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Senate Probes Meta Over Alleged Censorship Tools and Data Sharing Ties with Chinese Communist Party, Whistleblower Testifies

US Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, on Wednesday organized a hearing about Meta’s alleged work to develop custom censorship tools for China’s Communist Party (CCP) and share user data with China – which Meta denies.

Whistleblower and former Facebook Director Global Policy Sara Wynn-Williams, who left the company at some point around 2018, presented her testimony during the hearing dubbed, “A Time for Truth: Oversight of Meta’s Foreign Relations and Representations to the United States Congress.”

Senator Josh Hawley, who chaired the meeting, showed internal Facebook documents that Wynn-Williams previously shared with Congress, that appeared to corroborate the whistleblower’s claims.

Wynn-Williams accused Meta executives of “repeatedly” undermining US national security and betraying American values as they allegedly set out to build “an $18 billion business in China” and work directly with the CCP, including censoring a Chinese dissident.

According to her testimony, Meta executives are guilty of lying to employees, shareholders, Congress, and the American public about the giant’s dealings with China, which she dubbed “illegal and dangerous,” dating back to 2015.

One of Wynn-Williams’ allegations is that Facebook’s “moderation” tools for the CCP allowed those using them to censor access to content in entire regions, or on particular dates, such as the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Wynn-Williams also claimed that Meta was willing to allow access to user data, including that of Americans, as it built a physical pipeline between the US and China, which the latter country could have used to intercept information.

“The only reason China does not currently have access to US user data through this pipeline is because Congress stepped in,” she told the committee.

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Sen. Hawley Considers Criminal Referral for Zuckerberg — Demands Testimony Under Oath After Whistleblower Exposes Meta’s Dangerous Collusion with Communist China

The globalist empire of Big Tech is being dragged into the light, and U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) is leading the charge.

In a scathing letter sent Thursday, Hawley invited Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, following explosive testimony from a former Meta executive turned whistleblower.

Sarah Wynn-Williams, who served as Facebook’s Director of Global Public Policy from 2011 to 2017, delivered a bombshell under oath: Meta didn’t just sell out American users — it surrendered to the Chinese Communist Party.

In her riveting testimony, Wynn-Williams exposed Meta’s secret project—code-named “Project Aldrin”—an initiative that allegedly handed China’s Communist regime access to sensitive U.S. artificial intelligence technologies.

Her most alarming claim? That Meta executives deliberately briefed Chinese officials on cutting-edge AI to give Beijing the upper hand over American companies.

“These briefings focused on critical emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence – explicit goal being to help China outcompete American companies,” said Wynn-Williams.

She warned that Meta’s LLaMA AI model is already being used by China in military applications and stated that the only reason the CCP doesn’t currently have unrestricted access to U.S. user data is because Congress intervened.

This is no longer just about privacy—it’s about national survival in the face of an aggressive foreign adversary, aided and abetted by America’s own Big Tech titans.

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Meta Keeps Big MAGA Accounts on Ban List as Mark Zuckerberg Lobbies Trump

Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly lobbying the Trump administration to drop a pivotal FTC case against the company, in what would amount to a major political favor for Meta. Despite Zuckerberg’s multiple olive branches to the Turmp administration, a number of high-profile, pro-MAGA voices are still banned on Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Mark Zuckerberg has made regular visits to the White House urging the president to lean on the FTC to drop its case against Meta. If the FTC were to prevail in the case, Meta could be forced to divest from WhatsApp and Instagram, breaking up the company.

In January, Zuckerberg made several public overtures to the Trump administration, praising parts of its policy platform in an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience, and criticizing the outgoing Biden administration for its censorship demands during COVID. Zuckerberg also announced a policy pivot at Meta, promising to “get back to our roots” of supporting free speech.

