Arizona Republican questions Mark Zuckerberg over dealings with China
An Arizona Republican is urging Meta to be more transparent about its effort to win the approval of the Chinese Communist Party to implement a censored version of Facebook in the China market.
Rep. Abraham Hamadeh (R-Arizona) wrote a letter dated Friday urging Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to clarify the level of oversight the company was willing to give the CCP over social media content to realize its goal of entering the Chinese market.
Hamadeh was responding to a Washington Post report earlier this week about an SEC whistleblower complaint filed by Meta's former global policy director, Sarah Wynn-Williams, who alleges that the social media giant developed a censorship version of Facebook in 2015 allowing for a 'chief editor' who would decide what content to remove, or even to shut down the entire site during times of 'social unrest.'
Meta didn't respond to a request for comment. Meta spokesman Andy Stone previously said in a statement that it was 'no secret' the company was interested in operating in China. 'We ultimately opted not to go through with the ideas we'd explored, which Mark Zuckerberg announced in 2019,' Stone added.
Hamadeh also asked Zuckerberg to confirm whether the social media giant had suppressed content or accounts at the request of the CCP. Wynn-Williams' complaint, which was bolstered by internal documents, alleged that Meta leaders faced aggressive pressure by Chinese government officials to host Chinese users' data to local data centers and suppress the account of a Chinese political dissident living in the United States.
'The latest allegations raise urgent questions about whether Meta continues to assist foreign regimes in controlling online discourse or targeting U.S. based dissidents of the CCP and other totalitarian regimes,' Hamadeh wrote. 'Given Meta's substantial influencer over public debate and democratic processes, this matter demands immediate transparency and accountability.'
Earlier this week, an emergency arbitrator temporarily prohibited Wynn-Williams from promoting her book 'Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism,' which was released this week. The arbitrator found that Wynn-Williams probably violated a non-disparagement agreement when she released the book, which offered a critical insider's look at the actions of the social media company's top executives.
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