Whistleblower tells senators that Meta undermined U.S. security, interests
134 comments
·April 9, 2025imiric
DrScientist
On the other hand these tools do allow individuals to connect and share.
I see it like politics ( at least the way it's managed in the UK ) - democracy means everyone get's to vote, leaflet door to door, politically organise etc. However there are ( in the non-online space ) strict regulations about money not being able to buy a larger voice - political spending is(was) strictly limited. You can't use broadcast media for political ads, apart from the government allocated slots.....
The regulations haven't kept up with the digital world - but they need to. Looking at what unfettered money has done to US politics is all the incentive you need.
One of the core problems is astroturfing is so easy online - money pretending to be people - in the end, I think the only solution is the loss of anonymity online - anonymity enables sock puppetry and astroturfing.
ie if we want to keep people's freedoms online to say what they want ( but within the law ), but at the same time stop money drowning out all voices, then you have to know what's automated and what's real - and people need to be held accountable for what they say or do - that's how the real world works.
You don't need authoritarian laws regulating content - social peer pressure is quite effective - after all democracy is the tyranny of the majority.
midnightblue
> On the other hand these tools do allow individuals to connect and share.
Ok, Mark. That's enough.
Any coder can build a tool that allows individuals to connect and share. It's not a unique feature of Meta tools.
The unique property of Meta is that they have a hegemony. Which is ok.
They went further than that, though, and built the infrastructure for influencing the decisions of individuals. That's no longer ok.
freehorse
Blogging platforms also allow people to connect and share, but are prob less profitable. A lot of the role of blogs was taken over by social media, this created larger networks but with a lot of downsides. But these downsides are not inherent to all the online platforms where people can connect and share.
Clubber
Blogging is typically unidirectional, like TV or radio. You get to hear what someone says, but unless they turn on comments and actually read them, you don't get to have a conversation.
hulitu
> On the other hand these tools do allow individuals to connect and share.
Yes , with the NSA, MI6 and other 3 letter agencies. The best democracy ever.
Hojojo
Honestly, it's crazy that any country allows online media to control the national discourse about politics without having any insight into how the algorithms decide what kind of content is shown to whom and how content is moderated or controlled. Then there's bot/propaganda accounts run by who knows who poisoning any political discussion.
beloch
If you're upset with what Meta does in the U.S., consider that Meta's engagement algorithms played a key roll in driving the Rohingya massacre in Myanmar[1].
"Internal studies dating back to 2012 indicated that Meta knew its algorithms could result in serious real-world harms. In 2016, Meta’s own research clearly acknowledged that “our recommendation systems grow the problem” of extremism."
They knew there was a problem, but refused to act until Myanmar's government shut them down in 2014. After that, their response was half-hearted, inept, and actually made things worse[2].
Governments should not simply be paying attention to what users publish on Facebook, but also how Facebook's algorithms promote material to its users. Meta has demonstrated they will not take preventative action themselves. Meta needs to be carefully and extensively regulated by the government of any jurisdiction Facebook operates in.
It's easy to appreciate concerns that regulating social media could result in state propaganda or censorship. However, regimes likely to do this are probably already using other forms of control anyways. Taking Meta's remorselessly proft-seeking engagement algorithms out of the picture may be the lesser evil by a substantial margin.
[1]https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...
[2]https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2022/09/29/rohingya...
imiric
A valid solution is, of course, authoritarian levels of control over all media outlets. This puts countries like China and Russia at an advantage in this case.
Since most western citizens would object to this, surely middle ground solutions can be found that would prevent abuse and foreign (and domestic) manipulation, while preserving democracy, free speech and individual freedoms. I'm inclined to believe that democracy and authoritarianism doesn't have to be zero-sum, and that a balance can exist that allows societies to prosper even among hostile actors.
vasac
And only ten years ago, during the Arab Spring, social networks were praised for their role.
Wondering what has changed in the meantime.
