Meta fired back Sunday at whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams' allegations that Facebook sought to curry favor from China to gain access to its market a decade ago, calling her a disgruntled former employee fired "eight years ago for poor performance."
Wynn-Williams is releasing a book, "Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism," on Tuesday, exposing the company's "Project Aldrin" work to gain access to China. Aldrin is a homage to astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the first to land a manned spacecraft on the moon.
"This is all pushed by an employee terminated eight years ago for poor performance," a Meta spokesperson wrote in a statement to Newsmax, noting The Washington Post declined to include the full statement in its report.
"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.
"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."
Wynn-Williams was fired from Facebook in the first year of the Trump administration in 2017, the Post reported.
Wynn-Williams' 78-page Security and Exchange Commission complaint, reviewed by the Post, alleged Facebook developed a censorship system to appease China in its desire to enter their market, including a "chief editor" who would modulate content undesired by China and even shut down the whole platform in the country during "social unrest."
When questioned by investors and U.S. regulators, Facebook executives "stonewalled and provided non-responsive or misleading information," Wynn-Williams alleged in the complaint.
Meta's response to the resurfacing of the complaint is it is all old news and "no secret" Facebook wanted to work with China to gain access to their country under restrictive regulatory environment.
The Meta spokesperson Sunday morning shared Zuckerberg's 2019 Georgetown speech remarks, highlighting to Newsmax the realization that China's censorship demands would not be doable for the company and its founder.
"It's one of the reasons we don't operate Facebook, Instagram, or our other services in China," Zuckerberg said in the 2019 speech excerpt highlighted Sunday by Meta. "I wanted our services in China because I believe in connecting the whole world and I thought we might help create a more open society.
"I worked hard to make this happen.
"But we could never come to agreement on what it would take for us to operate there, and they never let us in. And now we have more freedom to speak out and stand up for the values we believe in and fight for free expression around the world."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.