Bbc
Sarah Wynn-Williams says she watched Facebook develop from “a place in the front row”
A former Facebook senior executive explained to the BBC how the social media giant had worked “hand in glove” with the Chinese government on the potential means of allowing Beijing to censor and control content in China.
Sarah Wynn -Williams – A former world director of public policy – said in exchange for the Chinese market access of hundreds of millions of users, Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has planned to accept to hide publications that become viral, until they can be checked by the Chinese authorities.
Ms. Williams – who makes complaints in a new book – also filed a complaint against the denunciators with the American market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), alleging that Meta misleads investors. The BBC examined the complaint.
Facebook Meta’s parent company, said Ms. Wynn-Williams had her job out in 2017 “for poor performance”.
It is “no secret that we were once interested” by operating services in China, he adds. “We finally chose not to pass with the ideas we had explored.”
Meta referred us to the comments of Mark Zuckerberg from 2019, when he said: “We could never achieve an agreement on what we would need to operate it there, and they (China) never let us enter.”
Facebook also used algorithms to locate when young teenagers felt vulnerable as part of research for advertisers, according to Ms Wynn-Williams.
Former New Zealand diplomat, she joined Facebook in 2011 and says that she saw the company develop from “a headquarters in the front row”.
Now she wants to show part of the “decision -making and moral compromise” which, she said, continued when she was there. It’s a critical moment, she adds, because “many people I worked with … will be central” at the introduction of AI.
In her memoirs, Careless People, Ms. Wynn-Williams, painted an image of what she alleges to work on the Senior Facebook team.
Mr. Zuckerberg, she said, did not get up before noon, loved the karaoke and did not like to be beaten during board games, such as risk. “I didn’t know you were supposed to let him win. I was a little naive,” she told us.
However, Ms. Wynn-Williams says that her allegations concerning the close relationships of the company with China give an overview of Facebook’s decision-making at the time.
Open
Mark Zuckerberg loves board games, but hates to lose – according to Sarah Wynn -Williams
“China is the white whale of Mark Zuckerberg”, which means an objective that he pursued obsessively, explains Ms. Wynn-Williams.
The country is the world’s largest social media market, but access to Facebook remains blocked there, alongside X and Youtube.
“This is the only piece of board game that he has not conquered,” she said.
Ms. Wynn-Williams says that in the mid-2010s, as part of her negotiations with the Chinese government, Facebook planned to allow it a future access to data from Chinese citizens.
“He worked in Glove with the Chinese Communist Party, building a censorship tool … working essentially to develop a kind of antithesis of many principles that underpin Facebook,” she told the BBC.
Ms. Wynn-Williams says that governments have frequently requested explanations on the operation of Facebook software aspects, but they were told that it was proprietary information.
“But when it comes to the Chinese, the curtain has been removed,” she said.
“The engineers were highlighted. They crossed all the aspects, and Facebook ensured that these Chinese authorities were sufficiently reduced to be able to know not only more about these products, but then test Facebook on the version of censorship of these products they built.”
Meta told the BBC that such claims on China had been “widely reported” at the time.
Sarah Wynn-Williams
Sarah Wynn-Williams Illustrated with Mark Zuckerberg (C) and Joel Kaplan, now Meta Director of Affairs
In her dry complaint, Ms. Wynn-Williams also alleges that Mr. Zuckerberg and other meta frames had made “deceptive declarations … in response to congress surveys” on China.
A response given by Mr. Zuckerberg to Congress in 2018 said that Facebook was “unable to know exactly how the (Chinese) government would seek to apply its content and regulations on content”
Meta told the BBC that Mr. Zuckerberg had given precise testimony, adding that he had not operated on services in China.
Mark Zuckerberg / Facebook
Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, ran to Pékin’s Tiananmen square during a visit to China in 2016 in 2016
Most Facebook leaders did not allow their own children on Facebook – according to Ms Wynn -Williams. “They had screen prohibitions. They would certainly not allow them to use the product.”
And yet, she says that the 2017 reports – that the company used algorithms to target and categorize vulnerable adolescents – were true.
“The algorithm could deduce that they felt without value or unhappy,” she says.
The company – which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp – could, according to her, identify when a teenager had deleted a selfie on her platforms, then informed a beauty company that it would be a good time to target the child with an advertisement.
Ms. Wynn-Williams says she “felt sick” at the idea and tried to repel, “even if I knew it was futile”.
“They said:” The commercial side thinks that this is exactly what we should do. We have this incredible product, we can get young, which is a really important advertising segment. “”
Meta told the BBC that it was false – he never offered tools to target people according to their emotional state – and that the research he had previously done was to help marketing specialists understand how people are expressed on Facebook, not to target advertisements.
Emma Lynch / BBC
Ms. Wyn-Williams wants the meta to change because it “influences a large part of our daily life”
Overall, Ms. Wynn-Williams says that the company did not do enough to solve the problem of young people on social networks.
“This is one of the most precious companies in the world. They could invest in this and make it a real priority and do more to repair it.”
Facebook said he was transparent to targeting the announcement and shared updates regarding his approach to create adolescent -adapted advertising experiences.
He also said that he had introduced “adolescent accounts” for tens of millions of young people with integrated protections. He also said that it gave parents more surveillance on the use of their adolescence of the application.
In addition to poor performances, Meta says that the 45 -year -old woman was also dismissed for “toxic behavior” after having done “deceptive and unfounded” harassment allegations “.
But Ms. Wynn -Williams told the BBC that she had been released after she had complained of the inappropriate comments of one of her bosses – Joel Kaplan, who is now Meta’s world business director.
Meta told us that it had been paid by “anti-facebook activists” and that it was not a denunciation.
“The status of a denunciator protects communications with the government, and not unhappy activists to try to sell books,” he said.
Bloomberg via Getty Images
Mark Zuckerberg (L), with Jeff Bezos (C) and Elon Musk (R), attended the inauguration of President Trump in Washington DC in January
Regarding Ms. Wynn-Williams’ book, Meta confirmed to the BBC that she had launched legal action in the United States to “stop the additional distribution of defamatory and false information”.
To counter this, a legal representative of Ms. Wynn-Williams said: “Meta made a certain number of false and inconsistent statements on Sarah because the news of her memories broke out … While Meta’s statements are trying to mislead the public, the book speaks for itself”
We asked her why she was speaking now. She said that she wanted the meta to change because she “influences a large part of our daily life” and we must assure “we get the future that we deserve”.
“We are in this moment when technological and political leaders meet and combine the forces, this has a lot of consequences for all of us.
“I think it is really important to understand this and understand that you are looking at all those engineers who influence the highest level of government.”
