Hawley Hosts Facebook Whistleblower, Exposes Meta’s Stunning Complicity With China

The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism is called to order. I want to welcome everybody to today's hearing, the title of which is, A Time for Truth, Oversight of MEDA's Foreign Relations and Representations to the United States Congress. Let me just say as we begin, this is a hearing that Facebook has tried desperately to prevent. Facebook is one of the most powerful companies in the world. It is one of the most powerful companies in the history of the world, and they have stopped at absolutely nothing to prevent today's testimony. They've absolutely gone to war to try to prevent it. Our witness today is a whistleblower, and not just a whistleblower, but a longtime executive at Facebook. She worked directly with Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sanders and the Facebook brass. She was a part of the Facebook brass, and they have gone scorched earth to prevent her from telling what she knows. They've sued her. They have sought a gag order against her. They have begged courts to take her book off of the shelves. They tried to get it stopped from being printed in the first place. They have threatened her, get this, with $50,000 in punitive damages every time she mentions Facebook in public. $50,000 every time she mentions Facebook in public, even if the statements that she is making are true. And even as we sit here today, Facebook is attempting her total and complete financial ruin. They are attempting to destroy her personally. They are attempting to destroy her reputation. And I think the question is, why? Why is it that Facebook is so desperate to prevent this witness from telling what she knows? What is it that they are so afraid of? Well, we're going to find out today. And I think that we've already got a sense of it. Sarah Wynne Williams knows the truth about Facebook. That's what they fear. She knows that while Mark Zuckerberg now claims to be a champion of the United States and claims to be a free speech warrior, he in fact worked hand in glove with the Chinese Communist Party for years. He in fact made censorship his business model. He in fact developed censorship tools for the Chinese Communist Party to use against its own people. He in fact made Americans' own user data available, was willing to make it available, to Beijing. The truth is, Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg have lied to the American people repeatedly. And I think as we'll see today, they have lied to Congress as well. It's time for this to stop. That's why this committee has launched a full-scale investigation into the potential illegal behavior of Facebook. Today's hearing is one step in that investigation. Ms. Wynne Williams' testimony is absolutely essential to that investigation. Facebook does not want you to hear what she has to say. I dare say China probably doesn't want you to hear what she has to say. But we are going to get the truth. And we're going to get the truth starting now. I'm delighted to have with me the ranking member, both for the subcommittee and for the full Judiciary Committee, Senator Durbin. And I'll turn it over to him. Thank you, Ms. Wynne Williams. We're going to have eight-minute rounds of questioning, and I will start. Let me just start with something that you referenced, Ms. Wynne Williams, a moment ago. Facebook Meta issued a statement again last night saying that they don't do business in China. Now, is that true? Facebook Meta is not doing business in China? Is that accurate? That is not accurate, Chairman Hawley. Facebook has a $18.3 billion business in China. And to give just one example, in 2014, it launched Oculus in China with a strategy of playing dumb. And Oculus has continued to grow as a significant part of their business. In fact, they have, since 2014, 2015, they have launched multiple apps in China, often without, well, always without seeking authorization from this government, not informing their shareholders, not informing Congress, not informing the public. And now they have employees in China. Is that accurate? They have a partnership with Tencent in China. Is that accurate? Their Oculus VR business is in China. Is that accurate? So, tell me this. Why has Facebook Meta been so obsessed, if I can use that word, with breaking into the Chinese market? What is this all about? It is incredibly valuable for Meta. Monetarily? Absolutely. So, we're really, we're talking about profit at the end of the day? We are absolutely talking about profit. Profit and power. Let's talk about what Meta has been willing to do for profit and power. You said just a moment ago that Meta's dishonesty started with the betrayal of core American values. And you mentioned that Mark Zuckerberg has pledged himself as a free speech champion. I notice he talks a lot now in the American media about free speech. I notice he talks a lot when he goes to the White House about free speech and how Facebook won't censor and Facebook will protect the rights of all. Have you ever known Mark Zuckerberg to censor on behalf of China? Yes, Chairman Hawley. Let's talk about a few specific instances. In 2017, the Chinese dissident, Guo Wengui, suddenly had his Facebook profile shut down. Now, Facebook at first said that this was a temporary glitch. Was that true to your knowledge? Uh, no. In fact, Facebook shut down this dissident's page. This dissident, as you pointed out a moment ago, was living on American soil at the time. Facebook shut down that page based on pressure from the Chinese Communist Party. Is that accurate? That's accurate. Let's just take a look here at the documents. Here's some meeting notes taken shortly after a conversation with a Mr. Chow, who is a Communist Chinese Party member, a government official. Here, Mr. Chow asks Facebook. It says to Facebook that they want Mr. Guo's Facebook page dealt with. The notes say that Chow wants Facebook in China, but there are others who don't. So we, Facebook, need to take measures and do more