Few things are more delightful than witnessing a massive corporation stumble spectacularly, and that’s exactly what’s happening with Meta. Last week, the release of “Careless People,” a whistleblowing exposé by former senior Meta employee Sarah Wynn-Williams, sent shockwaves through the company. In response, Meta’s frantic legal team tried to ban the book immediately through the Emergency International Arbitral Tribunal. In an attempt to silence her, the tribunal sternly ordered Wynn-Williams not to speak or write anything disparaging about Meta, its leaders, or its staff. Macmillan, the book’s publisher, quickly countered with a blunt response equivalent to, “No way.”
It seems Meta is unfamiliar with the Streisand effect, which is when attempts to hide information only draw more attention to it. Their efforts have only guaranteed that Wynn-Williams’s scathing critique [which you can find in our review in the New Review] is destined to become a bestseller worldwide.
Amusingly, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO and self-proclaimed free speech champion—at least as defined by the Trump era—seems bent on stifling Wynn-Williams’s bold revelations. This contradiction, known in the old days as hypocrisy, is something Wynn-Williams is well-versed in, thanks to her six years in Zuckerberg’s inner sanctum.
Wynn-Williams has played her cards wisely. Meta was blindsided by her moves. She followed a strategic playbook reminiscent of Frances Haugen, another Facebook whistleblower, by lodging a pre-publication complaint with the SEC and providing the Washington Post with its contents. Additionally, she recorded a captivating interview with Emily Maitlis and made a notable appearance on Steve Bannon’s entertaining podcast.
A poignant theme in Wynn-Williams’s narrative is how Meta mirrors its CEO’s personality, akin to Microsoft’s era under Bill Gates. Thanks to Zuckerberg’s unique stock arrangement, he holds complete control over Meta. Their filings with the SEC routinely highlight that he could sell the company despite shareholder or board opposition.
Under this setup, Meta has followed Zuckerberg’s directives, often obsessively pursuing user growth. To him, world domination was like a strategic board game, with China as the elusive territory that eluded conquest. Wynn-Williams’s 78-page SEC filing, seen by the Washington Post, reveals that Meta relentlessly strategized to penetrate the colossal Chinese market.
These strategies included developing a 2015 censorship model for China that allowed a “chief editor” to decide on content removal; forming a “China team” in 2014 to create compliant versions of Meta services; contemplating reduced privacy measures for Hong Kong users; crafting an automated censorship system; and restricting the Chinese government critic Guo Wengui’s account on suggestion from a Chinese internet regulator. These initiatives ceased only when both Trump and Biden recognized China as a strategic adversary to the U.S.
During her stint at Meta, Wynn-Williams witnessed these efforts firsthand. Her whistleblowing offers a rare glimpse into the inner workings of a major tech firm, drawing parallels with the oil, mining, and tobacco giants of the past. These tech giants, largely American, have aligned with Trump, their fortunes now deeply tied to U.S. state interests.
This alignment has profound implications for the UK. Any government effort to regulate companies like Meta, X (formerly Twitter), or Amazon might be seen by Trump as economic hostility. It’s time for leaders like Starmer to muster the courage to break away from the AI rhetoric pushed by the Tony Blair Institute and confront the troubling subservience shown by officials like Peter Kyle to American tech moguls.
John Naughton, who serves as a professor of public understanding of technology at the Open University, raises an essential concern for national security in the presence of such dynamics.
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