Guests – Ava Chen, Jared Knott
Meta's Secret Censorship Tools and Chinese Communist Party Influence
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, built a sophisticated censorship tool designed specifically for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to revelations from whistleblowers. Sarah Wynne Williams, former global policy director at Meta who worked there for six years until being fired in 2018, details these efforts in her new book "Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed and Lost Idealism."
According to Williams, Meta valued the Chinese market at approximately $18 billion a year (as of 2024). The company determined that China was so critical to its growth and future that executives were willing to do "anything and everything" to gain access to the Chinese market, despite the fact that Meta platforms remain blocked within China to this day.
In 2014, a letter was drafted on behalf of Mark Zuckerberg to a CCP official detailing the company's cooperation with the Chinese consulate in San Francisco. The letter explained how Meta had already blocked websites deemed by the CCP as "terrorist sites" and expressed willingness to work with CCP consulates and embassies worldwide.
This cooperation coincided with the Yellow Umbrella movement in Hong Kong in 2014, when protesters pushed back against CCP control. Meta consulted with the Irish Data Protection Commissioner regarding Hong Kong users, who were initially afforded the same privacy protections as users in the United States and Europe under common law. However, shortly after meeting with Meta's Chinese negotiation team, the company weakened Hong Kong users' privacy rights and began sharing their data—creating potentially dangerous situations for protesters who could be identified, located, arrested, or threatened by authorities.
By 2015, Meta had built a censorship tool codenamed "Project Eldrian" for the CCP. Another whistleblower, Alec Muffett, who resigned from Facebook in 2016, reviewed code for this project and discovered "experimental code which divided the Facebook user base into Chinese Users (CU) and non-Chinese Users (NCU)" that proposed different treatments for them.
The system was designed to identify users by nationality, not just location. As Muffett explained: "If members of a community have a certain bit set, and if they create an interesting cluster of similar content that would usually cause a viral video or something to go viral, then that content may be sent for external content management review. If the reviewer gives a thumbs down, the content is suppressed for other people in that bit set."
This censorship tool was more sophisticated than traditional geo-blocking. Rather than providing location-relevant content as a convenience, the system targeted all users identifying as Chinese regardless of their location in the world. Meta planned to hire over 300 content reviewers to work with CCP officials, embassies, and China's cybersecurity administration to implement this system.
Despite creating these tools, Meta never successfully entered the Chinese market. However, the company continued to receive significant advertising revenue from China—approximately 10% of its global advertising revenue in 2018, according to research from Pivotal Research. This financial relationship helps explain Meta's willingness to accommodate CCP demands.
Beyond Meta, similar patterns emerged across major social media platforms. In 2017, Twitter faced DDOS attacks that brought down hundreds of servers when the platform resisted CCP demands to block Miles Guo, a Chinese dissident who began exposing CCP corruption. Internal Twitter employees reportedly contacted Guo's social media team, warning them about the attacks and asking when Guo would release new whistleblowing information about CCP leaders so they could prepare their servers.
The Meta whistleblower's book reveals that on September 30, 2017, Facebook received demands from CCP officials working for China's cybersecurity administration to deplatform Miles Guo. Internal Meta documents regarding this conversation stated: "If there is nothing we can do to those accounts, there will be an impact on our cooperation"—implying financial or other consequences if Meta failed to comply.
This level of influence extends beyond any single dissident. The CCP has reportedly spent approximately $2 trillion on social media and media influence operations over a 15-20 year period—roughly $100 billion annually. This massive spending power gives the regime significant leverage over global tech platforms and media companies.
The tools and techniques developed for censoring Chinese users have implications for users worldwide. The capability to identify, track, and censor specific groups based on nationality or other characteristics represents a concerning precedent for how these platforms can manipulate information access globally.
Miles Guo Case and Evidence Destruction
The case of Miles Guo illustrates the extent of CCP influence operations within the United States. Guo, founder of the New Federal State of China movement and a vocal critic of the CCP, has faced numerous legal challenges that his supporters describe as politically motivated.
Currently held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in New York, Guo awaits sentencing in what his supporters characterize as political persecution. The circumstances surrounding his arrest on March 15, 2023, raise serious questions about evidence destruction and potential corruption.
When federal agents arrested Guo at his Manhattan penthouse in the Sherry-Netherland Hotel, a fire broke out in the apartment. According to sources close to Guo, the apartment contained critical evidence hidden between walls—including recordings, USB drives, and documents detailing business dealings between top CCP leaders and the Biden family dating back to 2010.
These materials allegedly included evidence of meetings between Biden and Chinese intelligence officials at the Pangu Plaza hotel owned by Guo's family. Before the fire was set, the walls were reportedly chiseled open and the evidence removed. This destruction of evidence raises questions about the true nature of the prosecution against Guo and possible interference in the investigation.