in such situations to demonstrate we can address mutual interests. And then they go on to list, here's what we can do. We can do nothing. We can say we can do something. Or we can do even more than expected. But we need to provide a response to the Chinese Communist Party on what we can do. So here we have evidence of high-level contacts between Chinese Communist Party officials and Facebook asking for this dissident's page to be taken down. Facebook acknowledging this pressure, saying we need to do something if we want to get the party's cooperation, the government's cooperation. And what happened next? Well, Senator Hawley, one thing the Chinese Communist Party and Mark Zuckerberg share is that they want to silence their critics. I can say that from a personal experience. So I think they came to the right man. This led to a series of events where eventually this man on American soil was kicked off the platform. So in April of 2017, following these conversations, Facebook takes down the profile, bans it, of Mr. Guo. Then in September they make that ban permanent. Now here's the really interesting thing. When Facebook's general counsel was asked about this directly under oath in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, he sang a different tune. Senator Rubio asked him directly, was there any pressure from the Chinese government to block his account? Was there any pressure to block his account? The general counsel must have stretched, no, Senator. We reviewed a report on that account and analyzed it through regular channels using regular procedures. Was this truthful testimony, Ms. Williams? No, Senator. It's in fact an outright lie, is it not? It is, Senator. We just saw the documentation. Facebook received not just a request, Facebook received direct pressure from the Chinese Communist Party and bowed to it and discussed it internally and planned it and then lied about it to Congress. Let's talk about what else they've been able to do, been willing to do in order to get this access to the Chinese market. Let's look at some more meeting notes. Here's a reading, here's a readout of a group of Facebook engineers offering to create a censorship regime that will allow Facebook to block all traffic the Chinese Communist Party doesn't want. Phase zero, this is an internal chat. Phase zero, we identify all traffic that are currently blocked in China and we, Facebook, block them. This is a test for us to see whether we can actually identify all traffic from China. And then the chat continues, yes, good way to build trust. And another conversant says, great stuff, guys, let's do it. Give us some context here, Ms. Williams. What are they talking about doing here? When they say block all content that China wants, we, Facebook, do it for them, what are they talking about? They're talking about activating their censorship tools on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. So Facebook creates censorship tools that will allow them to assume the burden, if you like, of censorship, where they will do all of the censoring that the Chinese government was doing, Facebook would do it on their behalf, is that right? That's my understanding. And here you have Facebook employees celebrating it. Good way to build trust. They mean build trust with the Communist Chinese Party, right? Correct. And great stuff, guys, let's do it, meaning they greenlit this and went forward to see if they could make it happen. Is that accurate? That's my understanding, Senator. All of this, let's be clear, for a murderous regime in China, the most barbaric, most evil regime on the face of the planet, and our free speech champion, Mark Zuckerberg, is here with his team of engineers, actively working to make Facebook censor on their behalf. Let me ask you this. What about user data, Ms. Quinn Williams? Facebook has said publicly many times we would never compromise user data. It's a red line in the sand. We'd never do that. Never, never, never. Was Facebook ever willing to share user data with the Chinese Communist Party? Yes, Senator. In fact, they had a plan for that, didn't they? Here's some more documents, internal documents. Update, I spoke with the China team yesterday. They flagged a potential complication arising from our negotiations with the Chinese government. I emphasize this is a Facebook document now. These are Facebook executives. In exchange for the ability to do operations in China, Facebook will agree to grant the Chinese government access to Chinese user data. There it is in black and white. Facebook will agree to grant the Chinese government access to Chinese user data, including Hong Kongese user data. And then they talk about they're going to have to get their Hong Kong citizens to re-agree to terms of service so they can slide this right by them. This is extraordinary. Can I just ask you, Ms. Quinn Williams, was Americans' user data ever compromised? Do they ever plan to compromise American user data in any way? Do you know? One of the challenges with servicing a market as big as China was the Internet infrastructure that would underpin that. So I mentioned the cable that they joined between the U.S. and China, and that would be very helpful in servicing this market. But it would still mean that the service would be slow. So they contemplated using POP servers. And POP servers is a technical data center that brings the data closer to the end user. The challenge with POP servers is that you can't segregate data. It would have American data, it would have Chinese user data, and it would be on Chinese soil. So I want to just be clear about this. Here in this document, Facebook is talking about making Chinese user data available to the Chinese government because they're going to store that data in China. Is that correct? Correct. But when you store that data in China, Americans who exchange messages or other information with Chinese Facebook users, that would mean the Chinese government could get access to the American data as well. Is that correct? Through the POP