The News Agents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. This is a Global Player original podcast. I want to take you back to Donald Trump's inauguration. It's not what Donald Trump said, as he was sworn into office, that I want you to remember.
It's who was in the audience, sat in prime position, in front of the president's own cabinet, symbolising perhaps a new age of power and influence. Alongside the Trump family, Elon Musk, Apple's Tim Cook, Google's Sunder Pinchot. Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. It looked like Donald Trump was hailing in the age of engineers. And it was a remarkable moment for Mark Zuckerberg particularly. The man who suspended Donald Trump from Facebook and Instagram for his attempts...
to undermine the peaceful transfer of power to Joe Biden, Trump had accused of plotting against him. But there he was. There's little doubt that Mark Zuckerberg is now one of the most powerful people on the planet. But what does he actually believe? What does he value? And what if his pursuit of expansion, profit and power made us look at his platform in a whole new light? Well, one woman who was influential in Facebook's ascendancy is now blowing the whistle. Welcome.
To the newsagents. The newsagents. It's Emily. And today we're going to bring you an interview with Sarah Wynne-Williams. You almost certainly won't recognise the name, but between 2011 and 2017, she worked at Facebook managing the company's global public policy, a sort of diplomat.
if you like, for Mark Zuckerberg and his company. She too had a front row seat to Facebook's rise and Zuckerberg's evolution. And she's written a book, Careless People, documenting her time there. Some of its contents are staggering. The book's been described as explosive. It has been fiercely disputed by Meta, and you're going to hear some of their responses a little later. But it makes serious claims about the company, how it operates, who it will work with.
and what it values. You can probably guess from the title that Sarah's account is not a flattering one. And it is just one account. Since news of the book's release came public, some former colleagues have been coming forward to contest the picture Sarah paints. One calls it absurd. But it is a striking account. which raises serious questions about Facebook's influence, its care for the well-being of its users and its safeguarding.
And she cites first-hand experience from meetings and quotes from strategy memos, emails and dozens of other corporate documents, many of which she provided to the news agents. Sarah has also filed a whistleblower complaint with the US markets regulator. the SEC. And I'll just say here that I sat down with Sarah about 10 days ago before there'd been any public acknowledgement that the book even existed in her very first broadcast interview.
Well, joining me now is Sarah Wynn-Williams. And so I wonder if we should start by just talking about how... bizarre this whole experience is for both of us because I had to sign a non-disclosure agreement you have kept this book completely secret even from your own family your mum doesn't know about it I've got to tell my mum so no one has read this book nobody knows it even exists correct why was that so important um i worried that after going through all of you know the various things that
go into writing a book that the company that believes in freedom of speech might try and stop it. And I understand that there's an irony there, but it was genuinely a concern. And the company that you're talking about is Facebook. This is the book of a whistleblower, essentially. You describe yourself as somebody so...
passionate, so desperate to work at Facebook because you believed in their mission and you saw the potential of the power of the company that you actually invented your own job and it tells the story of what happened there. Why did you write it? I think it was a wild ride. I mean, so partly it was just that it was such a wild ride. And it's the sort of thing when you try and sit down with a friend and be like, no, no, this really happened.
It doesn't sound real. So part of it was trying to make it real. Part of it was trying to make it make sense. And I think...
It's important for other people to have that experience of sort of peeking behind the curtain and understanding what this incredibly powerful company is really like so i mean it's not peeking behind the curtain this feels like a full-on operating table right there is blood and guts and gore all over the place most of mine to be fair right uh but well yes i mean more like you know
step into my shoes, go on this wild ride, see what I saw and make your mind up, which is a big part of it. And then I think the other part of it is that there are some truths you can only see when you see... someone's story or when you can step back from the day you know like every day there's some like this social media company's done this this is doing bad things to children this is doing you know and it's very hard to actually
You sort of know that these things are out there, but you don't know. And so I think as we're on the cusp of this new technological era in AI, which is going to be driven by... the same people who've done this last social media decade. I do think it's important for people to know who they are. So we've kind of teased people who are listening a little bit, but I think if we...
get down to what this is about. I mean, you have called this careless people. Who are those careless people? What do you mean? So I'm talking about the leaders of the company. So Mark Zuckerberg. Sheryl Sandberg and the people around them, the people who enable them. Why are they careless? I could not have been more excited.
to join this company that I thought was going to change the world. I mean, it's a long time ago. It's very hard to put yourself back in 2011. And the whole time I was there... I kept waiting for the thing that was the red line, you know, the thing that they won't do, the thing that is like, oh, no, we can't do that. You know, there was one meeting where...
