Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was working “hand in glove” with the Chinese Communists to “repeatedly undermine U.S. national security and betray American values.”
The former director of Global Public Policy at Facebook, Sarah Wynn-Williams, had a lot to say about how Zuckerberg bent over backward, groveling at the feet of the Chinese to help them enforce their censorship regime.
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, who led the bipartisan hearing, said that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg “made censorship his business model.”
“The evidence that we have in black and white is a company and leadership that is willing to do anything, anything, work with America’s chief competitor, work with our chief adversary,” Hawley said.
Wynn-Williams said that Facebook made “custom-built censorship tools” for the Chinese Communist Party. She said a Chinese dissident living in the U.S. was kicked off the platform at the Chinese government’s request. Facebook said he had shared private information with others.
Zuckerberg has been proclaiming his love for free speech and free expression, and Wynn-Williams questioned his sincerity.
“If he is such a fan of freedom [of] speech, why is he trying to silence me?” Wynn-Williams said. “The other thing is that this is a man who wears many different costumes. When I was there, he wanted the president of China to name his first child. He was learning Mandarin. He was censoring to his heart’s content.”
Hawley added, “I don’t trust this latest reinvention at all,” he said.
Wynn-Williams was speaking publicly for the first time since an emergency arbiter sided with Meta this past month and banned her from promoting her 400-page memoir, “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism.” The book, which debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list, chronicles the six years Wynn-Williams spent working with top Meta executives, including Zuckerberg, former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and global affairs head Joel Kaplan, as they attempted to woo world leaders and address public policy issues.
Hawley said Meta has been seeking $50,000 in punitive damages for each time she mentions Facebook in public, even if what she says is uncontested. Meta says that figure is set down in the separation agreement she signed when she left the company.
Much of the book dishes eye-popping details about top executives, including allegations of sexual harassment, prompting Meta to wage a fierce publicity battle to undercut Wynn-Williams. But Wynn-Williams, who was fired by the company in 2017, also devotes a considerable share of the book to chronicling Meta’s multiyear effort to enter the lucrative Chinese market.
That Zuckerberg sacrificed his principles, his patriotism, and his morality in trying to crack the billion-strong Chinese internet market is hardly surprising. Wynn-Williams’ revelations about the ease with which Zuckerberg sloughed off his Americanism for money are disturbing, however, and perhaps instead of investigating Trump for disloyalty, maybe the Democrats should take a look at the owner of the Washington Post.
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