Zuckerberg's Meta Considered Sharing User Data with China, Whistleblower Alleges

The Washington Post reports:

Meta was willing to go to extreme lengths to censor content and shut down political dissent in a failed attempt to win the approval of the Chinese Communist Party and bring Facebook to millions of internet users in China, according to a new whistleblower complaint from a former global policy director at the company.

The complaint by Sarah Wynn-Williams, who worked on a team handling China policy, alleges that the social media giant so desperately wanted to enter the lucrative China market that it was willing to allow the ruling party to oversee all social media content appearing in the country and quash dissenting opinions. Meta, then called Facebook, developed a censorship system for China in 2015 and planned to install a 'chief editor' who would decide what content to remove and could shut down the entire site during times of 'social unrest,' according to a copy of the 78-page complaint exclusively seen by The Washington Post.

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg also agreed to crack down on the account of a high-profile Chinese dissident living in the United States following pressure from a high-ranking Chinese official the company hoped would help them enter China, according to the complaint, which was filed in April to the Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC]. When asked about its efforts to enter China, Meta executives repeatedly 'stonewalled and provided nonresponsive or misleading information' to investors and American regulators, according to the complaint.

Wynn-Williams bolstered her SEC complaint with internal Meta documents about the company's plans, which were reviewed by The Post. Wynn-Williams, who was fired from her job in 2017, is also scheduled to release a memoir this week documenting her time at the company, titled 'Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism.' According to a memo in the complaint, Meta leaders faced aggressive pressure by Chinese government officials to host Chinese users' data to local data centers, which Wynn-Williams alleges would have made it easier for the Chinese Communist Party to covertly obtain the personal information of its citizens.
Wynn-Williams told the Washington Post that 'for many years Meta has been working hand in glove with the Chinese Communist Party, briefing them on the latest technological developments and lying about it.'
Reached for a comment, Meta spokesman Andy Stone told the Washington Post it was 'no secret' they'd been interested in operating in China. 'This was widely reported beginning a decade ago. We ultimately opted not to go through with the ideas we'd explored, which Mark Zuckerberg announced in 2019.' Although the Post shares new details about what a Facebook privacy policy staffer offer China in negotations in 2014. ('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.')

The Post also describes one iteration of a proposed agreement in 2015. 'To aid the effort, Meta built a censorship system specially designed for China to review, including the ability to automatically detect restricted terms and popular content on Facebook, according to the complaint...

'In 2017, Meta covertly launched a handful of social apps under the name of a China-based company created by one of its employees, according to the complaint.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.