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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.”
https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/16/meta-takes-aim-at-ex-employees-memoir-careless-people/
@cdarwin sounds like Streisand effect to me!
@cdarwin As soon as I read “Meta” and “non-disparaging clause”, I was hoping for it to backfire them. Good that it did.
@cdarwin The fact that a company needs a "non-disparagement agreement" says a lot about that company.
@cdarwin yeah, I had faint plans to read it. It's suddenly jumped to the top of my reading list.
Streisand effect indeed.
@cdarwin I see that there are 2 versions now: "A cautionary tale..." And "A story of where I used to work"
Is this a republishing under a slightly different name to bypass the issue?
Am halfway through this.
Would recommend, it's a fascinating read
@cdarwin a Pyrrhic victory at best.
Arbitrators are kangaroo courts inherently biased in favor of the company that pays their bills and their pronouncements should not be dignified by calling them “rulings”.
@cdarwin I'm not going to read a book by someone who thought it was ok to work for Facebook at that level, over those years.
I will enjoy the schadenfreude though.