A report from The Washington Post highlights allegations made by whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams in a 78-page complaint she filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last April. She claims that Facebook created a censorship system in an attempt to be allowed to operate in China and considered giving the Chinese government access to user data within the country. 

The idea that Facebook developed a tool to suppress content to please China, where the platform has been blocked since 2009, was first reported by The New York Times in 2016. Wynn-Williams is also releasing a memoir this week titled Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work, sharing her experiences at Facebook. Wynn-Williams, a former Facebook global policy director who was fired in 2017, claimed in her complaint that Facebook started a project in 2014 called "Project Aldrin" to create a version of the platform that would follow China’s laws, according to The Washington Post.

 As part of this effort, the company developed a censorship system. During negotiations with Chinese officials, there were also discussions about allowing a Chinese private-equity firm to review content posted by users in China and hiring hundreds of moderators to remove restricted content. Spokesman Andy Stone told The Washington Post that the company's prior interest in the Chinese market is "no secret" and that CEO Mark Zuckerberg had declared in 2019 that the company will no longer pursue these initiatives. 

According to Wynn-Williams' case, however, Facebook allegedly went to great lengths to acquire a Chinese user base before Meta.  Mark Zuckerberg since then been more outspoken about “free expression” and has made changes to how Meta handles moderation on its platforms. Earlier this year, he shared that Facebook and Instagram would stop using fact-checking and would instead adopt a system similar to X's Community Notes.