By Barbara Ortutay, technology writer AP
Former Facebook official, Sarah Wynn-Williams, testified to the Senate judicial committee on Wednesday, accusing the social media society of undermining national security and information on China on American artificial intelligence efforts in order to develop his activities there.
“We are engaged in an AI arms race for high issues against China. And during my stay in Meta, business leaders lied about what they were doing with the Chinese Communist Party to employees, shareholders, congress and the American public,” Wynn-Williams said in his prepared testimony.
His book “Careless people”, an account of an explosive initiate of his time in the social media giant, sold 60,000 copies during his first week and reached the top 10 of the Amazon bestselle list in the midst of Meta’s efforts to discredit work and prevent him from talking about his experiences in company. Meta used a “threat and intimidation campaign” to silence the former executive, said Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, during the hearing.
Wynn-Williams was director of global public policy on Facebook, now Meta, from 2011 to her dismissal in 2017.
“During these seven years, I saw metadata on several occasions on American national security several times and betraying American values. They did these secrets to win the favor with Beijing and build a company of $ 18 billion in China,” she said in her prepared remarks.
Wynn-Williams also said Meta had deleted the Facebook account of an eminent Chinese dissident living in the United States, losing to China pressure to do so. Meta says that this account, belonging to the Millionaire Guo Wengui, shared personally identifiable information such as people passport numbers, social security numbers, national identification numbers and domestic addresses and has been deleted because it violated Facebook rules.
And she said Meta “has ignored warnings” that the construction of a “physical pipeline” between the United States and China would provide China to do door to the data of American users. These plans – called the cable network of the Pacific Light – never materialized, but Wynn -Williams said it was only because the legislators intervened.
In a statement, Meta said that Wynn-Williams’ testimony is divorced from reality and shouted false affirmations. Although Mark Zuckerberg himself is public about our interest in offering our services in China and the details were widely reported from a decade ago, the fact is: we do not use our services in China today.
Zuckerberg, as well as other Big Tech executives, have tried to improve their position with the administration of President Donald Trump in recent months – through visits to Mar -A -Lago and the White House, as well as monetary donations – it is not yet clear if the efforts are paid.
“He is a man who wears many different costumes,” said Wynn-Williams about Zuckerberg. “When I was there, he wanted the president of China to appoint his first child, he learned Mandarin, he censored the contents of his heart. Now, his new costume is MMA Fighting or … freedom of expression. We don’t know what the next costume will be, but it will be something different. This is what brings him closest to power. ”
The hearing comes just a few days before the Meta antitrust trial. The Federal Trade Commission file against the technology giant could force the company to assign Instagram and WhatsApp.
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
