Meta received a authorized victory this week towards Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former worker who lately revealed a memoir of her time on the firm titled “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism.”
An arbitrator dominated that the corporate has made a legitimate argument that Wynn-Williams, who labored at Facebook (now Meta) from 2011 to 2017, might have violated the non-disparagement settlement she signed when leaving the corporate. The ruling states that Wynn-Williams is briefly prohibited from selling — or, “to the extent inside [her] management, from additional publishing or distributing” — her guide till non-public arbitration concludes.
However, “Careless People” stays accessible for buy, and will in actual fact be benefitting from the “Streisand Effect,” through which makes an attempt to suppress data solely serve to additional publicize it. As of Sunday afternoon, “Careless People” was the quantity three bestselling guide on Amazon.
Macmillan, which revealed “Careless People” by its imprint Flatiron Books, stated in an announcement that the arbitrator’s choice “has no impression” on the writer and that it’s going to “completely proceed to help and promote” the guide.
The writer added that it’s “appalled by Meta’s techniques to silence [its] writer by using a non-disparagement clause in a severance settlement.”
“To be clear, the arbitrator’s order makes no reference to the claims inside Careless People,” Macmillan stated. “The guide went by an intensive enhancing and vetting course of, and we stay dedicated to publishing vital books reminiscent of this.”
“Careless People” affords what a New York Times reviewer described as a “darkly humorous and genuinely stunning” look inside Facebook — significantly its relationship with China and different governments. (Wynn-Williams’ roles at Facebook included serving as director of world public coverage.)
“I used to be there for seven years, and if I needed to sum it up in a sentence, I’d say that it began as a hopeful comedy and led to darkness and remorse,” Wynn-Williams wrote within the memoir.
She added, “[M]ost days, engaged on coverage at Facebook was approach much less like enacting a chapter from Machiavelli and far more like watching a bunch of fourteen-year-olds who’ve been given superpowers and an ungodly sum of money, as they jet all over the world to determine what energy has purchased and introduced them.”
Wynn-Williams additionally reportedly filed a whistleblower grievance with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission alleging that, in its eagerness to function in China, Facebook created a plan in 2015 to put in a “chief editor” who would have been capable of censor sure content material or shut down the location in China on behalf of the nation’s ruling social gathering.
In an announcement, a Meta spokesperson described “Careless People” as “a mixture of out-of-date and beforehand reported claims about [Meta] and false accusations about our executives,” and described Wynn-Williams is “an worker terminated eight years in the past for poor efficiency.”
“We don’t function our companies in China as we speak,” the Meta spokesperson continued. “It is not any secret we had been as soon as fascinated with doing in order a part of Facebook’s effort to attach the world. This was extensively reported starting a decade in the past. We finally opted to not undergo with the concepts we’d explored, which Mark Zuckerberg introduced in 2019.”
“Careless People” recounts uncomfortable encounters between Joel Kaplan, now Meta’s vice chairman of world public coverage, and Wynn-Williams, who claims he floor himself towards her at a piece occasion, described her as “sultry,” and made “bizarre feedback” about her husband.
Meta stated it investigated Wynn-Williams’ allegations of harassment and located them “deceptive and unfounded.”
As for whether or not the corporate is solely attempting to silence a whistleblower’s criticism, the spokesperson stated, “Whistleblower standing protects communications to the federal government, not disgruntled activists attempting to promote books.”
Current and former Facebook staff have additionally criticized Wynn-Williams’ memoir. Ex-staffer Mike Rognlien stated he “sat subsequent to Sarah for 18 months once we each labored on the New York workplace” and claimed the guide “has so many lies in it I wouldn’t even know the place to begin.”
Wynn-Williams mentioned Meta’s pushback in a Business Insider interview performed earlier than the arbitration ruling, characterizing criticisms from the corporate and former coworkers as distractions. Asked about whether or not the guide had been fact-checked, she stated, “I believe Meta’s downside is utilizing this to not reply the questions themselves. What I’d love is for us to not fall into the distraction.”