servers, potentially, yes. And Facebook was willing to take that risk? Yes. There was a lot of discussion about this, and ultimately, yes. I mean, this is extraordinary. This is exactly contrary to what Facebook has represented for years. They're willing to build data centers, store data in China. They are willing explicitly to give the Chinese government access to it. And if that means that American user data is also compromised, they're willing to do that too. All for profits in China, there was virtually nothing they weren't willing to do. Chairman Grassley, Ms. Wynne-Williams, let me ask you a little bit more about the censorship tools that you've been asked about today, you've testified about, that were actually deployed in Hong Kong and Taiwan. And let's just, if we can, let's just look again at the privacy team email. Not that one. Yeah, so this is, and just so members of the press understand, the committee is in possession of this document. We have blacked out, as you can see, we've blacked out the names of individuals here. But in the documents, we have those names. Of course, we'll follow all appropriate legal procedures. But just so the press understands, the committee is committed to doing a full investigation. We do understand and know who the people are on this chain. We can see who they are, and we can see the full course of the discussion. But I just want to emphasize something here. The update is they spoke with the China team. They flagged a potential course of, a potential complication, of course, of negotiations with the Chinese government. Let's just stop there for a second. Someone pointed out to you that Mark Zuckerberg testified under oath that he didn't know what the Chinese government's terms would be to operate Facebook in China because they were banned, quote, unquote, in China. So he just had no idea. He was saying this as late as 2017, 2018. He just had no idea what the terms would be. That's just categorically false, isn't it? Absolutely, Sam. And this email shows that it is false, correct? Correct. In fact, what this email shows is Facebook is in very regularly close contact with members of the Chinese government down to specifying how they want the censorship tools to work. They're giving feedback on it back and forth and back and forth. And here they've agreed on a set of censorship tools to deploy in Hong Kong down to the fact that they say we're going to have to actually re-TOS. Does that mean Terms of Service? Correct. So, in other words, they're going to have to push out to Hong Kong users a new click thing for them to click on, which they won't, of course, really understand or know because it's almost impossible to decipher. But, in fact, what they're doing is it's allowing Facebook to stand up new censorship tools on behalf of the Chinese government. Is that correct? That's correct. Now, here's another interesting point. Back in 2012, the FTC, here in this country, the FTC entered a consent decree with Facebook about privacy. Do you remember, Ms. Wynne-Williams, this would have been early on in your time at the company, but do you remember roughly any of the terms of that FTC consent decree? Because they are relevant here. I do, Senator. They were intended to prevent matter from deceiving people about the extent to which they collect and share their data. Yes. So, part of the order is, and let me just quote, Facebook shall, quote, shall not misrepresent in any manner, expressly or by implication, the extent to which it maintains the privacy or security of covered information, end quote, which is user data. Now, Facebook is under a consent decree with the FTC on this basis, and yet they are deliberately misrepresenting across the world the security of user data. They are negotiating with the Chinese government to turn over user data, give, grant the Chinese government access to Chinese user data, including the Hong Kongese, including Taiwan, and yet they're representing to American government officials, no, no, no, we don't do that. We don't do that. In fact, they testified under oath, we don't make user data available. All of that was just lies. Is that fair to say, Ms. Wynne-Williams? Senator, many, many decisions have been made, and they were all premised on the basis that MEDA would hand over Chinese user data to the Chinese Communist Party. So, in addition to lying to Congress on what seems like a fairly regular basis, lying about suppressing dissidents, lying about setting up censorship tools, they've also arguably violated FTC consent decrees. And we have the documentation. This isn't just Ms. Wynne-Williams' opinion. This isn't just her recollection. We have the documentation with the Facebook employees, who I might add are high-level, executive-level employees, who are planning this and doing this. It's really, it's quite extraordinary. This was a pattern of operations at Facebook over and over and over. We'll come back to that, Ms. Wynne-Williams, but if you're ready, Senator Klobuchar, before we let you go, Ms. Wynne-Williams, just one other line of questions, if I could. Just one other subject. You actually touched on it with Senator Blackburn. She was talking to you about the kind of research that Facebook has done and the kind of advertising that they're willing to sell. And to me, what's so interesting about this is we've seen, frankly, the moral bankruptcy of this company and its leadership when it comes to China. And we've seen them be willing to lie to Congress, lie to the American public. We've got the documents in black and white. We've seen them be willing to give away American user data. But they were also trying to find out a way to make a buck on Americans, teenagers, children in times of distress right here in the United States. And I just want to give you an opportunity to comment on this. Here's an internal Facebook chat where a policy, a Facebook policy director asks, is it really accurate that Facebook is doing research into young mothers and their emotional state? Is it your understanding that there's