NikkiA
What has changed is who it affected. Meddling in foreign elections/uprising is the US's MO, but when it's reversed it becomes a problem.
throw1222212121
"To save the public from propaganda, we must implement national controls on all political media dissemination"
rcxdude
More like "let's not have national controls on political media dissemination in the hands of large corporations and hidden from view"
01HNNWZ0MV43FF
"everyone is smart enough to not be fooled by a firehose of addictive misinformation"
You can tell how smart everyone is by looking at our excellent voter turnout, especially in local elections
rayiner
It’s amusing that the right used to complain about “information warfare”—Marxist infiltration of universities, newspapers, and Hollywood—while now the left does so.
emchammer
I don't think that it's a left/right thing. There was a link that appeared here yesterday for a book newly released on Project Gutenberg called Masters of Deception. I went to the library to get a hard copy as it was originally published in 1958. I never thought that I would be agreeing with J Edgar Hoover so much. This is no longer just about Communism.
jgalt212
I'm starting to think very few things are left / right. People pick a team or tribe and stick with it regardless of what a dispassionate analysis of their team's positions actual mean to one's own conscience, values, objective function, whathaveyou.
mrguyorama
"""Used to"""
AtlasBarfed
Communism wasn't an authoritarian movement back then, it was anti authoritarian. What is being opposed is authoritarianism.
China isn't really communist, and neither was the ussr. It's just a regressive authoritarian regime with different propaganda.
Authoritarianism is fundamentally right wing. Freedom for the right wing is fundamentally doublespeak for freedom for the oligarchs to gain power and oppress. Secondarily that freedom to acquire and impose power is granted to racists so the oligarchs have their foot soldiers.
surge
>Authoritarianism is fundamentally right wing.
Go look at a political compass. Authoritarianism is when you use force to push your ideals, whether they be radical/liberal (left) or orthodox/conservative)(right) ideals on a populace with extreme authority. Communism is considered left/radical, if you use government force to make people adopt it, that's using authority, hence authoritarianism. Please learn definitions and political axis before making silly arguments.
China isn't really communist because they tried it and people starved, then they had to go back to capitalism or some degree of it, but kept the authoritarianism, and effectively became some hybrid version that leans fascist.
Communism simply never works at scale, socialism can to an extent, assuming its not abused and there's a homogeneous society with shared cultural values and purpose that includes to contribute and to not abuse it. Hence Nordic socialism, which of course breaks down when you bring in those that don't share those values as its doing now. I've heard enough Swedes bitch about Eastern European migrants abusing their social welfare to say nothing of now to see the idealism fall apart when self interested parties without the same cultural values enter en masse.
Human psychology being about protecting and serving the interests of your tribe and things like "Dunbar's number" and the limit of the number of people you can literally care about and prioritize makes it impossible at scale. Families can be communist, even a small group of 10-50 people (more or less a cult or small tribe), massive populations can not. They simply are not going to work for the benefit of others without receiving something in exchange, unless you use a gun to their head, which is why all communist regimes start out authoritarian, but holding a gun to someone's head for 10-50 years won't change 200k years of evolutionary programming. Hence why Marx is good at pointing out capitalism's flaws, but he's naive and even more fundamentally flawed when it comes to prescribing a solution that does way more harm in the end.
Truth is most successful societies adopt a hybrid solution, socialism at the community or local level where everyone works for a shared purpose and contributes to the local community, whether that be through a church, small local government, etc. with capitalism that allows trade and mutually beneficial deals to happen with those outside of that community.
atVelocet
> …Communism wasn't an authoritarian movement back then…
When and where was that?
rayiner
[flagged]
goldchainposse
> They have threatened her with $50,000 in punitive damages every time she mentions Facebook in public … even if the statements she is making are true,” he said.
Unless Congress asks for the testimony, which is probably why Meta tried to stop the hearing.
Alive-in-2025
But infinitely rich companies can of course bankrupt any ordinary human by suing them over and over again. They already look bad, so it doesn't make them look worse. Why wouldn't they just keep suing her?
JumpCrisscross
> infinitely rich companies can of course bankrupt any ordinary human by suing them over and over again
No. Not only does SLAPP prevent that, a rich, unpopular company trying to silence a whistleblower through tort is running a PR campaign for their legal defence fund.
More realistic: being blacklisted from employment.
ProllyInfamous
>No ... SLAPP prevent[s] that.
Yes and no.
I have successfully defended myself from a SLAPP lawsuit. I have also been arrested. To quote the arresting officer of the unrelated (and questionable) arrest:
"You may beat the rap, but you won't beat the ride!"
Defending yourself with an anti-SLAPP mechanism is expensive, time-consuming, and (even with an attorney) both parties can be made to look foolish.