The executives were acknowledging that what they were doing could potentially lead to people's torture or death. And instead of being like, hmm, it's probably not a good idea, they're like, okay, let's get out. Microsoft Office track changes and take out that wording and say, you know, we'll be dealing with a country that violates international human rights. China. So they changed the wording and not the policy. Of course. And I think the thing is that I think people assume that...
there is something they care about like there is something underpinning this and they tend to take a lot of take up a lot of space in the world pronouncing on you know freedom of speech or the importance of connection or any of those things but at the end of the day I don't think they care about anything. I think they care about more. They care about money. There's not something beyond that. It's not like...
You or I. It's not like the people in our lives. It's to them, and particularly to Mark, the world is like a board game. Like he's playing risk and he's just trying to occupy every territory. And if there's collateral damage, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what that collateral damage is. You cover a huge amount of ground here. The book's nearly 400 pages and the allegations are, frankly, jaw-dropping. But perhaps the one that strikes home right now...
Is your claim that Facebook played a major role in Trump's 2016 election? Did Mark Zuckerberg know how helpful his platform was to Trump? So right after the election, Mark went on stage at a conference and said the idea that Facebook had anything to do with the election was a crazy idea. Not long after that, we were traveling on his private jet and his executives were like, no, no.
You really need to understand, like, you run a company that is premised on being able to change the type of toothpaste that people want to buy because of the advertising. Like, you can change... people's minds you have so much influence and by the way this is what we were doing this is what you know and and initially
He really pushed back on the whole idea. Like he really genuinely didn't believe it. But as it was explained to him hour after hour, example by example, he came to think, actually, maybe... Maybe we can do this. Maybe we do do this. And it was an incredible transition over a very short period of time. You put in the book, Elliot, his colleague, explained to Mark.
all the ways Facebook basically handed the election to Trump. That's not just about encouraging people to use one toothpaste over another. You think, he thinks. that Facebook basically handed the election to Trump. Why? There were people, unlike the Clinton campaign, to be clear, in 2016, there were people embedded in the Trump campaign, Facebook employees.
sitting side by side with his campaign team, teaching them everything, every trick they knew about how to harness the power of the platform, how to target people, how to find the voters that were out there that were likely to vote for them. And then they just poured so much money into these tools that Facebook had created. So Facebook was embedded with the Trump campaign? Correct. So they were literally teaching...
the Trump social media campaign manager, how to use Facebook better to their advantage? Yes. Do you think without Facebook, Trump wouldn't have won? I think Facebook was critical. It's hard to see how you bring that coalition together, how you find all those voters together. I mean, it was Trump's campaign manager who said that Facebook was critical and that without Facebook, they couldn't have won.
And when Mark Zuckerberg finds this out, is he horrified? Is he proud? What was the sense you got from him? It's funny because we were sitting beside each other as this was being explained. And my reaction was like... I wanted to throw up. I was actually like, can I, I was wondering why he didn't want to throw himself out of the plane at 30,000 feet. Like if someone was explaining that to me, I would feel sick, right? Instead, he was sort of initially curious.
And then sort of taken with the idea, sort of playing with it, trying to understand the extent of the power that the platform had and by extension that he had. This is a plane journey that you're on with him to APEC in Peru. And during that trip, he goes off to meet with Barack Obama. And they have a row about this exact issue. What happened?
