Ex-Meta exec. claims censorship tool developed to monitor viral content in Hong Kong and Taiwan – report
Hong Kong Free Press
Former Meta executive Sarah Wynn-Williams has accused the social media giant of developing a censorship tool to monitor viral content in Hong Kong and Taiwan when Facebook attempted to gain access to the Chinese market.
In an interview with National Public Radio (NPR) that aired last Friday, Wynn-Williams discussed her criticism of the company which owns Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram. Meta has neither confirmed nor denied the allegation to HKFP.
The former director of public policy claimed that Hong Kong user data “appeared to be one of the possible negotiating chips that Meta thought it was holding” when it tried to operate in China.
“The suggestion was that as part of the negotiations for the company to enter into China, the data of users in Hong Kong could be put in play,” she told NPR.
Wynn-Williams went on to say that a censorship tool was developed, which included monitoring viral content in Hong Kong and Taiwan by installing what she called “virality counters.”
“Any content that got more than 10,000 views would automatically be sent to the censorship editorial body that would review that content,” she said.
The NPR interview was recorded before Meta obtained a court order barring the former employee from promoting her memoir, Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby, which alleged misconduct and harassment at the tech giant.
Wynn-Williams said she was fired in 2017 after she complained to Facebook about her boss Joe Kaplan’s misconduct.
No operation in China
In response to HKFP’s enquiries on Monday, Meta Hong Kong said the allegations were made by an employee “terminated eight years ago for poor performance.”
Although Facebook was interested in expanding its services in China, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in 2019 that the company would not go through with the idea, it said. “We do not operate… in China today,” it added.
The company referred to a speech by Zuckerberg in October 2019, when he said the internet had been defined by American platforms that held “strong free expression values.”
But with the recent rise in a Chinese internet that “focused on very different values,” there was “no guarantee these values will win out,” the CEO said.
“I wanted our services in China because I believe in connecting the whole world,” Zuckerberg said. “I worked hard to make this happen. But we could never come to agreement on what it would take for us to operate there, and they never let us in.”
Meta Hong Kong did not respond to questions about whether user data from Hong Kong was transferred to Chinese authorities over the past decade, or if the social media giant had changed its data handling policies since the enactment of the security laws in 2020 and 2024.
In July 2020, days after the Beijing-enacted national security law came into force, Facebook said it would suspend requests from the Hong Kong government and law enforcement authorities for information on users. When asked if the promise still stood in light of the locally-legislated 2024 security law last year, Meta did not respond.
In June 2021, HKFP reported that Facebook refused all 202 Hong Kong government requests for user data it received in the six months after the enactment of the national security law.
Beijing inserted national security legislation directly into Hong Kong’s mini-constitution in June 2020 following a year of pro-democracy protests and unrest. It criminalised subversion, secession, collusion with foreign forces and terrorist acts – broadly defined to include disruption to transport and other infrastructure. The move gave police sweeping new powers and led to hundreds of arrests amid new legal precedents, while dozens of civil society groups disappeared. The authorities say it restored stability and peace to the city, rejecting criticism from trade partners, the UN and NGOs.
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