Politics
JUST IN: Meta Whistleblower Claims Company Shared Americans’ Data, Tech With China
A former high-ranking Facebook employee testified Wednesday that Meta—Facebook’s parent company—knowingly put Americans’ private data at risk by cooperating with the Chinese government.
Sarah Wynn-Williams, who served as Facebook’s director of global public policy for seven years, told senators that Meta “repeatedly undermined U.S. national security” and willingly stored user data in China despite warnings that it could expose Americans’ information to the Chinese Communist Party.
“So I want to just be clear about this,” Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) said. “Facebook is talking about making Chinese user data available to the Chinese government because they’re going to store that data in China. Is that correct?”
“Correct,” Wynn-Williams replied.
Hawley followed up by pointing out that when Americans message or share data with Chinese users, that information could also be swept up by Chinese servers. “And Facebook was willing to take that risk?” Hawley asked.
“Yes. There was a lot of discussion about this, and ultimately, yes,” she said bluntly.
WATCH:
“This is extraordinary. This is exactly contrary to what Facebook has represented for years… If that means that American user data is also compromised, they’re willing to do that, too. All for profits.” Hawley went on to say that “in China, there was virtually nothing they weren’t willing to do.”
Wynn-Williams also accused Meta of working “hand in glove” with the Chinese Communist Party to facilitate censorship on its platforms. She claimed that during her time at the company, she saw executives make decision after decision prioritizing Chinese business interests over U.S. security and democratic values.
The whistleblower’s testimony painted a damning picture of a tech giant all too willing to compromise American users’ data and principles in order to expand its footprint in China—a country where the internet is heavily restricted, and free speech is routinely suppressed.
Wynn-Williams’ testimony adds to growing criticism of Meta’s global practices and comes just months after other whistleblowers alleged that Facebook ignored internal warnings about harmful content for the sake of engagement metrics.
Despite Meta’s repeated claims that it safeguards user privacy and opposes foreign censorship, the former policy director says the reality inside the company told a far different story.
Wynn-Williams said Meta constructed “a physical pipeline connecting the United States and China” and that company leadership “ignored warnings that this would provide backdoor access to the Chinese Communist Party, allowing them to intercept the personal data and private messages of American citizens.” She credited Congress with blocking Chinese access to U.S. user data, saying it was only because lawmakers “stepped in.”
She also told senators that while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg publicly pledged to uphold free speech, she witnessed the company “work closely with the Chinese Communist Party to construct and test custom-built censorship tools that silenced and censored critics of the Chinese Communist Party.”
According to her testimony, Meta complied with Beijing’s request to delete a Facebook account belonging to a prominent Chinese dissident based in the U.S., then “lied to Congress” about the deletion during a hearing.
“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 told lawmakers.
Wynn-Williams has since filed whistleblower complaints with the SEC and Department of Justice, along with a shareholder resolution urging Meta’s board to investigate the company’s operations and relationships in China.