So Mark came steaming out of the meeting and initially couldn't even get words out. And I think something to understand that by this time, just before meeting with Obama, we'd sat down with the presidents and prime ministers of... almost every nation right the most powerful people in the world and yet somehow it felt like mark was more powerful than anyone in that room it felt like he was you know the queen he was going to
see out seven generations of heads of state you know we knew the last leaders we knew the people who were coming up everyone wanted to kiss the ring we went from this moment of like absolute power, this feeling like Mark could have anything he wanted. I mean, he could buy anything he wanted with his money, but he didn't need to. He had everyone in the... He had more power than heads of state who were democratically elected, in other words. Than any of them.
than any of them in this room they were all deferring to him they were all coming up for selfies it was an incredible and he just again he didn't care
I mean, that was a really striking thing. There wasn't a sense of, you know, when we first started working together, he was frightened of these people. He had no desire. He didn't know it. By then, he just... couldn't have cared less like people were talking to me like what's he saying can you can you answer this question like it just wasn't he wasn't in awe of this and then I think that's why the meeting with Obama was so striking because Obama was still someone
who was, you know, more powerful technically than Mark. Yet as soon as he steamed out of the meeting, he's like...
That guy's a lame duck. That guy's a lame duck. Doesn't matter what he says. That guy's a lame duck. Because of what Obama said in the meeting? Yeah. What did he say? He had warned Mark that unless... he changed, unless Facebook changed and got, you know, particularly what Facebook was doing in elections around the world, unless Mark grasped that up, this was going to be a problem that was going to play out again and again and again.
country after country so he got told off essentially he got told off and he got warned he got warned that he was going to be on the wrong side of history enabling the wrong things and he was warned by one of the few other powerful people in his life, and he did not like it. And what happened? Basically, he fumed, which is not pleasant for any of us. And we tried to distract him with his favourite thing, which is playing board games and all sorts of things. he just sort of seemed to
just kept mulling on it and mulling on it. And it was about the time that he was deciding what his yearly challenge was going to be. So he does these crazy challenges where... For one year, he decides he's only going to eat roadkill or something like that. I mean, he shot himself. Shot himself. But Road Quill, yeah, sure, Road Quill was pretty close. Or he's going to learn Mandarin or he's going to read, you know.
books or something you know something out of character or in character depending and so he's trying to decide what what his next challenge is and you could see him sort of ruminate on not just on the conversation with Obama, but his experience being around the most powerful people in the world and yet having them be in sort of supplicant position to him. And that married up with... the very detailed explanation of how his platform had played such a role.
in his election, and then Obama's warning that, no, no, it's not just this election. It's all elections. Like, you're going to swing all the elections. And I think the conclusion he had from that was that he should suddenly start a massive... tour of the swing states around the United States. So my take on that was that he had come to the realization
that Facebook had played a very important role in this election, would play a very important role in future elections, and looked at Trump and thought, if that guy can do it, so can I. You think he wanted to run for president? Yes. Do you have any proof of that? I mean, did he ever say that in so many words? I mean, he was very quickly moving to how do we do political optics? Who are the politicians we know in each state? How do we get these photo ops? How do we meet with... It was planning...
political tour and very quickly wanting to go to like the Iowa State Fair which is known as the sort of first place for presidential candidates to meet. So do you think of him as a political animal then? I mean there's a lot of mystery around As you've said, what his ideology is. Is he political? Is he a brilliant engineer? Or is he a dangerous demagogue? I mean, how would you describe him? I think it's a mixture of all of those.
things i mean when when i first met him he was not political at all he was very much an engineer but as we've seen over the last decade Engineers more generally have moved into real positions of power. You mean Elon Musk? Oh, and Bezos and, you know, Altman. All of them. Yeah, you only need to look at the inauguration and look at like...
Who is shaping political power and who is shaping our world? And the vast majority of them are engineers. And it's funny because, you know, initially when, it's a long time ago, but when I started at Facebook. He didn't believe in anything. He didn't have an ideology. I'm not sure that he has an ideology as you or I would think of a political ideology. I think it's this concept of more. It's this sort of... territorial, trying to take up more power, more space, more money, more.
So that brings us on to China, which is the biggest market in the world. And Mark Zuckerberg is desperate to crack it. What is he prepared to do to get into China? Anything. Anything. And it's, you know... Where we are now, China is the second biggest market for Meta, for the parent company. So the Chinese market today is worth $18 billion to Meta. Two years ago, it was worth $7 billion. So this is where the power and the engine of Facebook is being powered, in part, quite significantly.
through China. I'm going to read a passage in your book. Sure. Facebook will agree to grant the Chinese government access to Chinese users' data, including Hong Kong users. would be complicit in a program to spy on Chinese citizens and obviously all their contacts. I mean, that would mean Facebook working. Facebook's been working hand in glove with the Chinese Communist Party for years. So while I was at the company, they were hosting delegations from the Chinese Communist Party.
