Congress should drop the hammer on Meta over whistleblower claims about China: tech watchdogs

Congress should “drop the hammer” on Meta after bombshell whistleblower allegations about the scandalous lengths that Mark Zuckerberg took to get his apps unbanned in China – including clamping down on a Beijing dissident, according to tech watchdogs.Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former Facebook global policy director who worked on China issues at the social media giant, filed a whistleblower complaint with the SEC in April, the Washington Post reported.She has also detailed her allegedly toxic experiences in a memoir titled “Careless People.”On Wednesday, Meta won an emergency ruling from an arbitrator ordering Wynn-Williams to stop promoting the explosive memoir – which also alleged that ex-COO Sheryl Sandberg once spent $13,000 on lingerie for herself and a young female assistant and later invited Wynn-Williams to “come to bed” during a long flight home from Europe.According to Wynn-Williams, Facebook was so desperate to boost revenue by breaking into the lucrative China market that it took extreme steps to curry favor with the Chinese Communist Party, which has long implemented a so-called “Great Firewall” that blocks most US social media apps.Attempts to get into the CCP’s good graces included building a “censorship system” in 2015 that would allow Beijing to block certain words and content and restricting an account in 2017 operated by Guo Wengui, a self-exiled Chinese billionaire and dissident, according to the whistleblower complaint.“These revelations are indicative of a company whose values are rotten to the core – and that goes all the way to the top,” Sacha Haworth, executive director of The Tech Oversight Project, told The Post.“Zuckerberg and Meta’s spin doctors pretend they’ve given up on Chinese investments, but Meta gets $1 billion a month from China,” Haworth added.

“Meta has proven time and time again that they are willing to throw US security under the bus, and it’s time for Congress to drop the hammer.”Wh...