Despite these pledges, several prominent anti-establishment figures remain banned on Meta platforms:

  • Laura Loomer, investigative journalist and former Republican congressional candidate who was recently credited with influencing a shakeup at the NSC.
  • Tommy Robinson, the prominent British political activist and critic of Islam.
  • Alex Jones
  • Paul Joseph Watson
  • Gavin McInnes
  • Milo Yiannopoulos, self-styled “civil rights icon” and former Breitbart News editor.

It is also unclear if Meta still maintains its “hate agents”  list of prominent anti-establishment voices uncovered by Breitbart News in 2019 that included political candidates. Or if the company has taken any steps to remedy the mass-censorship of WhatsApp accounts in Brazil, which extended to Flavio Bolsonaro, son of persecuted former president Jair Bolsonaro. In a comment to Breitbart News, the company denied it has continued to maintain its documented list of hate agents.

As the FTC trial date draws closer, Meta has drawn flak from the conservative commentariat.

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Whistleblower Drops Bombshell During Senate Hearing: Accuses Facebook (Meta) of Secretly Aiding China in Undermining U.S. National Security 

A former Meta executive turned whistleblower just dropped a political nuke that has rocked Capitol Hill and should terrify every American who values freedom, privacy, and national sovereignty.

Sarah Wynn-Williams, once Facebook’s director of global public policy (now Meta), appeared before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism on Wednesday and leveled jaw-dropping allegations against her former employer.

That Meta knowingly briefed the Chinese Communist Party on advanced U.S. technologies, including artificial intelligence, beginning in 2015—just to get a seat at Beijing’s lucrative tech table.

“These briefings focused on critical emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence – explicit goal being to help China outcompete American companies,” said Wynn-Williams, who worked at the social media giant from 2011 to 2017, according to the New York Post.

“There’s a straight line you can draw from these briefings to the recent revelations that China is developing AI models for military use, relying on Meta’s Llama model,” she added.

Project Aldrin, as it was known internally, was Meta’s covert initiative to worm its way into the Chinese market. But according to Wynn-Williams, it wasn’t just about business—it was about compromise.

Her testimony details how Meta’s briefings helped the CCP leapfrog U.S. competitors by giving them insights into emerging technologies meant to secure America’s future.

Her disclosures didn’t stop at AI. Wynn-Williams also revealed that Meta built a censorship engine for the CCP in 2015, and in 2017, willingly took down accounts belonging to Chinese dissident Guo Wengui after pressure from Beijing.

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100+ Meta employees, including Head of AI Policy, confirmed as ex-IDF

Meta’s recruitment of vast numbers of former Israeli soldiers raises serious questions about the tech giant’s commitment to free speech – and provides a peek into a biased content moderation process that’s been heavily censoring pro-Palestinian accounts amid the Israeli siege of Gaza.

This article was originally published by ¡Do Not Panic!

More than one hundred former Israeli spies and IDF soldiers work for tech giant Meta, including its head of AI policy, who served in the IDF under an Israeli government scheme that allows non-Israelis to volunteer for the Israeli army.

Shira Anderson, an American international rights lawyer, is Meta’s AI policy chief who voluntarily enlisted for the IDF in 2009 under a program which enables non-Israeli Jews who aren’t eligible for military conscription to join the Israeli army.

Through this program, known as Garin Tzabar, many non-Israelis who have fought for the IDF have been implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity since Israel’s genocide of Gaza began in October 2023.

Anderson served as a non-commissioned officer in the IDF for over two years where she worked in the Military Strategic Information Section, writing dossiers and public relations propaganda for the IDF. She was also the liaison between the IDF and foreign military attaches stationed in Israel, and liaison to the Red Cross.

With AI a critical emerging technology for tech giants and militaries, Anderson’s role at Meta is an important one. She develops the legal guidance, policies and public relations talking points concerning AI issues and regulation for all of Meta’s key areas, including its product, public policy and government affairs teams.

At Meta, Anderson, who is based in Meta’s Washington DC office, is in familiar company. More than one hundred former Israeli spies and IDF soldiers are employed by the company, my new investigation shows, many of whom worked for Israel’s spy agency Unit 8200.

