Meta 'hand in glove' with China, betrayed American values: Whistleblower

A former Meta executive, Sarah Wynn-Williams, has come forward as a whistleblower, accusing the social media giant of compromising US national security to establish a substantial business presence in China.

Wynn-Williams accused Meta executives of allowing the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) to access user data, including that of Americans.

She noted that Meta worked "hand in glove" with Beijing to create censorship tools that were used to silence critics of the CPC.

Wynn-Williams testified this during a congressional hearing led by Senator Josh Hawley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism.

"I saw Meta executives repeatedly undermine US national security and betray American values," Wynn-Williams was quoted as saying by CBS News.

She alleged that Meta built custom censorship tools for the Chinese government which enabled it to extensively control content.

"The greatest trick Mark Zuckerberg ever pulled was wrapping the American flag around himself and calling himself a patriot and saying he didn't offer services in China, while he spent the last decade building an $18 billion business there," she added.

The whistleblower also alleged that Meta's artificial intelligence model, Llama, was used to help Chinese AI company DeepSeek.

However, Meta has disputed the claims, stating that Wynn-Williams' testimony is "divorced from reality and riddled with false claims".

The company's spokesperson Ryan Daniels said that although Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg been public about the company's interest in offering its services in China, "[T]he fact is this: we do not operate our services in China today."

Further, Wynn-Williams claimed that Meta threatened her with $50,000 in punitive damages for speaking out.

But the company clarified that the amount is for each material violation of her separation agreement, not for testifying before Congress.