US lawmakers have opened an investigation into Meta Platforms over longstanding allegations that the company explored ways to collaborate with the Chinese government in order to break into the country’s heavily restricted digital market.
The Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is demanding internal records and communications dating back over a decade, including those tied to efforts that reportedly involved censorship mechanisms designed to comply with Beijing’s demands.
The inquiry, announced Tuesday, is being led by Senator Ron Johnson, with support from Senators Richard Blumenthal and Josh Hawley. In a formal request to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the senators are asking Meta to turn over documents by April 21. The scope includes any interactions between Meta and Chinese officials, as well as company discussions surrounding potential market entry strategies.
This renewed scrutiny follows revelations published in Careless People, a memoir by former Facebook executive Sarah Wynn-Williams. The book outlines a covert initiative allegedly pursued by Meta, internally referred to as “Project Aldrin,” which was reportedly developed in 2014 as a three-year plan to establish a presence in China. According to the Senate letter, internal Meta materials reviewed by the subcommittee corroborate Wynn-Williams’ account.
Among the records being sought are details on Meta’s China-linked subsidiaries, app launches in the country, including platforms like Colorful Balloons, Flash, Boomerang, and MSQRD, and any actions taken by the company to suppress or remove content at the request of foreign governments. Lawmakers are also probing Meta’s abandoned attempt to establish a submarine data cable connecting California and Hong Kong.
Meta has issued a firm denial, dismissing the claims as outdated and unreliable. “This is all pushed by an employee terminated eight years ago for poor performance. 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,” a Meta spokesperson said. “We ultimately opted not to go through with the ideas we’d explored, which Mark Zuckerberg announced in 2019.”
Despite those assertions, Senator Blumenthal said the internal documents reviewed by the subcommittee raise deep concerns. “Chilling whistleblower documents reviewed by the Subcommittee paint a damning portrait of a company that would censor, conceal, and deceive, to obtain access to the Chinese market,” he stated.
Further fueling the controversy are Meta’s legal moves to silence Wynn-Williams. On the day Careless People was released, the company filed for arbitration, citing a voluntary non-disparagement agreement she had signed upon her departure. Within 24 hours, an arbitrator issued a temporary gag order that barred her from making “disparaging, critical or otherwise detrimental comments” about Meta and from promoting the book.
Wynn-Williams’ legal team has since pushed to overturn that decision, arguing the order prevents her from responding to inquiries from members of Congress and foreign governments. Her lawyers say the silence being enforced through arbitration is cutting off access to key testimony about corporate behavior that has real-world public policy implications. Meta, for its part, has claimed it does not intend to interfere with her legal rights.
