Facebook ‘worked hand in glove’ with China, says former director

A former Facebook senior executive told the BBC how the social networks giant worked “Hand in Glove” with the Chinese government about potential ways to allow Beijing to censure and control the content in China.

Sarah Wynn -williams, a former world director of public policies, says in exchange for obtaining the Chinese market of hundreds of millions of users, the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, considered to be accepted hiding the publications that were becoming viral, until the Chinese authorities could verify them.

Mrs. Williams, who makes claims in a new book, has also filed a complaint complaint with the US market regulator, the stock exchange and securities commission (SEC), claiming the maladjusted target investors. The BBC has reviewed the complaint.

The parent company of Facebook, Meta, says Mrs. Wynn-Williams, her job ended in 2017 “for poor performance.”

“It is no secret that we were once interested” in the operational services in China, he adds. “Ultimately, we chose not to happen with the ideas we had explored.”

Goal referred to the comments of Mark Zuckerberg of 2019, when he said: “We could never reach an agreement on what we would need to operate there, and they (China) never let us in.”

Facebook also used algorithms to detect when young adolescents felt vulnerable as part of the research aimed at advertisers, says Wynn-Williams.

A former New Zealand diplomat, joined Facebook in 2011 and says he saw the company grow from “a front row.”

Now she wants to show some of the “decision commitments and moral commitments” that, according to her, continued when she was there. It is a critical moment, he adds, since “many of the people I worked with … they will be central” for the introduction of AI.

In his memories, careless people, Mrs. Wynn-Williams paints an image of what she alleges was working on the Senior Facebook team.

Mr. Zuckerberg, he says, did not get up before noon, loved the karaoke and did not like to be defeated in board games, such as risk. “I didn’t realize that I was supposed to let him win. It was a bit naive,” he told us.

However, Mrs. Wynn-Williams says that her accusations about the company’s close relationship with China provide an idea of ​​Facebook decision making at that time.

“China is the white whale of Mark Zuckerberg,” which means an objective that pursued obsessively, says Mrs. Wynn-Williams.

The country is the world’s largest social media market, but access to Facebook is still blocked there, along with people like X and YouTube.

“It is the only piece in the board game that has not conquered,” she says.

Mrs. Wynn-Williams states that in the mid-2010, as part of her negotiations with the Chinese government, Facebook considered allowing future access to the data of the users of Chinese citizens.

“I was working on the glove with the Chinese Communist Party, building a censorship tool … basically working to develop the antithesis of many of the principles that support Facebook,” he told the BBC.

Mrs. Wynn-Williams says that governments frequently requested explanations of how aspects of Facebook software worked, but they were told that it was property information.

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

“The engineers were taken out. They walked through all aspects, and Facebook made sure that these Chinese officials were relieved enough so that they could not only learn about these products, but then tested Facebook in the censorship version of these products they were building.”

Goal told the BBC that such statements about China had been “widely reported” at that time.

In her SEC complaint, Mrs. Wynn-Williams also alleges that Zuckerberg and other executive targets had made “deceptive statements … in response to Congress investigations” on China.

An answer given by Mr. Zuckerberg to Congress in 2018 said that Facebook was not “in a position to know exactly how the Government (Chinese) would seek to apply its laws and regulations on content”

Goal told the BBC that Zuckerberg gave a precise testimony, adding that he did not operate services in China.

The majority of Facebook executives did not allow their own children on Facebook, according to Mrs. Wynn -williams. “They had screen prohibitions. They would certainly not allow them to use the product.”

And yet she says 2017 reports – that the company had been using algorithms to aim and classify vulnerable adolescents – they were true.

“The algorithm could infer that they felt useless or unhappy,” he alleges.

The company, which also has Instagram and WhatsApp, could, according to her, identify when a teenager had eliminated a selfie on her platforms and then notify a beauty company that would be a good time to attack the child with an ad.

Mrs. Wynn-Williams says “she felt ill” in the idea and tried to go back, “although I knew it was useless.”

“They said: ‘The commercial side believes that this is exactly what we should be doing. We have this incredible product, we can get young people, which is a really important advertising segment.”

Goal told the BBC that this was false, that he has never offered tools to attack people based on his emotional state, and that the research he did previously was to help marketing specialists to understand how people express themselves on Facebook, not to attack ads.

In general, Mrs. Wynn-Williams says that the company has not done enough to address the safety problem of young people on social networks.

“This is one of the most valuable companies in the world. They could invest in this and make it a real priority and do more to solve it.”

Facebook said it was transparent about advertising orientation and had shared updates about his approach To create appropriate advertising experiences for adolescents.

He also said he had introduced “teenage accounts” for dozens of millions of young people with incorporated protections. He also said he was giving parents more supervision about the use of the application by their teenagers.

In addition to low performance, a goal says that the 45 -year -old man was also fired for “toxic behavior” after having made “accusations of misleading and unfounded harassment.”

But Mrs. Wynn -williams told the BBC that she was fired after she had complained about the inappropriate comments of one of her bosses: Joel Kaplan, who is now the director of World Meta Affairs.

Meta told us that it had been paid by “anti-offering activists” and that it was not a complainant.

“The status of complainant protects communications to the government, not the unhappy activists who try to sell books,” he said.

Regarding the book of Mrs. Wynn-Williams, Meta has confirmed to the BBC that it has launched legal actions in the United States to “stop the additional distribution of the defamatory and false information.”

To counteract this, a legal representative of Mrs. Wynn-Williams said: “Meta has made a series of false and inconsistent statements about Sarah since the news of their memoirs occurred … While the goal statements are trying to deceive the public, the book speaks for itself”

We asked him why he was talking now. She said she wanted to change, since “it influences much of our daily life” and we must make sure to “obtain the future we deserve.”

“We are at this time where technological and political leaders join and, while combining forces, that has many consequences for all of us.

“I think it is really important to understand that and understand that he looks at all these engineers who are influencing the highest level of government.”