In my own SLAPP lawsuit, I represented myself (so no attorney fees). I don't recommend others pick fights with megacorporations.
leereeves
gruez
Is that's what's happening here? The bit about suing her "even if the statements she is making are true" makes me think they're not trying to sue her via defamation, but through non-disparagement agreements. If that's the case, I'd hesitate to characterize this as SLAPP. If you voluntarily entered into a non-disparagement agreement and got something in exchange (eg. in exchange for severance or whatever), then at the very least it's slightly different than a journalist or whatever trying to expose some scandal.
avalys
All I see in this story are a bunch of things that were under discussion at some point, but never happened.
But then, “Meta considered doing business in China, evaluated and negotiated with the Chinese government what would be required to do so, and then did not proceed” isn’t a story that is going to sell a lot of books or get her a lot of attention.
Another tell that this is a stunt for attention and not a genuine issue is her trying to blame China’s progress in AI on Meta’s release of an open-source model.
apercu
> But then, “Meta considered doing business in China, evaluated and negotiated with the Chinese government what would be required to do so, and then did not proceed” isn’t a story that is going to sell a lot of books or get her a lot of attention
It could be as simple as Meta did not want to give the Chinese government partial ownership and their IP.
surge
I remember when this happened, it was in the news then, except the conversation was everyone in SV was doing it, including Google. They decided not to. We don't convict for thinking about robbing a bank, you actually have to attempt it and nothing being discussed was explicitly illegal, merely unethical by some arguments, but then again, NSA has several listening posts at AT&T hubs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A), and Apple is building backdoors for iCloud in the UK, its the cost of doing business in western countries, that ethically its simply complying with local laws at that point, just degrees of magnitude.
malshe
Read her book Careless People [1] where she shared many details. A crucial aspect of the China story is that FB/Meta conveyed to the Chinese officials that they were ready to do anything they asked for in the hope that they will be allowed in China.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Careless-People-Cautionary-Power-Idea...
maxglute
IS there a TLDR for why it didn't happen. Reporting at the time said internal dissent (woke/liberal internal culture + worker power) at the time killed the project like it did similar initiative at Google (Project DragonFly).
malshe
I think the book mentions that it did not happen because Xi abruptly shut it all down.
1vuio0pswjnm7
"Hawley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Crime and Counterterrorism Subcommittee, said that Meta or Facebook tried "desperately to prevent" him from holding the hearing.
"They have threatened her with $50,000 in punitive damages every time she mentions Facebook in public ... even if the statements she is making are true," he said. "Facebook is attempting her total and complete financial ruin. They're attempting to destroy her personally, they're attempting to destroy her reputation and I think the question is, `Why?'"
"What is it they are so afraid of?" Hawley asked.""
Meta has a stellar reputation to protect. Honest people doing honest "work".
zombiwoof
Kinda wild this is a buried story. This should be top news
nextworddev
probably a lot of "algorithmic" downvoters
jongjong
It's interesting to think about the way in which the Chinese government operates compared to the government of other countries like the US. The US government was conceived as merely a public utility to fund public works; there was no single ideological basis beyond that. Freedom isn't a "single" ideology because it encapsulates all possible ideologies. The ideology rested with the people themselves to implement on an individual basis. The CCP, on the other hand, was conceived as an ideological movement with specific goals.
Now that the Chinese economy has become so important in the world, the ideological aspects are seeping into the economies of all countries, though it doesn't translate well into western politics. I think this is because the western political system was a limited-trust system, it only worked well when the state was anemic; if the state becomes big (cash-rich), companies will find that they can start to earn significant sums of money from the state, they will redirect their attention to catering to the needs of the state and away from the private sector. Unfortunately the western state has no intrinsic ideology, no intrinsic needs or goals, so it will lead to corruption or faux-adoption of external ideologies (as a means to serve private financial interests).
Western governments cannot form genuine ideological movements (besides the ideology of economic pragmatism) IMO because their foundations aren't designed to support anything besides that. They are founded on the principles of individualism and limited state power.
hluska
Many “western” governments have formed genuine ideological movements. I understand this may be difficult, but what are you actually talking about?
null
486sx33
Precisely why China needs to be a whole lot less important to the world. Freedom and personal liberty actually are ideologies. They don’t encompass every ideology that doesn’t make sense at all.
