cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/30804814

A former senior Facebook executive has told the BBC how the social media giant worked “hand in glove” with the Chinese government on potential ways of allowing Beijing to censor and control content in China.

Sarah Wynn-Williams - a former global public policy director - says in return for gaining access to the Chinese market of hundreds of millions of users, Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, considered agreeing to hiding posts that were going viral, until they could be checked by the Chinese authorities.

Ms Williams - who makes the claims in a new book - has also filed a whistleblower complaint with the US markets regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), alleging Meta misled investors. The BBC has reviewed the complaint.

Facebook’s parent company Meta, says Ms Wynn-Williams had her employment terminated in 2017 “for poor performance”.

It is “no secret we were once interested” in operating services in China, it adds. “We ultimately opted not to go through with the ideas we’d explored.”

[…]

Ms Wynn-Williams says her allegations about the company’s close relationship with China provide an insight into Facebook’s decision-making at the time.

[…]

Ms Wynn-Williams claims that in the mid-2010s, as part of its negotiations with the Chinese government, Facebook considered allowing it future access to Chinese citizens’ user data.

“He was working hand in glove with the Chinese Communist Party, building a censorship tool… basically working to develop sort of the antithesis of many of the principles that underpin Facebook,” she told the BBC.

Ms Wynn-Williams says governments frequently asked for explanations of how aspects of Facebook’s software worked, but were told it was proprietary information.

“But when it came to the Chinese, the curtain was pulled back,” she says.

“Engineers were brought out. They were walked through every aspect, and Facebook was making sure these Chinese officials were upskilled enough that they could not only learn about these products, but then test Facebook on the censorship version of these products that they were building.”

[…]

In her SEC complaint, Ms Wynn-Williams also alleges Mr Zuckerberg and other Meta executives had made “misleading statements… in response to Congressional inquiries” about China.

One answer given by Mr Zuckerberg to Congress in 2018 said Facebook was “not in a position to know exactly how the [Chinese] government would seek to apply its laws and regulations on content”

[…]