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What just happened? The first step in Meta’s attempts to have a tell-all book by a former employee blocked has succeeded. An arbitrator has decided in favor of the company, ruling that Sarah Wynn-Williams is prohibited from promoting Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism.
Wynn-Williams’ book includes several damning revelations and allegations against Meta. There are further details about the concessions the company offered to the Chinese government in the hope of launching a censored version of the platform in the country. The book also includes claims of sexual harassment by chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan while he was a vice president for global public policy and Wynn-Williams’ boss. Further allegations include Facebook ignoring internal warnings about its potential damage to human rights and democracy.
The book also alleges that Chinese president Xi Jinping once used a human wall of security personnel to block any potential eye contact between himself and Mark Zuckerberg.
Yesterday, Meta won an emergency arbitration ruling to temporarily stop promotion of the book. The arbitrator, Nicholas Gowen, said Meta would suffer “immediate and irreparable loss” in the absence of emergency relief.
Sarah Wynn-Williams pictured with Mark Zuckerberg and Joel Kaplan
Gowen said that Wynn-Williams must stop making disparaging, critical, or otherwise detrimental remarks against Meta and its employees and retract all such previous comments from all forums, including online, where they appear – to the extent she can control.
Furthermore, Wynn-Williams cannot promote the book via a book tour or other means, or further publish or distribute it. Again, the order comes with the “to the extent she can control” caveat.
Meta alleges that Wynn-Williams violated the non-disparagement terms of her September 2017 severance agreement. Book publisher Macmillan argues it was not bound by this agreement.
It’s unclear if the arbitrator can stop the book from being published. It remains on sale at retailers such as Amazon, where it is the number one best-seller in its category.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said the ruling confirms that Wynn-Williams’ “false and defamatory book” should never have been published.
“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,” Stone said.
Meta previously said that Wynn-Williams’ comments were out-of-date and that she was fired in 2017 for poor performance and toxic behavior. The international lawyer and a former New Zealand diplomat joined Facebook in 2011 and eventually became its director of global public policy.
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