Meta takes aim at ex-employee’s memoir ‘Careless People’
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Meta won a legal victory this week against Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former employee who recently published a memoir of her time at the company titled “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism.”
An arbitrator ruled that the company has made a valid argument that Wynn-Williams, who worked at Facebook (now Meta) from 2011 to 2017, may have violated the non-disparagement agreement she signed when leaving the company. The ruling states that Wynn-Williams is temporarily prohibited from promoting — or, “to the extent within [her] control, from further publishing or distributing” — her book until private arbitration concludes.
However, “Careless People” remains available for purchase, and may in fact be benefitting from the “Streisand Effect,” in which attempts to suppress information only serve to further publicize it. As of Sunday afternoon, “Careless People” was the number three bestselling book on Amazon.
Macmillan, which published “Careless People” through its imprint Flatiron Books, said in a statement that the arbitrator’s decision “has no impact” on the publisher and that it will “absolutely continue to support and promote” the book.
The publisher added that it is “appalled by Meta’s tactics to silence [its] author through the use of a non-disparagement clause in a severance agreement.”
“To be clear, the arbitrator’s order makes no reference to the claims within Careless People,” Macmillan said. “The book went through a thorough editing and vetting process, and we remain committed to publishing important books such as this.”
“Careless People” offers what a New York Times reviewer described as a “darkly funny and genuinely shocking” look inside Facebook — particularly its relationship with China and other governments. (Wynn-Williams’ roles at Facebook included serving as director of global public policy.)
“I was there for seven years, and if I had to sum it up in a sentence, I’d say that it started as a hopeful comedy and ended in darkness and regret,” Wynn-Williams wrote in the memoir.
She added, “[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’ve 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.”
Wynn-Williams also reportedly filed a whistleblower complaint with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission alleging that, in its eagerness to operate in China, Facebook created a plan in 2015 to install a “chief editor” who would have been able to censor certain content or shut down the site in China on behalf of the country’s ruling party.
In a statement, a Meta spokesperson described “Careless People” as “a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about [Meta] and false accusations about our executives,” and described Wynn-Williams is “an employee terminated eight years ago for poor performance.”
“We do not operate our services in China today,” the Meta spokesperson continued. “It is no secret we were once interested in doing so as part of Facebook’s effort to connect the world. This was widely reported beginning a decade ago. We ultimately opted not to go through with the ideas we’d explored, which Mark Zuckerberg announced in 2019.”
“Careless People” recounts uncomfortable encounters between Joel Kaplan, now Meta’s vice president of global public policy, and Wynn-Williams, who claims he ground himself against her at a work event, described her as “sultry,” and made “weird comments” about her husband.
Meta said it investigated Wynn-Williams’ allegations of harassment and found them “misleading and unfounded.”
As for whether the company is simply trying to silence a whistleblower’s criticism, the spokesperson said, “Whistleblower status protects communications to the government, not disgruntled activists trying to sell books.”
Current and former Facebook employees have also criticized Wynn-Williams’ memoir. Ex-staffer Mike Rognlien said he “sat next to Sarah for 18 months when we both worked at the New York office” and claimed the book “has so many lies in it I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
Wynn-Williams discussed Meta’s pushback in a Business Insider interview conducted before the arbitration ruling, characterizing criticisms from the company and former coworkers as distractions. Asked about whether the book had been fact-checked, she said, “I think Meta’s problem is using this to not answer the questions themselves. What I would love is for us not to fall into the distraction.”
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Anthony Ha is TechCrunch’s weekend editor. Previously, he worked as a tech reporter at Adweek, a senior editor at VentureBeat, a local government reporter at the Hollister Free Lance, and vice president of content at a VC firm. He lives in New York City.
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