Silicon Valley Can’t Regulate Itself
Facebook whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams’ new book is yet another account of why.
“The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good.”
For almost two decades, Facebook has dominated global social media in the pursuit of “connecting people.” But as whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams documents in her new book “Careless People,” the company’s leadership has repeatedly allowed a ruthless, profit-driven perversion of that mission to jeopardize fundamental human freedoms globally.
Thanks to her insider account, for the first time the public has a first-hand account of the reckless decision-making at the very top of the multi-billion dollar company, stripping executives of any plausible deniability.
As Wynn-Williams prepares to testify before Congress later today, her message could not be more urgent: Without immediate and comprehensive regulation, the unchecked power of tech giants poses a serious threat to American national security. Her book delivers a damning indictment of the current regulatory approach to Big Tech, revealing why multinational tech firms cannot — and must not — be trusted to police themselves.
Hubris or Calculated Indifference?
Wynn-Williams’ book reaffirms much of what is already known about Meta’s questionable approach to consumer safety, including how the platform's engagement-driven algorithms compromise user well-being, the company’s willingness to empower dangerous political figures and harmful actors, and the platform’s documented contribution to the horrific ethnic cleansing campaign in Myanmar.
Yet what has truly alarmed current Meta executives — and led them to try to muzzle Wynn-Williams with a gag order — wasn’t the well-known issues she raised, but her revelations about leadership’s persistent pattern of deliberate inaction and calculated indifference, even in the face of mounting evidence.
This theme played a central role in Facebook’s aggressive pursuit of market access in China, the focal point of today’s Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing. “Careless People” details how Facebook executives readily forfeited fundamental privacy and security measures to appease the Chinese government, despite having a keen understanding of the potential for abuse of their services. This calculated recklessness represents a stunning abdication of corporate responsibility.
Her account exposes not just Facebook's failings, but a broader Silicon Valley pathology: the dangerous willingness to sacrifice everything at the altar of a simplified technological utopia. Zuckerberg’s unwavering adherence to his mission of “connecting people” persists despite clear evidence that his platform achieves precisely the opposite effect – siloing users into hyper personalized filter bubbles.
“The idea that Facebook cares about people’s privacy is not believable anywhere.”
- Excerpt from Facebook’s internal consumer research from a focus group assessing Facebook’s reputation (“Careless People,” pg. 315)
For years, Facebook has claimed that the company “does not offer back doors” for the government, meaning that the data harvested and stored on its servers could never be transferred for government use. This stance, echoed by other American technology companies like Apple and Amazon, has been used to lobby against comprehensive privacy reform, as companies promise that they are the best actors to be trusted to safeguard data against potential misuse.
This precedent even shaped the contours of the TikTok debate, in which the U.S. government asserts that TikTok’s Chinese ownership could grant the Chinese government access to extensive data on American users, raising concerns about surveillance and covert influence operations and reinforcing the principle that no government should have unchecked access to digital information.
Yet, when the Chinese government demanded that Facebook compromise on privacy and surveillance to operate in China, the company happily obliged. According to Wynn-Williams, Facebook proposed relocating its data servers to China — a move that would have granted the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) complete access to everything stored on them. These servers would have contained data not just on Chinese users, but also on everything those users interacted with, implicating users across the globe. No other government, including the United States, had ever been offered that level of tailor-made access.
Ultimately, Facebook never entered China — a point executives have repeatedly emphasized in response to Wynn-Williams’ allegations. Regardless of what steps the company began taking to implement the litany of surveillance mechanisms designed in conjunction with the CCP, these revelations symbolize a broken promise once made to the billions of users active across Meta’s services: Their data would never be accessed by any government — ever.
Faithless and Detached
What Wynn-Williams says Facebook was willing to do mirrors the very actions for which TikTok has been publicly condemned: transferring sensitive user data to an adversarial government. Yet as TikTok faced intense scrutiny, congressional hearings, and an eventual ban last April, it was ironically Facebook that took up the torch and led the town witch hunt.
In a speech at Georgetown in 2019, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg lamented TikTok for censoring protests and speeches his platforms dutifully protected through “strong encryption and privacy protections.” He spoke of his personal value of free expression, and warned of a world in which Chinese interests dictated user experience online. One year later, Zuckerberg met personally with American lawmakers to alert them about the looming threat of Chinese competition in emerging technology. And as Issue One has reported, the year that the TikTok ban-or-sell law was introduced, Meta spent a record $24.4 million lobbying Capitol Hill, the highest amount it had spent since it began lobbying in 2009, much of it in support of the TikTok law.
This behavior highlights a systemic crisis in global communications technology. Both governments and citizens lack meaningful understanding or control over how personal data is harvested, stored, and leveraged by tech giants. The current self-regulatory approach to privacy is fundamentally unsustainable and leaves billions vulnerable to exploitation.
Beyond Self-Regulation
The unchecked growth of Silicon Valley giants like Meta has proven time and again that their commitment to user safety and national security is secondary to their pursuit of profit. Their repeated failures to act in the public interest highlight the dangerous hubris that drives the industry — an arrogance that believes innovation and expansion justify any means necessary. This pattern of self-interest and lack of accountability masquerading as a utopian ethos makes it abundantly clear that Silicon Valley cannot be trusted to regulate itself.
Addressing national security challenges on TikTok or Meta requires more than targeting individual companies. The hemorrhaging of personal data to unknown entities demands comprehensive privacy legislation that establishes clear standards for all technology companies operating in the United States. For Congress, that means that the approach to national security must address the underlying shortcomings of the current regulatory framework. The patchwork of state privacy laws is meaningless when American companies continue to act with disregard for the law. That’s part of why Issue One has offered expertise to the House Commerce Committee’s Privacy Working Group, encouraging the group to prioritize national security as they draft a new comprehensive federal privacy bill.
Without robust regulatory frameworks that prioritize user protection over corporate convenience, Americans will remain vulnerable to manipulation by both domestic and foreign adversaries. The evidence is clear: The tech industry has repeatedly demonstrated it cannot be trusted to regulate itself when profits conflict with the public good.
 | A guest post by
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