Facebook “works hand in glove” with China, according to a former director

A former Facebook CEO told the BBC how the social media giant works “hand in a glove” with the Chinese government in potential ways to allow Beijing to censor and control content in China.

Sarah Win -Waylam – a former director of global public policy – says in exchange for access to the Chinese market by hundreds of millions of users, the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, thinks he agrees to hide publications that are viral until they can be checked by the Chinese authorities.

D -Ja Williams – which claims in a new book – has also filed a complaint to report to the US market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), claiming that META are delusional investors. BBC reviewed the complaint.

Facebook’s Meta Meta says Mrs. Wynn-Williams has discontinued her work in 2017. For a bad performance.

“It’s no secret that we’ve ever been interested” in China’s performance services, he adds this. “In the end, we decided not to go through the ideas we have studied.”

Meta directed us to the comments of Mark Zuckerberg from 2019 when he said, “We could never agree what we would need to do there, and they (China) never let us go.”

Facebook also uses algorithms to notice when young teenagers feel vulnerable as part of advertiser studies, says Ms. Wynn-Williams.

A former New Zealand diplomat, she joined Facebook in 2011 and says she watched the company grow from the front row seat.

Now she wants to show some of the “decision -making and moral compromises” that she believes continue when she was there. This is a critical moment, she adds, as “many of the people I have worked with … will be central” for the introduction of AI.

In her memoir, careless people Mrs. Wynn-Williams draws a picture of what he claims to have worked on the senior Facebook team.

According to her, he did not get up before noon, loved Karaoke and did not like to be in board games, such as risk. “I didn’t realize you should let him win. I was a little naive,” she told us.

However, Mrs. Wynn-Williams says her allegations of the company’s close relations with China give an idea of ​​making Facebook’s decision at the time.

“China is Mark Zuckerberg’s White Whale,” a goal that he pursues obsessively, “says Mrs. Wynn-Williams.

The country is the largest social media market in the world, but access to Facebook remains blocked there, along with the likes of X and YouTube.

“This is one piece in the game of the desktop that he has not conquered,” she says.

Mrs. Wynn-Williams claims that in the mid-2010s, as part of her negotiations with the Chinese government, Facebook was considering allowing him to access the user data of Chinese citizens.

“He worked a hand in a glove with the Chinese Communist Party, building a censorship tool … He mainly worked to develop a type of antithesis of many of the principles that underlie Facebook,” she told the BBC.

Mrs. Wynn-Williams says governments often want explanations of how aspects of Facebook software work, but they are told that this is his own information.

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

“The engineers were taken out. They were viewed through every aspect and Facebook made sure that these Chinese employees were raised enough to not only learn about these products, but then test Facebook about the censorship of those products they build.”

Meta told the BBC that such allegations about China were “widely reported” at the time.

In her complaint to SEC, Mrs. Wynn-Williams also claims that Mr Zuckerberg and other Meta leaders made “misleading statements … in response to Congress investigations” for China.

One answer given by the 2018 Congress G -n -Zuckerberg said Facebook “is not able to know exactly how (the Chinese) government will strive to apply its laws and provisions on content”

Meta told the BBC that G -n Zuckerberg gave accurate testimony, adding that he did not work services in China.

Most Facebook executives did not allow their own children on Facebook -according to G -Ja Wynn -williams. “They had prohibitions on screen. They would certainly not allow them to use the product.”

And yet she says Reports of 2017 – That the company has used algorithms to direct and categorize vulnerable teens – are true.

“The algorithm can conclude that they feel useless or unhappy,” she says.

The company – which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp – may, she claims, identify when a teenager deleted a selfie on her platforms and then notify a beauty company that it would be a good time to target the child with advertising.

Mrs. Wynn-Williams says she “felt sick” at the thought and tried to step back, “although I knew it was useless.”

“They said,” Business country thinks this is exactly what we should do. We have this incredible product, we can get young people, which is a really important advertising segment. “

Meta told the BBC that this was incorrect – he had never offered tools to direct people based on their emotional state – and that the studies he had done before was to help marketers understand how people express themselves on Facebook rather than target ads.

Overall, Mrs. Wynn-Williams says the company has not done enough to deal with the question of the safety of young people on social media.

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

Facebook said it was transparent to direct ads and had shared updates on his approach To create age -appropriate advertising experiences for teens.

He also said he had introduced “teenage accounts” for tens of millions of young people with built -in protection. He also said he was giving parents more supervision of using the application of their teenagers.

In addition to poor performance, Meta says the 45-year-old was also fired for “toxic behavior” after making “misleading and unfounded allegations of harassment”.

But D -Jynn -williams told the BBC that it was released after complaining about inappropriate comments from one of its bosses -Joel Kaplan, who is now CEO for Meta Global Affairs.

Meta told us that she had been paid by “Book Activists” and she was not a signal.

“The status of signaling protects the government’s communications, not dissatisfied activists trying to sell books,” the message said.

With regard to Mrs. Wynn-Williams’ book, Meta confirmed to the BBC that it had launched lawsuits in the United States to “stop the further distribution of defamatory and incorrect information.”

To oppose this, Mrs. Wynn-Williams’s legal representative said: “Meta made a number of false and inconsistent statements about Sara

We asked her why she was talking now. She said she wanted Meta to change because “it affects so much of our daily lives” and we have to ensure that “we get the future we deserve.”

“We are at this point where technological and political leaders gather and while combining forces, it has many consequences for all of us.

“I think it is really important to understand this and to understand that you are looking at all those engineers who influence the highest level of management.”