Meta blocks further sales of Kiwi ex-employee’s scathing memoir

Meta executives have called claims in a newly released book by Sarah Wynn-Williams false or wildly exaggerated. Photo / Jason Henry, The New York Times

An arbitrator has prevented the employee from promoting her book and disparaging the company until private arbitration concludes.

Meta won a legal victory on Wednesday against a former employee who published an explosive, tell-all memoir, as an arbitrator temporarily prohibited the author from promoting or further distributing copies.

New Zealander Sarah Wynn-Williams last week released Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, a book that describes a series of incendiary allegations of sexual harassment and other inappropriate behaviour by senior executives during her tenure at the company. Meta pursued arbitration, arguing that the book is prohibited under a nondisparagement contract she signed as a global affairs employee.

During an emergency hearing on Wednesday, the arbitrator, Nicholas Gowen, found that Meta had provided enough grounds that Wynn-Williams had potentially violated her contract, according to a legal filing posted by Meta. The two parties will now begin private arbitration.

In addition to halting book promotions and sales, Wynn-Williams must refrain from engaging in or “amplifying any further disparaging, critical or otherwise detrimental comments,” according to the filing. She also must retract all previous disparaging comments “to the extent within her control”.

The filing does not limit the publisher, Flatiron Books, or its parent company, Macmillan, from continuing publication of the memoir, a spokesperson for Macmillan said, adding that the company will continue to promote the book.

“We are appalled by Meta’s tactics to silence our author through the use of a nondisparagement clause in a severance agreement,” the spokesperson, Marlena Bittner, said. “The book went through a thorough editing and vetting process, and we remain committed to publishing important books such as this.”

Meta has vehemently denied the allegations in the book.

The book is a “mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives,” a Meta spokesperson, Andy Stone, said in a statement. Wynn-Williams was fired for poor performance, he added, and an investigation at the time determined that “she made misleading and unfounded allegations of harassment”.

A spokesperson for Wynn-Williams, who worked at what was then called Facebook from 2011 to 2017, did not comment.

The move to publish the arbitration filing is one of Meta’s most forceful public repudiations of a former employee’s tell-all memoir, several of which have been published over the past two decades.

Meta executives have also responded online to Wynn-Williams’ claims, calling most of them wildly exaggerated or flat-out false.

It is unclear whether Meta’s attempts to claw back Wynn-Williams’ book will ultimately be successful. In 2023, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that it is generally illegal for companies to offer severance agreements that prohibit workers from making potentially disparaging statements about former employers, including discussing sexual harassment or sexual assault accusations.

In a Meta shareholder report in 2022, the company’s board of directors said that it did not require employees “to remain silent about harassment or discrimination,” and that the company “strictly prohibits retaliation against any personnel” for speaking up on these issues.

And in 2018, Meta said it would no longer force employees to settle sexual harassment claims in private arbitration, following a similar stance taken by Google at the time.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Mike Isaac

Photographs by: Jason Henry

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