Having engineers sit down, show them how facial recognition works, show them the technology behind photo tagging, show them how Facebook Live works, like the sort of stuff that if the UK government asked for it, would say... Absolutely no way. No, I'm sorry. This is proprietary information. Wait, so Facebook is helping the Chinese Communist Party to refine their surveillance. Tools. Yeah. Facebook was giving them briefings on AI.
Isn't that treason? I don't know what the definition of treason is, but it really does bring into question who is Facebook? Who is Meta working for? Whose interests are they focused on? Do you know that Mark was behind this? Could it have happened without his sign-off? Absolutely. I mean, he was the one who decided this is... the top priority for the company so the way he saw it once the company had reached a certain stage of growth there were
And again, this comes back to a sort of board game mentality. There were just a few things that stopped him having complete domination over the world. So... Areas where there wasn't internet, you know, children, but they were working on trying to get, you know, Facebook for children, and then China. And so his focus was on making sure that... the company, expanded into China. You've written Facebook has guaranteed China it will promote safe and secure social order. I mean, that sounds like...
That sounds like a crackdown tool. Absolutely. Again, this company that purports to be doubling down on freedom of speech in the last few weeks was building a bespoke censorship tool. for the Chinese Communist Party and having them test the tool with these engineers, setting them tests, making sure that it was built to their specifications. Did Congress know about this? Not to my knowledge, no. Did anyone in the US government ask about this?
I don't know what conversations were had. What I do know is that when they were asked about these things, the standard Facebook line was, we're studying and learning about China. You knew about this. Did you ever think you should quit then and there and take it to somebody, tell the US government? I did. I did think about it. And one of the challenges with this is that...
It's so much bigger than one person. I also worried about what the company was prepared to do to cover it up. There is a conversation between Chinese officials. They're looking for a... An exiled Chinese billionaire, Guo Wengai, who became a political activist. And the Chinese official asks Mark Zuckerberg directly if his Facebook page can be removed, can be taken down.
What happened? So I think that request went into the person that had been delegated to run China for Mark, but he reported directly to Mark. And the way that was framed, they're like... You could help us by, they gave basically different options as to how helpful the company could be and what the consequences would be if they were helpful and what the consequences would be if they were not helpful. And the decision was made.
Facebook would just wipe his account off the platform. I'm going to quote you there. A member of the China team tells me the removal of Guo from Facebook was Mark's decision.
He initially wanted a middle ground, a temporary suspension, but given China's demands and the stakes, he ultimately decided to do the full suspension. Correct. So Mark Zuckerberg, this non-political or apolitical creature, somehow... is now involved not in creating systems of moderation, but in individual cases of moderation.
It sounds like he stops Navalny protests, freedom protests against Putin in Russia. He stops discussion about a Mexican school shooting because the president of Mexico says, please don't. He. removes Chinese citizens because the Chinese government asked him to. So this is a one-man band. Of course, yeah. The power is infinite. But there's no system. There was initially, but it just got eroded over time.
I mean, one thing that you repeat at intervals is this idea that Facebook imagines the worst case scenario headline. So they write their own headlines to imagine how they deal with them. And they came up with these headlines themselves. Chinese government uses Facebook to spy on its system. or Facebook hands over data to the Chinese government. So they were totally aware of how this would be seen and indeed what they were doing. They know.
I mean, they know on every level. That's one of the things that surprised me throughout my experience there is it's not just about China. They know what they're doing in China is wrong. But, you know. Facebook executives don't allow their children to use, you know, many of the ones I worked didn't allow their children to use Instagram or Facebook. You know, they had screen pans. You know, so they know.
They know what their products are doing. And there's a moment where you write about them trying to target vulnerable young people. Yeah, that was really disturbing. So what I found out was that they had developed up the ability. So say a 13-year-old girl posts a selfie on Instagram. and then decides and deletes it. At that moment, Facebook can serve a beauty ad to them. It just, as a parent...
