by Lucas Nolan at Breitbart
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,…
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