Meta (NASDAQ:META) was willing to censor political content and shut down political dissent in a failed attempt to enter the lucrative Chinese market, The Washington Post reported Sunday, citing a whistleblower complaint by a former global policy director at the company.
The social media giant was so "desperate" to enter China, that it was willing to let the Chinese Communist Party oversee all social media content and suppress dissenting opinions, the report said, citing the complaint by Sarah Wynn-Williams, who was part of a team handling Meta's (META) China policy.
Meta (META) platforms including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, along with other global social media players are banned in China, a country with one of the most sophisticated and extensive censorship regimes in the world.
Facebook, along with Twitter (now known as X), and Google (GOOGL) (GOOG) were first blocked in China in 2009, after riots occurred in Xinjiang, a special autonomous region in western China.
Despite Meta (META) founder Mark Zuckerberg's several high-profile visits to the world's second-largest economy, the company has been unable to establish a foothold in the country.
Zuckerberg in recent years has stepped up criticism of the Chinese government, warning in 2019 that the country was "exporting their vision of the internet to other countries."
The company has reportedly funded American Edge, a nonprofit that has run campaigns criticizing China and ByteDance (BDNCE)- owned short video platform TikTok.
Earlier this week, Joe Kaplan, Meta's (META) chief global affair officer said the company would work with the U.S. administration to "keep the U.S. at the cutting edge of AI and make sure the global AI standard is based on our shared values, not China's."
"For many years Meta has been working hand in glove with the Chinese Communist Party, briefing them on the latest technological developments and lying about it," said Wynn-Williams to the Washington Post. "People deserve to know the truth."
According to the report, Meta (META) developed a censorship system for China in 2015 and was willing to hire a "chief editor" who would decide what content to remove and have the power to shut down the entire site during times of social unrest.
Zuckerberg was willing to crack down on a high-profile Chinese dissident living in the United States following pressure from a high-ranking Chinese official in order to curry favor with the country, the report said.
Meta (META) executives repeatedly "stonewalled and provided nonresponsive or misleading information" to American investors and regulators about the company's efforts to enter China, the report said.
"This is all pushed by an employee terminated eight years ago for poor performance. We do not operate our services in China today. It is no secret we were once interested in doing so as part of Facebook’s effort to connect the world," said a Meta (META) spokesperson.
"This was widely reported beginning a decade ago. We ultimately opted not to go through with the ideas we'd explored, which Mark Zuckerberg announced in 2019," the spokesperson added.
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