Makes me feel sick. So there are tools that suggest to Facebook when somebody thinks that they are not pretty enough for their own selfies. And that moment will be sold to an advertiser who wants to sell them a beauty advertisement at that moment. Or a flat tummy tea or whatever else. So at the moment that they realise that this 13-year-old girl is feeling worthless...
that's the moment that is sold to the advertiser. You worked with one of the most powerful women in the world, Cheryl Sandberg, who took on the cause of women and underrepresented women and women who felt locked out of the boardroom. I mean... Presumably you had that conversation with her, did you? That conversation, I had that conversation with the people who reported to her. I did not have the conversation directly with Cheryl. Do you think that this mattered?
to people i mean do you think that they cared that they oh no i know i know it went to her for sign off and she signed you know so i think that's the thing is that you think there's you think they're going to care you think there's a moment where they're going to be like no no
On that example, I had this conversation where I'm like, this company doesn't need more money. We don't need to make the money that way. At this point, they had so much money already. It's one of the most valuable companies in the world. There are no shortage of innovative ways that it can expand and grow. And yet. We'll have more from Sarah after the break, including her claims of sexual harassment from her own boss. This is The News Agents. Joel Kaplan is your immediate boss.
I mean, Joel Kaplan is now number two to Mark Zuckerberg. You describe his behaviour towards you over many years. How would you describe him, describe it? I mean, I experienced what many... women many people in the workplace experience and for me it was as much an assertion of power and control as anything else. But I know, I mean, there were many, many people at Facebook who banded together in a group because they'd had these experiences shared.
Terrible experiences. Would you describe it as sexual harassment? Would you describe it as bullying? I mean, how would you characterize it? I mean, I think it's a mixture of all those things together. But the broader point is that... employees, like everyone else, are not important. If you're trying to find the thing that matters to these people at the top of these companies, it's not...
the people who use Instagram or Facebook or WhatsApp. It's not the investors because they're not straight with them. It's not Congress or regulators because they're not straight with them. And it's not their employees. Who is it? I don't think it's anyone It doesn't sound like Mark Zuckerberg is careless It starts to sound like you think he's dangerous. Do you? I think he's a careless person. And I think when you have that amount of power, it matters.
I think the way that these products, the way Instagram has infiltrated our lives, the way WhatsApp has infiltrated our lives, they have so much power to shape. how we experience the world we're in. And I think the challenge is when you have that much power and when you're surrounded by people who enable it because...
They derive their wealth and their security from it. I think you just lose touch with what matters. You lose touch with the real world. Until you've experienced it, it's very hard to believe. I talk about how he's in a bubble, and you think of a bubble as a sort of flimsy, transparent, but with him it's like a thick, opaque fortress. There's just no understanding of how much... damage these products can have but also just how the real world
And yet he's making all these decisions. You talk about real-world consequences with Facebook in Myanmar and Burma. And you say, if you're on the internet in Myanmar, Facebook is built into all the phone systems. And you call it lethal carelessness. Facebook leaders see how Facebook is in flaming tensions and they do nothing. Virulent hate speech circulating in Myanmar, most target Rohingya Muslim population.
and your content operation is based in Dublin, and your complaint button doesn't work, and the translation is all wrong because nobody speaks Burmese, and the guy in Dublin is out to dinner on the wrong time zone when a riot is... kind of kicking off. I mean, how much responsibility does Facebook bear for what happened in that terrible period of Myanmar's history? So not just me, but the United Nations who did a really extensive report.
decided that Facebook bore a lot of responsibility, that they were directly responsible for inflaming and spreading hate speech and directly leading to the genocide. But I think what's so challenging with so much of this stuff and partly why I think it's helpful just to see it all in one place is that these aren't necessarily things that the company does.
It's the things they don't do. It's the sort of sins of omission where all these bad things are happening. Teens are committing suicide after being bullied on the product. There are riots that could be. many different places around the globe Myanmar is just one example that have fueled instigated on the platform you've got all these sort of
bubbles of hatred sort of coming together. And it's not so much that they do something specific, it's that they do nothing. They know. They know and they do nothing. I suppose you could argue that actually... The premise that Facebook set up was we are...
a platform. We're not editorial. We're not publishers. This is a tool that we're offering to the world. But it's almost impossible to moderate. You know, how do you decide what is peaceful protest? How do you decide what is terrorism versus what is freedom fighting?