These ex-IDF members are based evenly across Meta’s US offices and in its Tel Aviv office, and a significant number of them, like Anderson, have a specialization in AI. Given that Israel has made extensive use of AI not just to conduct its genocide, but to establish its prior system of apartheid, surveillance and occupation, Meta’s recruiting of IDF AI specialists is particularly insidious. Did these former Israeli spies use their Unit 8200 connections to help the tech giant collaborate with the IDF to build kill lists? According to a report last year, Unit 8200 infiltrated WhatsApp groups and marked every name in a group for assassination if just one alleged Hamas member was also in the group, no matter the size or content of the group chat.

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Facebook To Shut Down Fact-Checking Program On Monday: ‘Officially Over’

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced Friday that its fact-checking program in the United States would be “officially over” on Monday, when it will roll out the community notes feature across all platforms.

The news comes after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in January that the company would end fact-checking and move to restore free speech on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Starting Monday, fact-checkers will no longer be able to rate new content, and old fact-checks placed on content will no longer appear.

Instead of fact-checks, Meta will adopt an X-style community notes system where users can add context to posts, which are then rated by other users. Anyone will be able to sign up to be a contributor to community notes if they are over 18 and have had a verified account for over six months.

Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, announced the changes on Friday.

“By Monday afternoon, our fact-checking program in the US will be officially over. That means no new fact checks and no fact checkers. We announced in January we’d be winding down the program & we haven’t applied penalties to fact-checked posts in the US since then. In place of fact checks, the first Community Notes will start appearing gradually across Facebook, Threads & Instagram, with no penalties attached,” Kaplan posted on social media.

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Meta Complies with Brazilian Court Order While Challenging Justice Alexandre de Moraes’s Demand for Journalist’s Instagram Data

Meta has launched a legal challenge against a ruling by controversial Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who compelled the tech giant to disclose data tied to the Instagram account of journalist Allan dos Santos. Though raising objections to the judge’s rationale, Meta affirmed it would still comply — at least for now.

The company confirmed it will deliver the requested data in a confidential filing, stating, “In compliance with the order and demonstrating good faith, Meta Platforms will provide the requested data, in a separate confidential procedure, within the period granted.”

Justice Alexandre de Moraes consistently stirs controversy with his heavy-handed censorship tactics, like banning social media accounts and blocking platforms such as Telegram and X when they defy him. Critics slam him for trampling free speech, overreaching his role, and acting like a one-man judge-jury-executioner, especially against Bolsonaro allies, while his clash with Elon Musk over X’s compliance has fueled accusations of authoritarianism.

The demand, issued last week, also targeted platform X, requiring both companies to provide the Federal Police with detailed information on Santos’s accounts within ten days — under threat of a R$100,000 ($17,362) daily fine for delay or refusal. The data request is broad, seeking registration details, IP addresses, and post content from mid-2024 through early 2025.

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Did Facebook Conspire With the Government to Censor Speech in Violation of the First Amendment? Case Could Redefine Social Media Censorship

The Rutherford Institute is calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to hold Facebook accountable for conspiring with the government to censor and suppress speech and address Facebook censorship issues.

Weighing in before the U.S. Supreme Court with an amicus brief in Children’s Health Defense v. Meta, The Rutherford Institute argues that Meta Platforms should be held accountable as a government actor for violating the First Amendment by partnering with the government in order to restrict the Facebook posts, fundraising, and advertising of Children’s Health Defense (“CHD”). Although the Trump Administration has ordered federal officials to cease the government’s censorship efforts, The Rutherford Institute warned that political stances can change quickly and social media companies are likely to censor speech again at the government’s direction unless they are held accountable as government actors for violating the First Amendment rights of the people. Facebook censorship leads to the suppression of diverse ideas.

“We should all be alarmed when prominent social media voices are censored, silenced, and made to disappear from Facebook, X, YouTube, and Instagram for voicing ideas that are deemed politically incorrect, hateful, extremist, or conspiratorial,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “At some point, depending on how the government and its corporate allies define what constitutes ‘extremism,’ we might all be considered guilty of some thought-crime and subjected to technocensorship like Facebook censorship.”

