Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta went to great lengths, including developing a censorship system and potentially sharing user data, in an unsuccessful bid to bring Facebook to China, according to a whistleblower complaint.
The Washington Post reports that a new whistleblower complaint filed by Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former global policy director at Meta, reveals that the social media giant was prepared to implement extreme measures to gain access to the lucrative Chinese market. The complaint, seen exclusively by the Post, alleges that Meta was willing to allow the Chinese Communist Party to oversee all social media content in the country and suppress dissenting opinions.
According to the complaint, Meta developed a censorship system specifically for China in 2015. The system included plans to install a “chief editor” who would be responsible for deciding which content to remove and had the authority to shut down the entire site during periods of “social unrest.” Additionally, the complaint claims that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg agreed to crack down on the account of a prominent Chinese dissident living in the United States after pressure from a high-ranking Chinese official.
Wynn-Williams supported her SEC complaint with internal Meta documents detailing the company’s plans to enter China. When questioned about these efforts, Meta executives allegedly “stonewalled and provided nonresponsive or misleading information” to investors and American regulators.
The complaint also alleges that Meta faced intense pressure from Chinese government officials to store Chinese users’ data in local data centers, which Wynn-Williams believes would have made it easier for the Chinese Communist Party to covertly access its citizens’ personal information.
Despite publicly criticizing China and presenting the country as a threat to a free global internet, Meta’s actions behind the scenes suggest a different story. Under the codename “Project Aldrin,” Zuckerberg assembled a “China team” in 2014 to develop a version of its services that could legally operate in China. The company was eager to demonstrate its willingness to cater to the demands of the Chinese Communist Party, even discussing the possibility of weakening privacy protections for Hong Kong users.
In 2015, Meta and Chinese officials began negotiating a detailed plan for the company to operate in China later that year. One proposed agreement involved a Chinese private-equity firm reviewing and deciding whether content posted by China-based users was “consistent with applicable law.”
Despite losing a key regulatory promoter in China, Meta continued to pursue the market. In 2017, the company covertly launched social apps under the name of a China-based company created by one of its employees. The same year, Meta restricted the account of Guo Wengui, a wealthy Chinese businessman and government critic, after a top Chinese internet regulator suggested that taking action could demonstrate the company’s willingness to “address mutual interests.”
By 2019, Meta had abandoned its China ambitions, coinciding with the Trump administration’s fierce battle against China over trade. Now, the company aims to benefit from Washington’s aggressive stance on China, with Zuckerberg stating that Meta’s business would be helped if the China-based app TikTok is banned in the United States.
A Meta spokesperson told Breitbart News, “This is all pushed by an employee terminated eight years ago for poor performance. We do not operate our services in China today. It is no secret we were once interested in doing so as part of Facebook’s effort to connect the world. 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.”
Read more at the Washington Post here.
Update — Added a statement from Meta’s spokesperson
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
