Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg have been in their “free speech” arc since Donald Trump took office again, but a new account offered by a whistleblower throws cold water on the idea that the company won’t comply with censorship regimes. According to a report from the Washington Post, a whistleblower complaint alleges that Facebook built a content censorship system that complied with the wishes of the Chinese Communist Party in a failed attempt to operate within China.
The 78-page complaint was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission by Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former global policy director who worked on a team handling China policy and left the company in 2017. According to Wynn-Williams’ account, which was obtained by WaPo, Facebook was started trying to crack the Chinese market back in 2014, and was willing to make major concessions to the country’s ruling party in order to gain access to the potentially massive userbase.
Throughout its courtship with China, Facebook and Zuckerberg reportedly agreed to play ball in a number of ways that undermined its standard operating procedure. That included, per Wynn-Williams, agreeing to host Chinese user data on servers in China, including users in Hong Kong, who had previously received stronger protections. According to the whistleblower, that concession would have made it easier for the Chinese government to access the personal information of its citizens.
Wynn-Williams claims that talks of Facebook operating in China...
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