The fact that no fire report has been released more than a year after the incident, along with prosecutors' attempts to block arguments related to the fire in court, adds to suspicions about potential misconduct. Some have suggested that Guo's case represents an attempt to silence a key witness to corruption between American officials and the CCP.
Russia-Ukraine Peace Prospects Under Trump Administration
The ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine has reached a potential turning point with direct communication between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Their recent two-hour phone conversation signals a possible path toward negotiated peace after more than two years of devastating warfare.
This conflict has resulted in catastrophic casualties—approximately 800,000 Russian and 700,000 Ukrainian deaths, totaling 1.4-1.5 million casualties. This figure exceeds the combined losses of the United States and Great Britain during World War II, highlighting the urgent humanitarian need for resolution.
The fundamental challenge in negotiating with Russia lies in their historical pattern of violating agreements. As historian Jared Knot explains, "The problem in dealing with Russia and signing any kind of peace treaty is they violated every single peace treaty they've ever signed." This makes enforcement mechanisms essential to any workable agreement.
For a peace deal to succeed, it would require significant penalties and incentives compelling Russian compliance. These could include:
Military deterrence through NATO forces positioned to respond to violations
Land mines and other physical barriers to prevent further aggression
Severe economic sanctions that would automatically trigger upon treaty violations
The Trump administration appears to be taking a "peace through strength" approach similar to the strategy employed by President Eisenhower during the Cold War. Trump has reportedly told Putin in the past that he would "bomb Moscow" if Russia invaded Ukraine—the kind of clear deterrent that might have prevented the invasion under a different administration.
Any potential agreement would likely involve territorial concessions, with Russia retaining Crimea and portions of eastern Ukraine. While controversial, this framework recognizes the military reality on the ground and prioritizes ending the devastating human toll over idealized outcomes.
Putin's motivations must be understood within a historical context. As Knot notes, Putin follows in the tradition of leaders like Stalin, who infamously said, "An individual's death is a tragedy, death of millions of people is just a statistic." For Putin, rebuilding the Russian Empire and securing his legacy may outweigh concerns about casualties.
The international dimension adds further complexity, with a "coalition that involves North Korea, China, and Russia, and Iran as well," forming a bloc of authoritarian states with shared interests in challenging Western dominance.
Despite these challenges, cautious optimism exists that the Trump administration possesses the negotiating expertise needed to achieve a workable peace agreement. As Knot observes, "If anybody can pull it off, it's the Trump administration."
How Tiny Mistakes Change World History
History often focuses on major events while overlooking the small mistakes that trigger massive consequences. Historian Jared Knott explores this phenomenon in his books "Tiny Blunders, Big Disasters" and its sequel "The Many Tiny Mistakes That Change the World Forever."
One striking example involves how a misplaced piece of tape altered the course of the Vietnam War. During the Watergate break-in, burglars were instructed to place tape on a door latch in a vertical position to avoid detection. Instead, they placed it horizontally, making it visible to a security guard who then called police. This led to arrests that triggered the Watergate scandal, ultimately forcing President Nixon from office.
As the Nixon administration collapsed, it lost the political strength needed to enforce the peace treaty with North Vietnam. Henry Kissinger had anticipated North Vietnamese violations of the agreement and planned to "bomb the daylights out of them" to force compliance. Without Nixon's leadership, this enforcement never happened, South Vietnam collapsed, and the war's outcome changed—all because of tape positioned incorrectly.
Another example comes from 1453, when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Empire partly because someone forgot to close and secure a gate in the fortress wall. This oversight allowed Ottoman forces to pour into the city, leading to the fall of the last vestige of the Roman Empire—essentially ending an empire because someone didn't lock a gate.
The discovery of the Americas resulted from Christopher Columbus's mathematical errors. Columbus believed the Earth was only 75% of its actual size due to calculation mistakes and using Italian miles instead of Arabic miles in his measurements. While most European powers rejected his proposal as mathematically impossible, Queen Isabel and King Ferdinand of Spain took a chance on his miscalculations, inadvertently leading to European contact with the Americas.
This "discovery" had devastating consequences for indigenous populations. Within three years of Columbus's arrival in the Bahamas, 90% of the native population had perished, primarily from European diseases like measles, smallpox, and malaria against which they had no immunity. What was a navigation error for Columbus became an apocalyptic disaster for native peoples.
Even positive discoveries sometimes emerge from mistakes. In 1928, Professor Alexander Fleming's notoriously sloppy laboratory habits led to one of medicine's greatest breakthroughs. Leaving bacteria cultures unattended with an open window while on vacation, Fleming returned to find a penicillin mold had contaminated one of his petri dishes and killed surrounding bacteria. This accidental observation launched the field of antibiotics, which has saved an estimated half-billion lives since World War II.
These historical examples illustrate how seemingly inconsequential decisions or oversights can trigger chain reactions with profound global consequences—reinforcing philosopher George Santayana's warning that "those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it."