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Senator Ron Johnson Demands Meta Releases Records on COVID-19 Vaccine Injury Censorship

Senator Ron Johnson, Chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, has escalated his scrutiny of Meta’s alleged suppression of COVID-19 vaccine injury discussions, demanding that CEO Mark Zuckerberg release internal records detailing Facebook’s content moderation practices.

More: Facebook and YouTube Censored Victims of AstraZeneca COVID Vaccine

In a letter dated February 4, 2025, Johnson specifically questioned Facebook’s removal of vaccine injury support groups, including A Wee Sprinkle of Hope, which was described in the book Worth a Shot? as the largest such group in the world before it was shut down just five days after Johnson’s June 28, 2021, roundtable with vaccine-injured individuals.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

The letter also reiterated claims that Facebook engaged in shadow banning, appended warning labels to users’ posts about vaccine injuries, and even censored private messages. One particularly tragic case cited in Worth a Shot? described a woman who took her own life after her private messages seeking help from fellow vaccine-injured individuals allegedly went unnoticed due to Facebook’s restrictions on message visibility.

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“Torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn’t feel right”: Meta emails unsealed

Last month, Meta admitted to torrenting a controversial large dataset known as LibGen, which includes tens of millions of pirated books. But details around the torrenting were murky until yesterday, when Meta’s unredacted emails were made public for the first time. The new evidence showed that Meta torrented “at least 81.7 terabytes of data across multiple shadow libraries through the site Anna’s Archive, including at least 35.7 terabytes of data from Z-Library and LibGen,” the authors’ court filing said. And “Meta also previously torrented 80.6 terabytes of data from LibGen.”

“The magnitude of Meta’s unlawful torrenting scheme is astonishing,” the authors’ filing alleged, insisting that “vastly smaller acts of data piracy—just .008 percent of the amount of copyrighted works Meta pirated—have resulted in Judges referring the conduct to the US Attorneys’ office for criminal investigation.”

Seeding expands authors’ distribution theory

Book authors had been pressing Meta for more information on the torrenting because of the obvious copyright concern over Meta seeding, and thus seemingly distributing, the pirated books in the dispute.

But Meta resisted those discovery attempts after an order denied authors’ request to review Meta’s torrenting and seeding data. That didn’t stop authors from gathering evidence anyway, including a key document that starts with at least one staffer appearing to uncomfortably joke about the possible legal risks, eventually growing more serious about raising his concerns.

“Torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn’t feel right,” Nikolay Bashlykov, a Meta research engineer, wrote in an April 2023 message, adding a smiley emoji. In the same message, he expressed “concern about using Meta IP addresses ‘to load through torrents pirate content.'”

By September 2023, Bashlykov had seemingly dropped the emojis, consulting the legal team directly and emphasizing in an email that “using torrents would entail ‘seeding’ the files—i.e., sharing the content outside, this could be legally not OK.”

Emails discussing torrenting prove that Meta knew it was “illegal,” authors alleged. And Bashlykov’s warnings seemingly landed on deaf ears, with authors alleging that evidence showed Meta chose to instead hide its torrenting as best it could while downloading and seeding terabytes of data from multiple shadow libraries as recently as April 2024.

Meta allegedly concealed seeding

Supposedly, Meta tried to conceal the seeding by not using Facebook servers while downloading the dataset to “avoid” the “risk” of anyone “tracing back the seeder/downloader” from Facebook servers, an internal message from Meta researcher Frank Zhang said, while describing the work as being in “stealth mode.” Meta also allegedly modified settings “so that the smallest amount of seeding possible could occur,” a Meta executive in charge of project management, Michael Clark, said in a deposition.

Now that new information has come to light, authors claim that Meta staff involved in the decision to torrent LibGen must be deposed again because the new facts allegedly “contradict prior deposition testimony.”

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