Facebook worked ‘hand in glove’ with China, ex-executive tells Senate panel

Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former Facebook executive, testified on Wednesday on explosive allegations about the social media company’s relationship with China.

In her prepared opening statement for a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, Wynn-Williams accused company founder Mark Zuckerberg of pledging himself as a “free speech champion” while working “hand in glove” with the Chinese Communist Party to “construct and test custom-built censorship tools that silenced and censored critics of the Chinese Communist Party.”

Wynn-Williams—who worked for Facebook from 2011 to 2017 and served as director of global public policy—also claimed that the social media behemoth has been willing to capitulate to the Chinese government, including deleting the account of a notable Chinese dissident living in the United States, and then lying about it in a Senate hearing.

In a statement to The Daily Signal, a spokesman for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said, “Sarah Wynn-Williams’ testimony is 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.”

According to Wynn-Williams, the company continues to be deceptive about its relationship with China.

“As recently as this Monday, they claimed they do not operate services in China. Another lie. In fact, they began offering products and services in China as early as 2014. That hasn’t stopped. Their own [Securities and Exchange Commission] filings from last year show that China is now Meta’s second-biggest market,” she contended.

Wynn-Williams asserted in her prepared testimony that “Meta built a physical pipeline connecting the United States and China.” A spokesman for Meta disputed that, telling The Daily Signal that that wasn’t true. Facebook did contemplate installing an 8,000-mile cable between Hong Kong and California, but it ultimately opted to abandon the project after the U.S. government expressed concerns about Chinese espionage.

Wynn-Williams also asserts that Meta was comfortable exposing American user data to the Chinese Communist Party.

“I watched as executives decided to provide the Chinese Communist Party with access to Meta user data—including that of Americans,” the former Facebook employee said. A spokesman for Meta reiterated that “our services are not available in China.”

Wynn-Williams quoted from alleged internal documents that describe the tech company’s sales pitch to the Chinese government as “help[ing] China increase global influence and promote the China Dream.”

She further claimed that Meta’s artificial intelligence model, Llama, has led to Chinese advances in its own AI technologies, such as DeepSeek.

The Senate hearing was a remarkable display of bipartisanship, with both Republican and Democratic senators criticizing the technology conglomerate.

“Meta chooses to put human rights concerns aside if it means access to more users, more growth, more dollars,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., ranking member of the Senate subcommittee, said at the hearing.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told Wynn-Williams that members of the committee would be “conducting a thorough investigation and ask Meta to fully cooperate.”

“Meta is trying to buy and even bribe and pander its way out of any accountability,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated since publication.

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]