Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams told a US Congressional committee that the company had made significant human rights compromises in order to further its business interests in China.

Wynn-Williams, a former New Zealand diplomat, held the post of Director of Global Public Policy at Meta until 2017. In her role, she worked closely with Meta’s top executives, including Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg.

In 2011, when Wynn-Williams joined the company, she was fascinated by the potential of social media to make connections between people and its potential as a political force. She felt that joining the company at a point when leadership was just beginning to think about global policy work was the best way of making a difference.

Eight years later, her perspective had changed dramatically.

In April 2025, Sarah Wynn-Wlliams testified before a US Senate sub-committee that Meta, which runs Facebook, had made serious compromises with the Chinese government to advance its commercial interests in the region. These compromises, she claimed, included agreement to share user data with the Chinese authorities, deleting the accounts of well-known dissidents, and developing applications that enabled government surveillance. She also alleged that Meta staff had been briefing Chinese officials on emerging technologies since 2015.

Although Meta publicly maintains that it does not do business in China, Wynn-Williams told Congress this was dishonest. The company, she noted, continues to accept advertising revenue from China-based entities, which are highly lucrative.

In 2022, Wynn-Williams filed a shareholder motion urging Meta’s board to investigate these issues. In early 2025 she also submitted whistleblower disclosures to the SEC and DOJ. Among her broader allegations are claims that Meta deliberately used algorithms to target young people.

Following her departure, Wynn-Williams says she faced a campaign of legal intimidation from Meta, which enforced a non-disparagement clause in her 2017 separation agreement—designed, she argues, to silence her even in Congressional testimony.

In March 2025, Wynn-Williams published Careless People, a memoir detailing her experiences at Meta. In it, she describes Meta’s relentless work ethic – which led to her feeling obliged to write talking points while she was in labour and Mark Zuckerberg’s personal obsession about getting Facebook permission to operate in China. In 2014, the company was already poised to grant the Chinese government access to data of Facebook users in Hong Kong.

In Wynn-Williams’ account, Mark Zuckerberg became interested in Facebook’s influence on global politics from about this time, at which point the leadership of Meta was becoming increasingly personalised – if a head of state contacted Zuckerberg to complain about a particular post, he would send a message down the line that it should be deleted.

While Meta’s leadership was prepared to appease world leaders in some ways, in others it wanted to maintain control. Wynn-Williams describes the emergence of a policy that the company should use its influence over political advertising in order to avoid political pressure it perceived as unhelpful, be that new tax arrangements in European countries or Brazil and India’s resistance towards adopting the controversial internet.org initiative. In picking fights with governments, Wyn-Williams alleged that Meta adopted a cavalier attitude to employees being arrested.

Eventually, after seven years working under incredible stress, Sarah Wynn-Williams almost died while giving birth to her second child. She was seriously unwell for months afterwards but the demands from work kept coming in. The experience confirmed her gut feeling that, whatever the consequences for her family’s income and her health insurance, she would have to find another job.

The final breaking point comes in 2016, when it is brought home to Mark Zuckerberg how much of a role Facebook played in the election of Donald Trump, and his reaction is to consider a presidential run himself. Then the New York Times and UN investigators make public the dire consequences of Facebook’s inadequate policing of hate speech and manipulation in Myanmar. Finally, she is prevented from finding a different role in the company due to sexual harassment and is abruptly fired.

Meta was not happy about Wynn-Williams’ memoir. The company responded with legal action, seeking to suppress specific allegations in the book and threatening Wynn-Wlliams with punitive damages of US$50,000 for any public repetition. Meta secured a gag order. As a result, Wynn-Williams is barred from promoting the book or speaking publicly about its contents, despite its commercial success.

Meta’s manoeuvres have brought Wynn-Williams close to bankruptcy and she has described the financial pressure she is facing as severe. In September 2025, during a debate on a bill that would restrict the use of abusive non-disclosure clauses in separation agreements, British MP Louise Haigh raised Wynn-Williams’ case in Parliament, warning that Meta is attempting to “silence and punish” her.

A former colleague at Meta has corroborated Wynn-Williams’ allegations.