Facebook considered granting Beijing access to users’ data in order to gain a foothold in the Chinese market, a whistleblower has claimed.
Sarah Wynn-Williams, former director of Facebook’s global public policy, said the social media company was willing to compromise privacy and freedom of speech to appease Beijing as it attempted to set up in the country between 2014 and 2017.
She also claims that the company offered advertisers the opportunity to target vulnerable teenagers on Facebook and Instagram.
The claims are made by Wynn-Williams in a new book, Careless People, in which she also details allegations of sexual harassment against Joel Kaplan, the chief global affairs officer at Meta.
Wynn-Williams worked at Facebook for seven years from 2011 and the company says she was sacked for “poor performance and toxic behaviour”.
Advertisement
An internal investigation into the allegations against Kaplan, who was vice-president of global public policy at the time, cleared him in 2017.
Wynn-Williams, a former New Zealand diplomat, says she was sacked for making the claims against Kaplan. She has also filed a whistleblower complaint against Meta with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
In the book, which is published this week, Wynn-Williams describes Facebook under Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership as an “autocracy of one”. He once sent a four-letter email to Wynn-Williams, saying: “I am over-ruling you.”
MARK SCHIEFELBEIN/AP
She paints a picture of the chief executive...
CHICAGO (WLS) -- Walgreens has agreed to pay up to $350 million for illegally filling unlawful opioid prescriptions and submitting false claims, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern Distric...