I’d say CCP and many other governments like Russia and Ukraine are FAR more corrupt than the US. Your argument really doesn’t make sense.
walleeee
> Freedom and personal liberty actually are ideologies.
Feyerabend in particular would likely differ, and say instead that freedom and liberty are what emerge when mature adults democratically order their societies, irrespective (or in spite) of any ideologies used to bind them
egberts1
Yes
Paul Feyerabend, a philosopher of science, argued that true freedom and liberty arise when individuals actively and democratically shape their societies, free from the dominance of any single ideology, including science. He contended that science, often regarded as the ultimate path to knowledge, is merely one of many traditions and should not hold a privileged position in society. Feyerabend advocated for a “democratic relativism,” emphasizing equal rights for all traditions and proposing a separation between the state and any specific ideology, akin to the separation of church and state. He believed that this approach would allow individuals to live according to their own values and beliefs, fostering a more inclusive and liberated society.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0020174800860189...
Feyerabend, P. (1980). Democracy, Elitism, and Scientific Method. Inquiry, 23(1), 3–18.
analog31
I'd love to know the reference for that. I've read a couple of Feyerabend's books, but it was years ago, and I gave them away, but would not mind taking another look.
EasyMark
And China has no corruption or grifting in the government? I do not believe that at all. I reckon it's just as rife as any western government. What the do get right is long term planning and sticking to it, but giving it a time limit (5 years) and the reevaluate priorities. The American government literally has several founding documents and a purpose, I don't see how you think otherwise? Can cronyism happen? Sure, no one is denying that. However what set us apart during the recent downturn is we had some of the most free trade in the world. Now Trump is wrecking that with tariffs and short sighted "look a squirrel!" tactics.
squigz
The effects of decades of American propaganda at work...
neuroelectron
Not really surprising. I'm sure all the major tech companies are engaged in this kind of deal making. The influence of China over Amazon is obvious and there has been cases of algorithmic tampering and account unlocking in their favor.
lazyeye
You can watch the full Facebook whistleblower hearing here:-
vasco
If you're a director of global public policy for seven years, who are you really whistleblowing, the company, or yourself?
I appreciate the information coming out, but in some of these situations I can't help but picture that "the worst person in the room" in regards to the offenses might also end up being the person that then becomes the most holier than thou when they get out of the company.
If you ever met someone who used to work in software ads and ask them about privacy you'll get what I mean.
Capricorn2481
Everything is incentives of the company. People are not told to do something evil, they're told "We don't have the budget to look into that" or "don't do that until we hear from the higher-ups."
I'm disinterested in who made what call because ultimately it's designed to be nebulous. Someone breaking out of that horrific cycle and telling us what it leads to is a good thing. Even though it will likely lead to nothing, like it did with Sophie Zhang [1]
[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook...
FrancisMoodie
I get your point, but also, so what? The point of this whistle-blowing is that the public gets to make informed decisions about these companies that provide us with services that much of us use daily, and that the government gets a chance to figure out whether this is the truth or not and take actions accordingly. It's not about who is guilty right now but what needs to be done to prevent this in the future, IMO.
And whatever she might be guilty of doing, the chances of her ever having the same access to sensitive information in any company has gone drastically down after coming forward with this information.
Aurornis
> And she says she has the “documents” to back up her accusations.
Then show those documents? It's hard to take these allegations seriously when the mysterious proof is only alluded to, not submitted as part of the testimony.
bbatsell
Almost certainly blocked by NDA; that is her inviting Congress to issue a subpoena so she has legal cover.
Aurornis
A corporate NDA doesn't block someone from cooperating with legal proceedings or submitting evidence to a hearing.
lokar
And an NDA being void due to such a situation does not stop the company from taking legal action against, costing you lots of money and time to defend
jvanderbot
Exactly what legal proceedings though? That's the point.
stackskipton
You can end up in legal quandary where you fight over exactly what NDA can and cannot cover. Congressional Subpoena would put her on much firmer legal standing. My guess is her lawyers recommended this strategy.
hluska
Why did you just make up a legal proceeding? There are no proceedings (yet) - that is the entire point of this.
filoleg
It is even harder to take the accusations seriously, given that she made factually provably wrong statements that contradict the reality (and the original article in the OP actually contrasted those very plainly and directly, gotta commend good journalism there).
