Pan Macmillan has commended its author Sarah Wynn-Williams’ “brave” testimony before a US Senate panel on Wednesday (9th April), describing the panel’s confirmation that they had reviewed records corroborating claims made in the book as “incredibly validating”.
The testimony in front of the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism was the first time Wynn-Williams had spoken publicly since Meta initiated emergency arbitration proceedings to prevent her from promoting her bestselling book Careless People, which was published in the UK on 13th March by Pan Macmillan, and in the US on 11th March by Flatiron Books (an imprint of Macmillan Books).
In her introductory statement, Wynn-Williams – who was director of global public policy at Facebook, now Meta, for nearly seven years starting in 2011 – alleged that she saw Meta executives “repeatedly undermine US national security and betray American values” by providing the Chinese Communist Party with access to the data of Meta users, including Americans.
“They did these things in secret to win favour with Beijing and build an $18bn business in China,” she alleged. “We are engaged in a high-stakes AI arms race against China. And during my time at Meta, company executives lied about what they were doing with the Chinese Communist Party to employees, shareholders, Congress and the American public.”
In a statement shared with The Bookseller, a Meta spokesperson responded: “Sarah Wynn-Williams’ testimony is divorced from reality and riddled with false claims. While Mark Zuckerberg himself was public about our interest in offering our services in China and details were widely reported beginning over a decade ago, the fact is this: we do not operate our services in China today.”
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