Republican and Democratic senators took turns Wednesday denouncing Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over his company’s record on China after they heard testimony from the latest former Meta employee to become a public critic of the company.  

At a hearing of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and terrorism, senators of both parties accused Zuckerberg and his company of having put Americans’ data at risk as it explored releasing its apps Facebook and Instagram in China over the past decade.  

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., the subcommittee’s chair, said lawmakers would continue with an investigation of the company and would seek testimony from Zuckerberg. “This will not be the end. This is just the beginning,” he said.  

The hearing was a demonstration of deep bipartisan anger at Meta, even as it has largely flown under the political radar in recent months as other tech figures, such as Tesla CEO Elon Musk, have grabbed the spotlight.   

Senators turned their focus to Meta after the release of a memoir by a former company employee, Sarah Wynn-Williams. The memoir, “Careless People,” has become a bestseller, despite attempts by Meta to limit its promotion.  

The book chronicles Zuckerberg’s multi-year effort to break into the Chinese market beginning in 2014 in a quest to reach the country’s more than 1 billion potential social media users. Meta never released a mainstream app there, and Zuckerberg called off the effort in 2019, although the company still makes billions of dollars a year from China-based businesses that buy ads on Meta’s apps.   

Wynn-Williams writes in the book that, as part of Zuckerberg’s wooing of China, Meta created and tested custom censorship tools that it could potentially roll out in China. She also writes that company employees discussed potential deals with China over data, such as giving the Chinese government access to the personal information of Hong Kong-based users. Some of the allegations were previously published in news accounts.  

In testimony before the subcommittee, Wynn-Williams accused Zuckerberg, whom she worked with directly, of being dishonest about his past willingness to strike compromises with the Chinese government. 

“The greatest trick Mark Zuckerberg ever pulled was wrapping the American flag around himself and calling himself a patriot and saying he didn’t offer services in China, while he spent the last decade building an $18 billion business there,” she said, referring to Meta’s advertising sales in China.  

Meta denounced her comments to the subcommittee.  

“Sarah Wynn-Williams’ testimony is divorced from reality and riddled with false claims,” spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement. “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.”  

Wynn-Williams was the only witness to appear before the subcommittee, and senators used the opportunity of her testimony to unleash pent-up anger at Meta and Zuckerberg, sometimes with harsh language. Several said they agreed with Wynn-Williams that Meta had gone too far.  

“The American people are going to be pretty outraged that Mark Zuckerberg sold out America to China, that he imperiled our national security for a buck, that he compromised a highly significant American corporation for personal gain and profit,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. 

Blumenthal also accused Meta of fighting off proposed tech regulations through “deception and pandering and buying and — you might even say — bribing.”  

Hawley said at the end of the hearing that he wanted Zuckerberg to come before lawmakers to answer questions. Zuckerberg has testified before Congress eight times since 2018 on an array of subjects, and Hawley said he did not believe Zuckerberg had been truthful in his past appearances.  

“Every time it’s a different answer. Every time it’s a different facade,” Hawley said. “But every time the one consistent through-line is every time it’s something misleading. Every time is something other than the truth.”  

Hawley, who has railed against Facebook for much of his career, also cast doubt on Zuckerberg’s recent political pivot toward right-wing politics over the past year, saying, “I don’t trust his latest reinvention at all.” 

Meta declined to comment on whether Zuckerberg would agree to testify again.  

Wynn-Williams said Zuckerberg was adept at changing his public image.

“This is a man who wears many different costumes,” she testified. “When I was there, he wanted the president of China to name his first child. He was learning Mandarin. He was censoring to his heart’s content. Now, his new costume is MMA fighting or free speech. We don’t know what the next costume’s going to be, but it’ll be something different. It’s whatever gets him closest to power.”