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Author of explosive Meta memoir stars at US Senate hearing / Photo: Samuel Corum - GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP
Author of explosive Meta memoir stars at US Senate hearing
The former Facebook employee behind a scathing book about parent company Meta on Wednesday alleged that the social networking giant collaborated with the Chinese government on artificial intelligence, censorship and more, then lied to Congress about what it was doing.
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.
S.Abato--INP