And how, I mean, can that ever really be on one man's shoulders or one company's shoulders? Do you think it... Yeah, I don't deny that there's complexity. I mean, I've lived in the complexity for many, many years. And I think, but there are moments... that I try and capture throughout these stories where, like, it's not close. You know, like, if a 13-year-old girl is feeling worthless, like, don't target her with a beauty ad. Like, if there's a riot going on, like...
Make sure you have a way to take down the stuff that is creating the riot that's killing people. Like, I don't think these are things where it's like, hmm, kind of a hard, hard decision to do here. Do you think Facebook's responsible for deaths? I think there's a lot of documentation, for example, in that United Nations report that directly attributes it to Facebook.
You say about Burma, Myanmar, every turn when Facebook leaders see how FB is flaming tensions and making unstable situation worse, they do nothing. The truth is inescapable. Myanmar would have been far better off than if Facebook had never arrived there. What does far better off mean then? So I... was one of the first Facebook employees to visit Burma and Myanmar. And it was just a crazy experience because it's one of the few countries where they didn't have desktop.
because the country was so sealed off, they went straight from no internet to mobile. So you could see... What it would be like if our only, you know, in many ways, I think our early experience of the Internet has saved us because this country where everyone went straight to mobile. And they had the power to fire off whatever. No, nothing came down. And when I met these people, they're like, Facebook is the homepage for our country. And that homepage led to the most horrific.
horrific genocide so i think i think it's one of those things where we as we use it either in the uk or in other places around the world we experience one version of these products But there's a much worse version out there. And without the few limits that are in place here, it's so much... But that gives you some idea of, like, how...
the product is designed. Like if it's in a place where there's nothing to hold it back, that's what happened. Are you prepared for what happens when those at Facebook respond to what you've written? Do you think you'll get sued for this? It's a company that believes in freedom of speech, so I'm really hoping that they live their values. Are you worried? Look, I really hope that the leaders of the company read the book.
and see many of our shared experiences and hopefully reflect. What would you say to those who say, you know, Sarah... You had a, you know, shitty experience. You complained about sexual harassment and then you were fired. Like, this is what it sounds like when an employee has a grudge to bear and wants to come back with her revenge writing.
I think the book's the opposite I mean it's got so many of the best parts of my experience at Facebook as well as the worst it's got some Sometimes that we're actually, you know, there are times where I write in the book about how tender Mark was, and we'd had a weird run-in with Big Bird that I won't go into, but it's something that...
tries to capture the full human experience of what was an incredibly wild ride. I mean, this was a long time ago, so it is possible that all this has changed. Culturally, it's a different place now, right? I think culturally it seems pretty similar to the place that I experienced. You know, Mark seems very consistent. The company continues in the way... that I experienced it and continues to make decisions in the way that I experienced them. What I hope is that people read the book and know.
they know a lot more than what they did before and can make the choices once they know that i think once once you've pulled back the curtain and seen it for what it is there's a lot of stuff that Intentionally, they didn't want people to know. We all saw the inauguration, those pictures of Mark Zuckerberg sitting right behind, literally and figuratively, at the president's side now.
I mean, you wrote this book before you knew who would win in November. He's in a position of power like he's never been in before, Mark Zuckerberg. What do you think when you see them? I think it's a natural extension of many of the things that, many of the stories that I told and how this power compounds. And I think, you know...
We may just be at the beginning of it. We're certainly in an age of engineers in positions of power, not just Mark. There were other leaders, male leaders of other companies there. Is anyone stopping them? I mean, is anyone... Stopping what is going on? I mean, I think it just comes down to us. You know, I think at the end of the day, we are the ones who give our time and give our attention. I think this is more a moment of...
trying to understand what the company has said is different to what I experienced. And once you can see the difference between those two things, I'm hoping that... there will be some change. Sarah Wynne-Williams, thank you very much indeed. Thank you. Coming up, Metta's response to those claims. Now time to thank our partner for this episode, Uber. We all love how easy it is just to grab a ride with a tap on your phone. And Uber's doing so much more behind the scenes to make it better.
especially for drivers. Uber was the first major app-based operator to provide holiday pay and pensions to drivers, and they offer fully funded degrees through the Open University for platinum or diamond status drivers too. Plus, there are benefits such as...
sickness cover and new parent payments all alongside the flexibility to choose when where and how long they work yeah uber has partnered with the gmb union for more than three years now that means drivers also have the protection of union And let's not forget... Sustainability. If you're in London, you can choose Uber Green for a fully electric ride with no extra cost. To learn more about the benefits and protections Uber has introduced for drivers, just go to uber.com slash driver protection.
