Facebook with China was ‘hand in hand’, BBC told

A former senior Facebook executive has told the BBC how the social media giant worked with the Chinese government on the possible ways to control the sensor and control material in China with the Chinese government.

Sara Vyan -Villiams – a former global public policy director – in exchange for achieving access to the Chinese market of hundreds of crores of users, Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg agreed to hide the posts that were going viral, until they could be tested by Chinese authorities.

Ms. Williams – who claims in a new book – has also filed a whistleblower complaint with the US market regulators, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in which Meta has misled investors. The BBC has reviewed the complaint.

Facebook’s original company Meta says that Ms. Vinn-Villiams abolished her employment in 2017 for a “poor performance”.

This is not “no secret” in operating services in China. “We eventually opted to not go with the ideas we discovered.”

Meta referred to us to mark Zuckerberg’s comments since 2019, when he said: “We could never agree what would happen to operate us there, and they (China) never let us go inside.”

Facebook also used algorithms, when young teenage advertisers were feeling weak as part of the research, Ms. Vyan-Williams alleged.

A former New Zealand diplomat, she joined Facebook in 2011, and says that she saw the company growing from the “Front Row seat”.

She now wants to show some “decisions and moral compromises” that she says that when she was there. This is an important moment, she says, “Many of the people I worked with are going to be central” for the introduction of AI.

In her memoir, in careless people, Ms. Vinn-Villiams has portrayed a picture that she accused the senior Facebook team of working.

Mr. Zuckerberg, she says, did not get up before noon, loved Karaoke and did not like to beat in board games like risk. “I didn’t realize that you were going to let him win. I was a little naive,” he told us.

However, Ms. Vyan-Delhi says her allegations about the company’s close ties with China provide an insight into Facebook’s decision at that time.

Ms. Vyan-Villiams says, “China is Mark Zuckerberg’s white whale, which means that she is a goal that he pursues obsessed obsessed.

The country is the largest social media market in the world, but access to Facebook with the choice of X and YouTube is blocked there.

“This is a piece on the board game that she has not won,” she says.

Ms. Vyan-Villiams claim that in the mid-2010s, as part of its interaction with the Chinese government, Facebook considering it allowing future access to user data of Chinese citizens.

“He was working in gloves with the Chinese Communist Party, creating a censorship tool … originally working to develop the antigensis of several principles that underlined Facebook,” he told the BBC.

Ms. Vyan-Villiams say that governments often asked for an explanation of how Facebook’s software aspects worked, but were told that it was ownership information.

“But when it came to the sugar, the curtain was pulled back,” she says.

“Engineers were brought out. They had gone through every aspect, and Facebook was making sure that these Chinese authorities were adequately upcised that they could not only learn these products, but then test Facebook on the censorship version of these products that they were building.”

Meta told the BBC that such claims about China were “widely reported” at that time.

In her SEC complaint, Ms. Vyan-Villiams also alleged Mr. Zuckerberg and other meta officials that in response to Congress interrogation about China, “misleading statements …”.

An answer given by Mr. Zuckerberg to the Congress in 2018 said that Facebook “was not in a position to know how (Chinese) government would like to apply its laws and regulations to content”

Meta told the BBC that Mr. Zuckerberg gave accurate testimony, saying that it does not operate services in China.

Most Facebook officials did not allow their children on Facebook – according to Ms. Vyan -Villiams. “They had a screen restriction. They would definitely not allow them to use the product.”

And yet she says Report from 2017 – That the company was using algorithms to target and classify weak teenagers – true.

“The algorithm could guess that they were feeling useless or unhappy,” she accuses.

Company – who owns Instagram and WhatsApp – she can claim that when a teenage girl removed a selfie on her platforms, and then informed a beauty company that it would be a good moment to target the child with an advertisement.

Ms. Vyan-Villiams say she felt “sick” in the idea and tried to push back, “though I knew it was meaningless”.

“He said: ‘The business side feels that this is what we should do. We have got this amazing product, we can get young people, which is actually an important advertising segment.”

Meta told the BBC that it was wrong – it has never offered equipment to target people on the basis of its emotional situation – and not to target advertisements to help the Viponist to understand the Viponist who had done earlier, how people express themselves on Facebook.

Overall, Ms. Vyan-Ciliums say the company has not enough to address the issue of safety of young people on social media.

“It is one of the most valuable companies in the world. They can invest in it and make it a real priority and do more to fix it.”

Facebook said that it was transparent about advertising and goal Had shared updates about your approach To create an age-appropriate advertising experience for the teenager.

It also said that it introduced “adolescent accounts” for millions of youth with underlying security. It was also said that it was giving more monitoring to parents on the use of their teenage apps.

Along with poor performance, Meta says that the 45-year-old was also fired for “toxic behavior”, as he “misleading and harassing allegations”.

But Ms. Vyan -Villiams told the BBC that she was allowed to leave when she complained about an inappropriate comments by one of her owners – Joel Coupon, who is now the main global affairs officer of Meta.

Meta told us that she was paid by “anti-facebook workers” and was not a whistleblower.

“The situation of whistleblower protects communication to the government, not trying to sell books to disgruntled workers,” said this.

In relation to the book of Ms. Vyan-Viliams, Meta has confirmed the BBC that it has initiated legal action to “stop further distribution” in the US.

To compete this, a legal representative for Ms. Vyan-Viliums said: “Meta has made many false and inconsistent statements about Sara because the news of her memoir is broken … while Meta’s statements are trying to mislead the public, the book speaks for itself”

We asked her why she was speaking now. She said she wanted the meta to change because it “affects our day to day life” and we need to ensure that “we deserve the future”.

“We are in the moment where technology and political leaders are coming together and as soon as they combine forces, there are lots of results for all of us.

“I think this is really important to understand and to understand that you see all these engineers that are affecting the highest level of the government.”