Facebook Trying to Silence New Tell-All Author

This week, Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former employee who wrote a memoir about her experience at the firm called Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, lost a court battle against Meta.

According to an arbitrator's ruling, Wynn-Williams, who worked at Facebook (now Meta) from 2011 to 2017, may have broken the non-disparagement agreement she signed when she left the firm. According to the order, pending the conclusion of private arbitration, Wynn-Williams is temporarily barred from advertising her book or, "to the extent within [her] control, from further publishing or distributing."

Nevertheless, "Careless People" is still for sale and might even be profiting from the "Streisand effect," which states that efforts to censor material merely help increase its visibility. As of Sunday afternoon, it was the third-best-selling book on Amazon.

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The publisher of "Careless People," Macmillan, which released the book under the Flatiron Books banner, said in a statement that it would "absolutely continue to support and promote" the book and that the arbitrator's ruling "has no impact" on the publisher.

"Appalled by Meta's tactics to silence [its] author through the use of a non-disparagement clause in a severance agreement," the publisher continued.

"To be clear, the claims in Careless People are not mentioned in the arbitrator's order," Macmillan stated. "The book underwent a rigorous editing and screening process, and we are still dedicated to publishing significant works like this."

Picture Source: Macmillan

A New York Times critic said "Careless People" provides a "darkly funny and genuinely shocking" look at Facebook, namely its interactions with China and other nations. (Among her responsibilities at Facebook was the position of director of global public policy.)

According to Wynn-Williams' memoir, "I spent seven years there, and if I had to sum it up in one sentence, I'd say that it began as a hopeful comedy and ended in darkness and regret."

"[M]ost days, working on policy at Facebook was way less like enacting a chapter from Machiavelli and way more like watching a bunch of fourteen-year-olds who have been given superpowers and an ungodly amount of money, as they jet around the world to figure out what power has bought and brought them," she continued.

Additionally, Wynn-Williams allegedly filed a whistleblower complaint with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, claiming that Facebook had devised a plan in 2015 to appoint a "chief editor" who would have had the authority to censor specific content or shut down the website in China on behalf of the ruling party. This was done because Facebook was eager to operate in China.

A representative for Meta said in a statement that Wynn-Williams was "an employee terminated eight years ago for poor performance" and that "Careless People" was "a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about [Meta] and false accusations about our executives."

The Meta representative added, "At this time, we do not run our services in China." It's no secret that we were formerly interested in doing so as part of Facebook's global connectivity initiative. This was first publicly reported ten years ago. Ultimately, we decided not to implement the concepts we had investigated, as Mark Zuckerberg declared in 2019.

"Careless People" describes awkward interactions between Wynn-Williams and Joel Kaplan, Meta's current vice president of global public policy. Wynn-Williams claims that during a business function, Kaplan ground himself against her, called her "sultry," and made "weird remarks" about her spouse.

According to Meta, it looked into Wynn-Williams' claims of harassment and concluded that they were "misleading and unfounded."

"Whistleblower status protects communications to the government, not disgruntled activists trying to sell books," the representative stated in response to a question about whether the corporation is merely attempting to stifle a whistleblower's criticism.

Wynn-Williams' memoir has also drawn criticism from current and former Facebook staff members. The book "has so many lies in it I wouldn't even know where to start," according to former employee Mike Rognlien, who claimed to have "sat next to Sarah for 18 months when we both worked at the New York office."

In an interview with Business Insider prior to the arbitration decision, Wynn-Williams discussed Meta's resistance, calling the company's and her former coworkers' comments "distractions." When asked if the book had been fact-checked, she said, "I think Meta's problem is using this to not answer the questions themselves . " I want us to avoid becoming sidetracked.

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