Hello, blue skies. Hello, moving onwards and upwards. Hello, taking control of your money. Say hello to tax-free investing. Open a Stocks and Shares ISA and act by the 5th of April to get £100 to £3,000 cashback. Hargreaves Lansdowne. Hello Life. This is The News Agents. As I said right at the start, this is a book that Meta has contested fiercely and vocally. And we're going to give you their responses now to some of the claims made by Sarah in that interview.
On the claim that Facebook was critical to Donald Trump's successful 2016 campaign, Meta said the company had previously discussed this claim back in 2017. It said we offered identical support to both the Trump and Clinton campaigns and had teams assigned to both. Everyone had access to the...
same tools, which are the same tools that every campaign is offered. The campaigns did not get to handpick the people who work with them from Facebook. No one from Facebook was assigned full time to the Trump campaign or full time to the Clinton campaign. Both campaigns approach things differently and use different amounts of support.
On Sarah's claim that Facebook was working hand in glove with China to create a bespoke censorship tool designed to enable the Chinese Communist Party to monitor its own citizens. And on the allegation that Facebook staff acknowledged this could potentially lead to people being incarcerated. or killed and Meta's spokesman said the following. This was widely reported beginning a decade ago. We ultimately opted not to go through the... ideas we'd explored, which Mark Zuckerberg announced in 2019.
On Sarah's allegation that Facebook had developed software enabling it to target advertising at vulnerable teenagers, Meta said that the allegation was reported in 2017, we disputed it then. On May 1, 2017, the Australian posted a story regarding research done by Facebook. ...was never used to target ads and was...
based on data that was anonymous and aggregated. Facebook has an established process to review the research we perform. This research did not follow that process. We're reviewing the details to correct the oversight. Meta added that the company is public in how ad targeting works on its platforms.
Regarding Sarah's description of the treatment of employees at Facebook and with regards to her claims against Joel Kaplan, a Meta spokesman told us, this is a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives. Eight years ago, Sarah Wynne-Williams was fired for poor performance.
and toxic behaviour, and an investigation at the time determined she made misleading and unfounded allegations of harassment. Since then, she's been paid by anti-Facebook activists, and this is simply a continuation of that work. Whistleblower status protects communications to the government. disgruntled activists trying to sell their books.
With regard to the claims that Mark Zuckerberg was personally involved in content moderation decisions, including over Chinese activist Guo Wengui, Meta said, They added, testimony of our General Counsel at the time, which is also a matter of public record.
And on Myanmar and Facebook's role in the violence in that country, Meta told us we don't want our apps to be used to spread hate or encourage violence. And over the last several years, we've taken many additional steps to help protect our community there. That includes building a team dedicated to Myanmar, working with partners on the ground to remove misinformation that could...
to harm, banning hate figures, the entire Myanmar military and state-controlled media from our apps and improving our hate speech detection. We've also increased the number of content reviewers with native language expertise. With respect to the UN investigation, we've lawfully provided information and are cooperating with them.
It added that Myanmar is the only country in the world with a significant online presence that hasn't been standardised on Unicode, the International Text and Coding Standard, and that this lack of single standards has resulted in technical challenges for many companies that provide mobile apps and services in Myanmar.
It said the lack of standardization around Unicode makes automation proactive detection of violating content harder, can weaken account security, makes reporting potentially harmful content on Facebook less efficient, means less support for languages in Myanmar beyond Burmese. And Meta added, it's been supporting the country's...
transition to Unicode with a series of measures. Sheryl Sandberg's office declined to comment. And in response to these comments from Meta, a legal representative for Sarah Wynne-Williams has said, Meta has made a number of false and inconsistent statements about Sarah.
since the news of her memoir broke. The events that led to her departure from Meta are described in detail in the memoir. And while Meta's statements are trying to mislead the public, the book speaks for itself. Sarah's book, Careless People. is out now. We'll be back. Bye for now. This is a Global Player original podcast. Thanks for listening to the News Agents podcast brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity.
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