Meta was willing to allow the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to oversee content and suppress political dissent to gain access to the lucrative Chinese market and mislead investors and American regulators. The allegations by former global policy director Sarah Wynn-Williams reveal how the social media giant sought approval from Chinese authorities in a failed bid to expand its user base.
According to the 78-page complaint reviewed by The Washington Post, Meta developed a censorship system for China in 2015 and planned to appoint a ‘chief editor’ responsible for content moderation, with the power to shut down the platform during periods of unrest.
One of the key issues in the complaint is China’s push to localise user data. According to the documents, Chinese officials pressured the company to store user data within the country, which would have facilitated government surveillance and control.
The complaint further claims that CEO Mark Zuckerberg agreed to restrict the account of a prominent Chinese dissident in the U.S. following pressure from a high-ranking Chinese official. Meta restricted the account of Chinese businessman Guo Wengui after a top Chinese regulator suggested it would help demonstrate the company’s commitment to Chinese interests.
Internal company notes indicate that Meta officials saw actions against Guo’s account as a potential bargaining chip in negotiations with Beijing.
This is part of a more significant attempt by Meta to break into the Chinese market. In 2014, when Zuckerberg formed a special ‘China team’ to develop a complaint version of Facebook under the codename ‘Project Aldrin.’ Internal emails reveal that he saw China as a vital market and was willing to make significant concessions.
In a 2014 letter drafted for Chinese officials, Meta touted its cooperation in removing content deemed dangerous by Beijing and expressed willingness to collaborate with Chinese embassies worldwide. The company also explored weakening privacy protections for Hong Kong, a move that would have given the Chinese government greater access to user data.
By 2015, Meta was negotiating a detailed content moderation plan, proposing that a Chinese private equity firm, Hony Capital, oversee the censorship of posts made by users within China, including foreign visitors. The company even built a specialised censorship system to detect and suppress restricted content automatically.
These efforts by Meta persisted and in 2017 the company launched social media apps in China under shell companies to test the market.
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