-Williams said between these briefings and media coverage, and between media reports that China is developing AI tools for military use based on Meta’s published Llama model, “there is a straight line that can be drawn.”
A Meta spokesperson told the Epoch Times via email that Wynn Williams’ Congressional testimony was “divorced from reality and suffered from false claims.”
“Mark Zuckerberg himself is public about his interest in providing services in China, and details were widely reported over a decade ago, but the truth is this: we don’t operate our services in China today,” the spokesman said.
Holy tended to believe in Wynn Williams. He noted that Meta was “deeply trying to prevent” him from holding a hearing.
“They absolutely didn’t stop anything to prevent today’s testimony. They absolutely went to war to prevent it,” he said. “They ‘burned the earth’ to prevent her from telling her what she knows. ”
Issuing the challenge to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Holy came to the committee and dared an executive to answer Wynn Williams’ claims.
“Stop trying to shut her up,” he said. “Stop trying to gag her. Stop trying to hide your lawyer and millions of dollars at the legal fees you’re trying to charge her.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a ranking Democrat on the panel, agreed, thinking that Zuckerberg should “come here and tell the truth.”
