BBCA former Facebook ex -executive has told the BBC how the social media giant worked “hand on the handle” with the Chinese government for possible ways to allow Beijing to censor and control content in China.
Sarah Wynn -Williams – a former director of global public policy – says in exchange for access to the Chinese market of hundreds of millions of users, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, considered to be hiding viral posts until they could be controlled by Chinese authorities.
Mrs. Williams – who claims in a new book – has also filed a complaint about whistles with the US market regulator, the insurance and exchange commission (SEC), claiming deceived investors Meta. The BBC has reviewed the complaint.
Facebook Meta’s parent company says Mrs. Wynn-Williams had completed her employment in 2017 “On Poor Performance”.
It is “no secret that we were once interested” for operating services in China, he adds. “We have ultimately chosen not to go through the ideas we would explore.”
Meta referred us to Mark Zuckerberg’s comments from 2019, when he said: “We can never deal in agreement on what we would need for us to do there, and they [China] Never let us enter. “
Facebook also used algorithms to see when young teens were feeling vulnerable as part of the research targeting advertisers, Ms Wynn-Williams claims.
A former Diplomat of New Zealand, she joined Facebook in 2011 and says she watched the company grow from “a place of the front row”.
Now she wants to show some of the “decision -making and moral compromises” that she says she continued when she was there. It is a critical moment, she adds, as “many of the people I have worked with … will be central” for presenting him.
In her memory, careless people, Mrs. Wynn-Williams paints a picture of what she claims to work on the old Facebook team was like.
Mr. Zuckerberg, she says, did not get up before noon, loved Karaoke and did not like to be beaten on board games, such as the danger. “I didn’t realize you had to let her win. I was a little naive,” she told us.
However, Mrs. Wynn-Williams says her claims about the company’s close relationships with China offer an overview of Facebook decision-making at the time.
Color“China is Mark Zuckerberg’s white whale,” which means a goal he followed with obsession, says Mrs. Wynn-Williams.
The country is the world’s largest social media market, but access to Facebook remains blocked there, along with X and YouTube likes.
“That part of the board game that he has not conquered,” she says.
Ms. Wynn-Williams claims that in the mid-2010s, as part of her negotiations with the Chinese government, Facebook considered allowing future access to users of Chinese citizens.
“He was working on the handle with the Chinese Communist Party, building a censorship tool … essentially working to develop a kind of antithesis of many of the principles supported by Facebook,” she told the BBC.
Mrs. Wynn-Williams says governments often sought explanations on how Facebook software aspects worked, but was told it was the owner’s information.
“But when it came to the Chinese, the curtain withdrew again,” she says.
“Engineers were taken out. They were traversed every aspect, and Facebook was making sure that these Chinese officials were fast enough that they could not only learn about these products, but then try Facebook in the version of these products they were building.”
Meta told the BBC that such claims about China were “widely reported” at the time.
Sarah Wynn-WilliamsIn her complaint to SEC, Mrs. Wynn-Williams also claims that Mr. Zuckerberg and other Meta leaders had made “misleading statements … in response to Congress questions” for China.
A response given by Mr. Zuckerberg in Congress in 2018 said Facebook was unable to know exactly how [Chinese] The government would seek to enforce its laws and regulations on content ”
Meta told the BBC that Mr. Zuckerberg gave accurate evidence, adding that he did not operate services in China.
Mark Zuckerberg / FacebookMost Facebook executives did not allow their children on Facebook – according to Mrs. Wynn -williams. “They had screen stops. They would probably not allow them to use the product.”
And yet she says Reports from 2017 – that the company had used algorithms to target and categorize vulnerable teens – were true.
“The algorithm may find that they were feeling invalid or unhappy,” she claims.
Company – which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp – can, she claims, identify when a teenage girl had deleted a selfie on her platforms, and then let a beauty company be a good moment to target the baby with an ad.
Mrs. Wynn-Williams says she “felt ill” out of thought and tried to withdraw “, though I knew it was in vain.”
“They said,” The business side thinks this is exactly what we have to do. We have this amazing product, we can get young people, which is a really important segment of advertising. “”
Meta told the BBC that this was false – it never provided tools to target people based on their emotional state – and that the research they did before was to help traders understand how people say on Facebook, not to target advertising.
Emma Lynch / BBCIn general, Ms. Wynn-Williams says the company has not done enough to address the issue of youth security on social media.
“This is one of the most valuable companies in the world. They can invest in this and make it a true advantage and do more to fix it.”
Facebook said it was transparent about advertising marking and had shared updates about its access for creating advertising experiences suitable for adolescent age.
He also said he had introduced “teenage accounts” to tens of millions of young people with integrated protection. He also said he was giving parents more supervision for the use of their adolescents of the application.
As well as poor performance, Meta says the 45-year-old was also fired for “toxic behavior” after she had made “misleading and unfounded accusations of harassment”.
But Mrs. Wynn -Williams told the BBC that she was released after she had complained of inappropriate comments from one of her bosses -Joel Kaplan, who is now the chief of Global Meta affairs.
Meta told us she was paid by “activists against the phase” and she was not a whistle.
“Whistlebower status defends communications to the government, not unhappy activists trying to sell books,” she said.
Bloomberg through Getty ImagesRegarding Mrs. Wynn-Williams’ book, Meta has confirmed to the BBC that legal action has begun in the US to “prohibit further dissemination of defamatory and untrue information”.
To oppose this, a legal representative for Mrs. Wynn-Williams said: “Meta has made a number of false and volatile statements about Sarah after news of her memories broke up … while Meta’s statements are trying to deceive the public, the book speaks itself”
We asked him why he was talking now. She said she wanted Meta to change as she “affects so much from our daily lives” and we have to make sure “get the future we deserve”.
“We are at this moment where technology and political leaders are gathering and as they intertwine, this has many consequences for us all.
“I think it’s really important to understand this and to understand that you can see all these engineers who are affecting the highest level of government.”