- Facebook was to allow nation-state censorship in China.
- Allegations appear at same time as whistle-blower memoir’s publication.
- Rolling mediation up or out contingent on profit.
According to a former global policy director at Meta (called Facebook at the time), the company tried its hardest to enable the Chinese government to monitor and censor the Facebook platform in 2014, in an attempt to gain the platform access to the lucrative Chinese market.
Former executive turned whistle-blower Sarah Wynn-Williams, whose work involved overseeing policy for China, claims the company was willing to shut down the proposed Facebook service in China had it been directed to do so by a ‘chief editor,’ to be appointed by the Chinese authorities. The same role had the power to arbitrate what content was and wasn’t allowed on the Facebook platform, effectively controlling what the Chinese public would be able to see and share.
The allegations are detailed in a 78 page document seen by The Washington Post [MSN frame], part of a complaint Ms Wynn-Williams has made to the SEC (the US Security and Exchange Commission) about her treatment by the company.
Ms Wynn-Williams was fired from her position at Meta in 2017, shortly after sexual harassment claims against her then-boss, Joel Kaplan, were held to be unfounded. In addition to the claims concerning the alleged harassment and those regarding policies developed for Facebook’s proposed operations in China, the complaint brought to the SEC posits that Facebook made incomplete and misleading statements to Congress about the company’s relationship with China around that period.
A personal memoir by Sara Wynn-Williams is due for publication today, despite concerns that its arrival may prejudice proceedings at the SEC. The memoir covers six years Ms Wynn-Williams spent at Facebook, including time spent accompanying CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other top executives to high-level meetings around the world with government ministers and business figures.
Nation-state censorship
Ms Wynn-Williams describes in the SEC filings the lengths Facebook was willing to go to ensure it could operate in China. The company had apparently developed software that would allow the removal from the platform of materials that were critical of the Chinese government, and allow the ruling party to monitor all content. The SEC filing also claims that Mr Zuckerberg agreed at the time to pressure a high-profile Chinese dissident who was resident in the US.
In January this year, Mr Zuckerberg indicated a shift in Meta’s approach to posts on the platform, claiming a relaxation in content moderation was designed to reduce censorship and “restore free expression.” The company has significantly rolled-back moderation staffing and fact-checking mechanisms to further those aims. Meta has removed restrictions on posting about topics that many consider inflammatory, including issues around transgender issues, abortion, race, and immigration to the US.
Joel Kaplan, named by Ms Wynn-Williams as the perpetrator of her alleged sexual harassment, stated on Fox News after Mr Zuckerberg’s announcement, that Meta had been “too restrictive” in the past with regards to its censorship and moderation policies.
The move towards a less-regulated social media is in line with the present US government’s political approach, exemplified by the closeness between president Donald Trump and Twitter’s owner, Elon Musk. Technology industry executives have been at pains to express their support for the new president’s laissez-faire approach to online content. The administration and its Republican supporters have expressed complaints in the past about political bias on social media, seeing platforms’ censorship efforts as attempts to curtail what it terms freedom of speech.
Sara Wynn-Williams’ allegations about then-Facebook’s Chinese nation-state censorship policy point to an approach by the company that is focused on revenue generation, rather than the expression of a coherent and long-term moral framework. By offering methods by which the platform’s content could be radically censored by a foreign government, Meta showed that it was capable of and willing to commit the necessary resources to censorship for the betterment of its business objectives.
The current roll-back of content mediation on Meta is politically motivated and is being undertaken for the health of the company’s finances. No one should be surprised that measures were taken to move the censorship needle in a diametrically-opposed direction in or around 2014: financial not moral consistency is main driver of Zuckerberg and similar holders of executive positions in the technology industry.
