Ex-Meta employee alleges user surveillance, censorship, and AI misuse
A former Meta director of global public policy testified before the US Senate that Meta surveilled user data, provided it to the Chinese government, developed AI tools for Chinese military and commercial use, and exploited emotional vulnerabilities of adolescents in targeted advertising. Meta denied the allegations as false.
What happened
In a US Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism hearing on 10 April 2025, Sarah Wynn-Williams, former director of global public policy at Facebook/Meta and current diplomat for New Zealand, testified that Meta provided user data to the Chinese government, used censorship tools against critics of China, and developed AI prototypes for China's commercial and military purposes.
Wynn-Williams stated that Meta provided the code for its Llama AI model to the Chinese Communist Party to 'undermine US national security and betray American values', and that the company used a tool giving the Chinese government the ability to take down posts in Chinese territory.
Wynn-Williams also testified that Meta identified adolescents who felt useless, helpless, or like failures, and shared this emotional data with advertisers to target them with products, including using actions like deleting a selfie as a signal to display beauty products.
Reported impact
Meta allegedly exploited the emotional vulnerabilities of adolescents to increase the effectiveness of advertising and product sales targeting.
Governance controls
Meta denied the allegations as false and out of touch with reality. The company also filed a lawsuit to ban Wynn-Williams' book 'Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism', citing a non-defamation clause in her severance agreement from her 2017 departure, though the injunction did not prevent the publisher from distributing the book.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.