A whistleblower has spilled the beans on Meta's under-the-table deal with China, claiming that the company tried to win the country's favor in order to do business in the nation.
According to the whistleblower, China was given access to Facebook user data, including that of Americans, and Meta helped the country build censorship tools in order to curb dissent in the country.
The whistleblower has testified in front of Congress despite the gag order that Meta imposed against her, particularly amidst the sale of her book, "Careless People," which also contains allegations against the company.
Ex-Facebook Whistleblower Claims Meta Shared User Data to China
Before Sarah Wynn-Williams testified in Congress, her prepared remarks revealed a lot about her allegations against the company, which detailed how Meta leveraged Facebook user data in the hopes of doing business in China.
In her testimony in front of US senators, Wynn-Williams recounted Meta's sharing of US user data to Beijing to build a $18 billion business in the nation, the BBC reported.
Wynn-Williams claimed that she saw first-hand how Meta shared the said user data to the Chinese Communist Part (CCP) and provided them access to it. Meta spokesperson Ryan Daniels has refuted Wynn-Williams' claims, saying that they are false, and the company has no services operating in China today.
Furthermore, Wynn-Williams claimed that Meta's Llama AI model "significantly" contributed to helping the Chinese advance their AI technologies, citing DeepSeek as an example.
Read Also: Meta Attempted to Expand to China by Creating a Censorship Tool, Says Facebook Whistleblower
Meta's Alleged Censorship Tool for China and CCP
In addition to this, Wynn-Williams also expanded on her earlier claim about Meta helping China build a censorship tool that aims to silence critics. According to Wynn-Williams, she witnessed Meta work "hand in glove" with the CCP to construct and test custom-built censorship tools that silenced and censored their critics.
Now, Wynn-Williams is calling for help from the US Congress to stop Meta in their alleged further endangerment of the American public.
Meta Whistleblowers: Controversies Through the Years
Over the past years, Meta has been caught up in a series of controversies about its under-the-table deals and its "prioritizing" of profits instead of user and children's safety on its platforms. One of the most prolific claims against the company was made by a former product manager, Frances Haugen, who claimed that the company disregarded teens' mental health on the platform.
Apart from this, an earlier case centered on a former Facebook data scientist, who shared a 6,600-word memo about the company's operations that helped governments across the world use the platform for political manipulation.
This claim was from Sophie Zhang, who claimed that the company was slow to remove fake accounts and ignored political manipulation on its social media platforms that are undermining citizens.
Moreover, Meta has been met with several accusations that it has disregarded children's safety and well-being on the platform, with the company allegedly misrepresenting the "level of harm" these minors face online.
