All Eyes on Meta Whistleblower Hearing

Welcome back to The Dispatch from The Tech Oversight Project, your weekly updates on all things tech accountability. Follow us on Twitter at @Tech_Oversight and @techoversight.bsky.social on Bluesky.

🔥 LIT HEARING ALERT: Tomorrow, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee is inviting Meta Whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams to testify – after Meta had tried to use a gag order to silence and censor Congress.

Top Line Message: Meta repeatedly lied to Congress, and they sold out U.S. national security and technological innovation to appease China. Hell, the AI technology Meta shared with the CCP likely helped develop DeepSeek.

SIFTING THROUGH THE SPIN: Meta claims that they don’t do business in China, but that’s a bald face lie. Sarah Wynn-Williams’s book, Careless People, makes it crystal clear: Meta makes a massive amount of money by selling advertising to Chinese companies (with no firewall to the CCP) and access to Americans’ data with detailed precision. Where does the $18 billion in revenue from China come from anyway? And can they guarantee that data does not include sensitive information on members of the military, the intelligence community, the federal government, and their families?

But don’t take our word for it, Meta’s 2023 Securities and Exchange Commission filing details its revenue from China. LINK HERE

TUNE IN: Wednesday at 2:30 PM. Streaming link here.

Get up to speed with in-depth coverage below. ⬇️

ZUCKERBERG V. CONGRESS: As the Senate Judiciary Committee Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee gears up for Wednesday’s hearing into Meta’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), revealed in the book Careless People, here’s what you need to know. The whistleblower at the center of the firestorm, former Meta exec Sarah Wynn-Williams, is under a gag order barring her from speaking about her book. But it’s looking like she’ll testify anyway – Congressional subpoenas often supersede gag orders  – and the session is likely to be white-hot. How we got here:

• THE BOOK: Wynn-Williams, former global policy lead at Meta, released a book in February titled Careless People, detailing Meta’s behind-the-scenes efforts to appease the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), while putting U.S. national security in danger.
• META LIED TO CONGRESS: Per the book: Meta offered the CCP content censorship tools, backdoor data access, and an “off switch” for its platform in case dissidents got out of hand. And as the company did so, it lied to Congress about its ties to China.
• DRIVING IT UP THE CHARTS: Zuckerberg went to court to try to shut it all down – and instead, in the huge burst of publicity the book became a #1 bestseller.
• ATTEMPT TO CENSOR CONGRESS: An arbiter ruled that Wynn-Williams is barred from promoting the book — and, incredibly, from talking to Members of Congress, arguing that lawmakers can’t be trusted not to “parrot her deceptive talking points.”
• THE HEARING WILL GO ON: Senators say the hearing will proceed, and Wynn-Williams will testify “in public, under oath.” Sen. Josh Hawley: "Is it a surprise to anyone that Meta secured a gag order against her? Censorship is what Big Tech does best.”

Why this matters:

• The allegations are stark: Meta, wrote Wynn-Williams, offered a foreign adversary tools to suppress speech and access private user data — and then lied to Congress about it.
• Meta’s swift action to silence the book is about burying evidence that could trigger antitrust, regulatory, and national security consequences.
• Letting Meta dictate who can and cannot testify before Congress sets a dangerous precedent. It invites other monopolies to use legal contracts to shield their wrongdoing from oversight.
• As TOP’s Sacha Haworth put it: “Meta has proven time and time again that they are willing to throw U.S. security under the bus, and it’s time for Congress to drop the hammer."

“All of this stuff, Facebook has said for years they never did. They’ve always said, ‘Oh no, no, we never censored. We never would. We have these values.’ What I see here is they have lied to the public and lied to Congress.”

– Sen. Josh Hawley to the New York Post

🚨 GOOGLE + APPLE’S CHINA EXCEPTION: Apple and Google are quietly allowing VPN apps in their app stores that have ties to the Chinese military. That means users who think they’re protecting their privacy through a VPN may actually end up handing their data straight to the Chinese Communist Party. The tech giants claim to uphold global privacy standards — so why are they making secret exceptions for Beijing? And will Congress finally do something about it?

📌 CALIFORNIA TAKES AIM AT DIGITAL DANGERS: California’s legislature continues to develop a slate of bills putting online safety and tech accountability. The state Assembly’s privacy committee, in particular, has been busy: already, they’ve advanced a bill to outlaw AI-driven surveillance pricing, which Assm. Chris Ward called “a new form of digital exploitation.” Meanwhile, a key AI companion chatbot bill we’re working to support, Sen. Steve Padilla’s SB 243, is set for a hearing later today.

Last week, our Tech Oversight California office commended state legislators for moving forward on key legislation as they draw public notice for their eagerness to pursue strong tech accountability policies despite the constant threat of big-money Big Tech lawsuits and lobbying.

BIG TECH GRIFTERS PUSH FORWARD: Congressional Republicans are fast-tracking two bills — the GENIUS Act and its House counterpart, the STABLE Act — that would tear down longstanding crypto safeguards and legalize Big Tech memecoin scams. If passed, they’d open the door for billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg (not to mention Trump himself) to launch their own digital currencies — giving private entities the power to mint money, extract junk fees, and lock consumers into corporate-controlled payment ecosystems.

These aren’t harmless crypto experiments. They’re handouts that would weaken the U.S. dollar and throw our financial system into disarray — all to serve the personal ambitions of a few billionaires. Already, Trump’s tariffs are sending us tumbling toward a recession. Congress needs to fight like hell to make sure we don’t make things even worse. Former SEC Senior Advisor Corey Frayer: “Democrats should be in unified opposition to anything that puts the economy and investors and consumers at risk.”

DEEPFAKE REVENGE PORN BILL ADVANCES: H.R. 633, being marked up today, is part of a nationwide bipartisan push to protect Americans, especially kids, from this kind of disturbing tech-driven assault – New Jersey’s new law banning AI deepfakes, prompted by a high school incident, was signed into law last week.

The House bill, and its counterpart that passed the Senate in February, will take the protections nationwide. The bills put the onus on tech platforms to pull down nonconsensual and deepfake intimate images, including revenge porn – and if they don’t, they’ll hear from the FTC.

Big Tech does so much that puts our kids in danger, and they spend millions on lobbying to weasel out of accountability. But surely this kind of commonsense legislation is the least we can do: surely we can, at the very minimum, hold Big Tech accountable to keep their services free of revenge porn.

ZUCKERBERG WANTS WHAT HE PAID FOR: Since pouring money into Trump’s inauguration fund, gutting his own safety teams to appease the MAGA right, and showing up front-row at Trump’s swearing-in, Mark Zuckerberg has been to the White House three times. He even bought the house down the street from J.D. Vance. He’s pressing the Trump administration to drop the FTC’s landmark monopoly case against the company, which goes to trial next week— a case that could end up breaking Meta’s illegal dominance of the social media market.

People like Zuckerberg, who put profit above all, don’t give you anything unless they think they can get something in return, and from Trump, what Meta wants is protection from accountability. If Trump gives in, it’ll send a dangerous message: if you break the law, then just bankroll the right people and you’ll never face consequences. The FTC needs to hold the line.