Meta Obtains Legal Order to Halt Promotion of Ex-Employee’s Memoir

Meta obtained a legal order to halt the promotion and distribution of a former director’s memoir during an emergency hearing this Wednesday. The arbitrator ruled in favor of Meta’s allegations that the author may have violated a non-disparagement severance agreement.

According to the official ruling, the tech giant won, temporarily, the legal victory to stop Sarah Wynn-Williams’s book, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, from reaching a wider audience during an emergency proceeding she didn’t attend. A contract signed in 2017—which prohibited Wynn-Williams from making negative statements—was considered for the decision.

Wynn-Williams, worked at Facebook—now Meta—from 2011 to 2017 where she served as Director of Public Policy. Her profile at the World Economic Forum states she is an international lawyer and policy expert with vast experience as a diplomat. And, up until last week, her tell-all memoir of her seven years at Facebook was kept a secret.

“Careless People is darkly funny and genuinely shocking: an ugly, detailed portrait of one of the most powerful companies in the world,” wrote journalist and literary critic Jennifer Szalai in a review of the book at The New York Times published this week. “What Wynn-Williams reveals will undoubtedly trigger her former bosses’ ire.”

During her time at Facebook, Wynn-Williams interacted with CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Joel Kaplan—current policy chief who allegedly made inappropriate comments she reported as sexual harassment—and then-COO Sheryl Sandberg, also involved in inappropriate behaviors according to the former employee.

After learning about the book’s publication, Meta immediately denied Wynn-Williams’s allegations and took action.

“This is a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives,” said a Meta spokesperson about the book in an interview with the New York Post published on Monday. “Eight years ago, Sarah Wynn-Williams was fired for poor performance and toxic behavior, and an investigation at the time determined she made misleading and unfounded allegations of harassment.”

Andy Stone, Communications Director at Meta, shared a post on Threads including the filing issued by the emergency arbitrator Nicholas A Gowen after considering that Meta had provided enough information to consider that Wynn-Williams could have violated her contract in publishing her memoir.

“This ruling affirms that Sarah Wynn Williams’ false and defamatory book should never have been published,” wrote Stone in the post. “This urgent legal action was made necessary by Williams, who more than eight years after being terminated by the company, deliberately concealed the existence of her book project and avoided the industry’s standard fact-checking process in order to rush it to shelves after waiting for eight years.”

Many users replied to Stone’s post saying that Meta’s censorship moves had only increased their interest in reading Wynn-Williams’s book and criticized the tech giant’s arguments. “I’m terribly confused. I thought Facebook was returning to its roots and embracing free speech. Can’t ‘community notes’ address false statements?” wrote one user referring to Meta’s recent decision to end its fact-checking program.