other research related to young mothers? Answer, yes, I looked at one list of research topics and saw one about young mothers and their emotional state. Coming down, the person says, I'm wondering about asking my apparently morally bankrupt colleagues if they are aware of any more. This is about Facebook's program to target ads to people when they are in emotional distress. Is that right? Is that what we're seeing here? That's correct, Senator. And that included teenage girls, as you were discussing with Senator Blackburn, those who had maybe recently deleted a selfie, maybe not feeling very good about themselves. And Facebook said, oh, oh, fantastic opportunity. We could sell this to advertisers. It apparently also included young mothers who are in moments of distress. I mean, who knows what that might include. Everything from the spilled oatmeal you were trying to put into your toddler's mouth. I have three children, Senator. Or who knows what, much, much worse things. So Facebook is constantly looking for opportunities to sell to advertisers, to make a buck, even on their own users. And they're doing it by tracking their users all over the place, tracking their emotional state. Have I got that accurate? You've got that accurate. And beyond that, it's things like things that often do concern teen girls, like body confidence. That's something else that they use to target weight loss or other things on children, really, 13 to 17 months. So to your knowledge, did Facebook, after this email exchange, where another user says, I think it's a slippery slope here, and then there's the admission there is a level of behavioral targeting. I mean, just to be clear, I want everybody to see this. There is a level of behavioral targeting. I mean, these are Facebook executives. Again, this is a policy director in this chat acknowledging that this is what Facebook is doing. Did it stop? Did Facebook stop doing this? Not to my knowledge, Senator. Yeah, in fact, we know they didn't because other whistleblowers came forward to show that at Instagram, owned by Facebook, there was explicit targeting that goes on. There was explicit knowledge that the Instagram product was causing, in some cases, severe emotional distress, particularly to young girls. Facebook kept right on doing it anyway. Is that just because it made them a bunch of money? Senator, as a mother of three children, it's very hard to say this, but yes, one of the discussions I had with one of the business leaders was like, we just don't need to do this. As a company, Meta is now a trillion-dollar company. It is not short of money. It doesn't need to do this. What he explained to me is like, we've got the most valuable segment of the population. Advertisers really want to reach 13- to 17-year-olds, and we have them. We should be trumpeting it from the rooftops. It's really just extraordinary. I think what we've seen here is the evidence that you presented, the evidence that we have in black and white is a company and leadership that is willing to do anything, anything, work with America's chief competitor, work with our chief adversary, sell out other American businesses, sell out American user data, lie to Congress, lie to the public, anything in order to amass more power and make a buck. Can I just ask you, you know Mark Zuckerberg very well. You've spent a lot of time with him. He's recently tried a reinvention in which he is now a great advocate of free speech after being an advocate of censorship in China and in this country for years, after suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story, after working hand-in-glove with the Biden administration to suppress content on COVID, to suppress content on masks, to suppress content on election questions, on vaccines, all of that. Now that's all wiped away. Now he's on Joe Rogan and says that he is Mr. Free Speech, he is Mr. MAGA, he's a whole new man and his company, they're a whole new company. Do you buy this latest reinvention of Mark Zuckerberg? Senator, there are two things. If he is such a fan of freedom of speech, why is he trying to silence me? And the other thing is that this is a man who wears many different costumes. When I was there, he wanted the president of China to name his first child. He was learning Mandarin. He was censoring to his heart's content. Now his new costume is MMA fighting or whatever, free speech. We don't know what the next costume is going to be, but it will be something different. It's whatever gets him closest to power. If he were here, is there anything you'd like to say to him? Senator, I have a lot of questions for Mark Zuckerberg, but he has proven time and time again that you cannot believe his answers. He's lied to members of Congress, he's lied to his employees, and he's lied to Americans. And that's why I'm asking this committee to hold him accountable. Well, we're going to do that. And I just have to say, I don't trust his latest reinvention at all. He's sat where you have sat in front of this committee multiple times in my short time in the Senate. Every time it's a different answer. Every time it's a different facade. But every time, the one consistent through line is, every time it's something misleading. Every time it's something other than the truth. Every time it's about Mark Zuckerberg, not the American people. It's about Mark Zuckerberg, not what's good for this country, not what's good for his users, not what is the truth. And I, for one, am very tired of it. So I have a message to Mark Zuckerberg as well, which is that it's time for you to tell the truth. You should come to this committee and take an oath and sit where Ms. Wynne Williams is sitting now and answer this evidence. Stop trying to silence her. Stop trying to gag her. Stop trying to hide behind your lawyers and millions of dollars in legal fees you're trying to impose on her. Stop threatening other whistleblowers. Come to this committee. Take the oath. Sit there. Let us question you and give the American people the truth. We will be waiting for you.