Meta gained a authorized victory this week in opposition to Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former worker who lately printed a memoir of her time on the firm titled “Careless Folks: A Cautionary Story of Energy, Greed, and Misplaced Idealism.”
An arbitrator dominated that the corporate has made a legitimate argument that Wynn-Williams, who labored at Fb (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 quickly prohibited from selling — or, “to the extent inside [her] management, from additional publishing or distributing” — her ebook till personal arbitration concludes.
Nonetheless, “Careless Folks” stays obtainable for buy, and should in actual fact be benefitting from the “Streisand Impact,” through which makes an attempt to suppress info solely serve to additional publicize it. As of Sunday afternoon, “Careless Folks” was the quantity three bestselling ebook on Amazon.
Macmillan, which printed “Careless Folks” by means of its imprint Flatiron Books, mentioned 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 ebook.
The writer added that it’s “appalled by Meta’s ways to silence [its] creator by means of the usage of a non-disparagement clause in a severance settlement.”
“To be clear, the arbitrator’s order makes no reference to the claims inside Careless Folks,” Macmillan mentioned. “The ebook went by means of a radical modifying and vetting course of, and we stay dedicated to publishing essential books akin to this.”
“Careless Folks” provides what a New York Instances reviewer described as a “darkly humorous and genuinely stunning” look inside Fb — significantly its relationship with China and different governments. (Wynn-Williams’ roles at Fb 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 resulted in darkness and remorse,” Wynn-Williams wrote within the memoir.
She added, “[M]ost days, engaged on coverage at Fb was means 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 amount of cash, as they jet around the globe to determine what energy has purchased and introduced them.”
Wynn-Williams additionally reportedly filed a whistleblower grievance with the U.S. Securities and Change Fee alleging that, in its eagerness to function in China, Fb created a plan in 2015 to put in a “chief editor” who would have been in a position to censor sure content material or shut down the location in China on behalf of the nation’s ruling celebration.
In an announcement, a Meta spokesperson described “Careless Folks” 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 providers in China right this moment,” the Meta spokesperson continued. “It’s no secret we had been as soon as focused on doing in order a part of Fb’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 Folks” recounts uncomfortable encounters between Joel Kaplan, now Meta’s vp of world public coverage, and Wynn-Williams, who claims he floor himself in opposition to her at a piece occasion, described her as “sultry,” and made “bizarre feedback” about her husband.
Meta mentioned it investigated Wynn-Williams’ allegations of harassment and located them “deceptive and unfounded.”
As for the corporate is solely making an attempt to silence a whistleblower’s criticism, the spokesperson mentioned, “Whistleblower standing protects communications to the federal government, not disgruntled activists making an attempt to promote books.”
Present and former Fb staff have additionally criticized Wynn-Williams’ memoir. Ex-staffer Mike Rognlien mentioned he “sat subsequent to Sarah for 18 months after we each labored on the New York workplace” and claimed the ebook “has so many lies in it I wouldn’t even know the place to begin.”
Wynn-Williams mentioned Meta’s pushback in a Enterprise Insider interview carried out earlier than the arbitration ruling, characterizing criticisms from the corporate and former coworkers as distractions. Requested about whether or not the ebook had been fact-checked, she mentioned, “I believe Meta’s drawback is utilizing this to not reply the questions themselves. What I might love is for us to not fall into the distraction.”