> Wynn-Willias told senators that Meta built a “physical pipeline connecting the United States and China” and executives “ignored warnings that this would provide backdoor access to the Chinese Communist Party, allowing them to intercept the personal data and private messages of American citizens.”
> She said that China does not currently have access to U.S. user data only because Congress “stepped in.”
> The pipeline to China mentioned by the whistleblower, the Pacific Light Cable, was never completed.
> The cable, which was first announced in 2016 with support from Facebook, Google and other companies, was envisioned as a high-capacity fiberoptic undersea cable running thousands of miles under the Pacific Ocean connecting Los Angeles and Hong Kong.
> Bloomberg reported in 2020 that Facebook, Google and other companies abandoned their plans to link the U.S. to Hong Kong. They revised their proposal to build the link only as far as Taiwan and the Philippines, according to Bloomberg.
Real talk, I have zero idea how she could explain this one away, other than with “it came to me in a dream.”
MeetingsBrowser
This is mentioned in her book. In the book she says Meta wanted to build the pipeline, despite the warnings. But yes, ultimately the construction fell through.
She is not claiming the pipeline exists today.
filoleg
I am really curious to hear what evidence there is of that high-capacity fiberoptic undersea cable connecting LA to Hong-Kong (being worked on by many companies like Google/Meta/etc.) ever having any plans of being used as a “backdoor” for China to intercept all the user data.
Either there is some massive grand conspiracy going on between all those different companies (a good number of which have exactly zero products or revenue or business presence in China) and the Chinese government or, which I am leaning more towards given the claims, this is all just oversensationalized lies.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and so far we only got the “bush did 9/11” level of evidence for claims that are arguably even more wild and convoluted than that.
The author, for example, also claims that “yeah, this was all according to the plan, until congress stepped in to stop the fiberoptic cable due to those concerns.” Any record of congress doing that for those reasons?
What about existing fiberoptic cables going through China right now? Are those cables not as special or useful for that purpose? Why not?
I am not even defending China and their approaches. I am familiar with deep packet traffic inspection and other things of a similar nature their government does. But that’s not a blanket excuse to just claim wild massive multinational conspiracies involving so many actors, all without as much as even good reason for why it would even make sense for them all to cooperate.
maxglute
>ultimately the construction fell through
It was part of the ongoing subsea cable wars, US wanted to squeeze PRC from subsea infra game a few years ago and sanctioned a bunch of PRC companies which disrupted projects.
hluska
[flagged]
sudoshred
Suicide by heart attack is imminent.
gradientsrneat
I despise Facebook for many reasons, privacy being a major factor. On the other hand, both Trump and Musk own competing social media companies, and the CEOs of other social media companies have attempted to curry their favor. So, there is a potential for conflict of interest here, which could lead to a misproportion of due process. Or, regardless of truthfulness, some form of leverage. Or the trial is just for show. Maybe the accusations are true, but there's a reason this person is coming forward now.
travisgriggs
Won’t matter. A handful of judges will use big words, cite legalese, and it won’t matter.
Every time I think “but the law/constitution won’t allow…” there’s some end run.
The rule of law is only as good as thems that rule the law.
A whistleblower is not required to determine that Meta, and all adtech companies, have been severely damaging not just to the US, but to all governments and societies where these platforms are used. They don't need to collude with any adversarial government for this to be true.
The same tools built to manipulate people into buying things, are used to manipulate them into thinking and acting in ways that could be beneficial to someone. Advertising and propaganda use the same tactics, after all. When these tools are accessible to anyone, including political adversaries, it would be naive to think that they're not being used for information warfare.
The Cambridge Analytica leak was just the tip of the iceberg. These companies and agencies are still operating at a global scale, and business is booming. Why adtech companies weren't heavily investigated and regulated after this became public is beyond me. These are matters of national security, which anyone sane would consider more important than any financial or practical value they might have.
Banning TikTok was a step in the right direction, but that's far from the only service that needs to be heavily regulated. And even that decision is flip-flopped and very controversial, so the idea of going beyond must be unthinkable. Yet not doing so will lead to the eventual downfall of the US, and the current western hegemony. The instability we're seeing now is just the beginning, and my only hope is that it doesn't escalate to a major global conflict.