Former global policy director Sarah Wynn-Williams, who worked at the company from 2011 to 2017, told members of a Senate committee that top Facebook executives met routinely with Chinese officials, schooling them on technology to compete with US companies and even building products to appease Beijing's government censors.
"The greatest trick (Meta founder and CEO) 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," Wynn-Williams said of the Meta co-founder and chief executive.
Wynn-Williams said she saw Meta work "hand in glove" with the Chinese Communist Party to construct censorship tools tested on users in Taiwan and Hong Kong.
"When Beijing demanded that Facebook delete the account of a prominent Chinese dissident living on American soil, they did it and then lied to Congress when asked about the incident in a Senate hearing," Wynn-Williams said.
Meta communications director Andy Stone told AFP Wynn-Williams' testimony was "divorced from reality and riddled with false claims."
"While Mark Zuckerberg himself was public about our interest in offering our services in China and details were widely reported beginning over a decade ago, the fact is this: we do not operate our services in China today," he added.
The company's family of apps is currently blocked in China.
Meta's open-source artificial intelligence platform Llama can be used there, as can its Oculus virtual reality gear, hearing testimony indicated.
Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, who initiated the hearing, cited documents and testimony provided by Wynn-Williams to accuse Zuckerberg of lying during past congressional hearings.
"The truth is, Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg have lied to the American people repeatedly," Hawley said.
- 'Careless People' -
Wynn-Williams's book, "Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed and Lost Idealism," was released on March 11 and became a bestseller despite Meta winning an arbitration court order barring the author from promoting the work or making derogatory statements about the company.
Her book recounts working at the tech titan and includes claims of sexual harassment by longtime company executive Joel Kaplan, a prominent Republican and ally of President Donald Trump who took over as head of Meta's global affairs team this year.
Meta took the matter to arbitration, contending the book violates a non-disparagement contract signed by Wynn-Williams when she worked with the company's global affairs team.
"The measure of how important these truths are is directly proportional to the ferocity of Meta's efforts to censor and intimidate me," Wynn-Williams told Senators.
"Careless People" ranks second on a New York Times bestseller list of nonfiction books.
US takes aim at Zuckerberg's social media kingdom
Washington (AFP) April 9, 2025 -
Barring any eleventh-hour intervention, social media juggernaut Meta will stand trial next week facing serious US government allegations that it abused its market power to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp before they could become competitors.
By moving forward, the trial in a Washington federal court dashes any hopes from Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg that the return of Donald Trump to the White House would see the government let up on the enforcement of antitrust law against Big Tech.
The Meta case is being made by the Federal Trade Commission, the powerful US consumer protection agency, and could see the owner of Facebook forced to divest Instagram and WhatsApp, which have grown into global powerhouses since their buyout.
The case was originally made in December 2020, during the first Trump administration, and all eyes were on whether Trump would soften his stance against Big Tech during his second stint in the White House.
Zuckerberg, the world's third-richest person, has made repeated visits to the White House as he tries to persuade the US leader to choose settlement instead of fighting the trial, a decision that would be extraordinary at this late stage.
FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson downplayed such possibilities, telling The Verge: "I think that the President recognizes that we've got to enforce the laws, so I'd be very surprised if anything like that ever happened."
Zuckerberg's lobbying efforts have included Trump inauguration fund contributions and overhauled content moderation policies favoring Republicans.
Even so, "I'm not sure Trump is persuaded that Zuckerberg is worthy of redemption," said George Hay, an antitrust law professor at Cornell Law School.
While a White House intervention remains technically possible, it would require both presidential and FTC agreement that the case lacks merit, he added.
The Meta lawsuit represents just one of five major tech antitrust actions initiated by the US government recently. Google was found guilty of search market dominance abuse last August, while Apple and Amazon also face cases.
Zuckerberg, his former lieutenant Sheryl Sandberg, and a long line of executives from rival companies will be taking the stand over a trial that will last at least eight weeks and kicks off on Monday.
- 'Really scary' -
Central to the case is Facebook's 2012 billion-dollar purchase of Instagram -- then a small but promising photo-sharing startup designed for mobile phones that now boasts two billion active users.
An email from Zuckerberg cited by the FTC reveals the concerns: "The potential impact of Instagram is really scary and why we might want to consider paying a lot of money for this."
The FTC argues Meta's $19-billion WhatsApp acquisition in 2014 followed the same pattern, with Zuckerberg fearing the messaging app could either transform into a social network or be purchased by a competitor.
Meta's defense will argue that substantial investments transformed these acquisitions into the blockbusters they are today, bearing little resemblance to their original versions.
They'll also highlight that the FTC initially approved both transactions and shouldn't be permitted a redo.
Recent court setbacks for the FTC -- including failed challenges to Meta's Within acquisition and Microsoft's Activision Blizzard merger -- may strengthen Big Tech's position.
Judge James Boasberg, who will decide and preside over the case, has already cautioned that the FTC "faces hard questions about whether its claims can hold up in the crucible of trial."
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