- Former Meta employee Sarah Wynn-Williams published a book this week with damning claims about Meta.
- Meta won a ruling in arbitration that blocks Wynn-Williams' promotion of her book, "Careless People."
- But that just made more headlines — and probably made people more eager to read it.
In an appearance on a podcast last year, Mark Zuckerberg basically said he was done explaining the past. Faced with a new book full of damning allegations, Meta is now doing just that — going all out to push back against a former employee's book.
It's possible that this strident defense is backfiring — creating a "Streisand Effect" that's publicizing the book even more.
Here's the quick version of the drama so far:
Sarah Wynn-Williams worked at Facebook from 2011 to 2017 — and her book, "Careless People," details what she said were a bunch of bad things the company did. It also contains allegations that Joel Kaplan — who is now Meta's chief global affairs officer — sexually harassed her. (Meta said this week that Kaplan had been cleared of the harassment allegations in 2017 after it investigated Wynn-Williams' complaint.)
The book was released with hardly any pre-publishing fanfare: It was announced by its publisher, Flatiron Books, an imprint of Macmillan, only a few days before it came out Tuesday. That's an unusually short timeline.
Meta's reaction has been emphatic and multi-pronged. The company created a page on its website that detailed a series of the claims in the book. It said some of these — like claims about its ambitions in China or its alleged failure to act in Myanmar— have already been reported in the news media as far back as 2017 and have been acknowledged by the company publicly. The company lists seven "new" claims from the book and then offers links to past coverage and company responses — calling the claims "old news."
Meta's strongest move was on Wednesday when it won a ruling in arbitration that said Wynn-Williams could no longer promote the book because of a non-disparagement clause in a contract she signed as an employee. The ruling was granted on an emergency basis and is temporary pending the completion of the full arbitration process, The Washington Post reported.
The ruling created a new set of headlines — and some people on social media were saying news of the arbitration was the first they were hearing about the book. They now wanted to read it.
(The book's publisher said the arbitration ruling had no impact on Macmillan itself and the book is still for sale online. In a statement, the publisher it was "appalled" by what it said were Meta's tactics to "silence our author.")
Business Insider's Pranav Dixit interviewed Wynn-Williams the day before the arbitration ruling. She told Dixit that Meta is "trying to smear me and convince people not to read the book. People should read the book. The truth is in the book. They can make up their own minds. I stand by everything in the book."
A spokesperson for Meta gave this statement: "This book is a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives. 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. Since then, she has been paid by anti-Facebook activists and this is simply a continuation of that work. Whistleblower status protects communications to the government, not disgruntled activists trying to sell books."
As for me, someone who closely follows Meta news? Sure, some of the things in "Careless People" were familiar. (I have even written about some of them.) Some of the things I had nearly forgotten or didn't know much detail about, like Meta's negotiations with China (of course, in the end, Meta didn't end up operating there).
But the point of a book like this isn't scoops, necessarily. It's about reading the point of view of an insider who can provide context and create a narrative story — take it or leave it. As a reader, you get to be the judge. And that's interesting! That's, you know, "books!"
People who are interested in Meta, and its people, probably will be interested in this for the same reason a Mötley Crüe fan — after reading "The Dirt," a history of the group, will also want to read the individual autobiographies of Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, and Nikki Sixx.
You might also continue to enjoy the oral history "Nöthin' But A Good Time: The Uncensored History of the '80s Hard Rock Explosion," the memoir of video vixen Bobbie Brown, or the memoir of the guitarist of Hanoi Rocks, whose bandmate died in a car crash with Vince Neil. Heck, you might even watch the movie version of "The Dirt" (it's not very good, unfortunately) — or better yet get some context of the rock scene of the time from the documentary "The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years."
The point is: I can promise you that if there is a topic that interests you, whether it's '80s hair metal or the inner workings of one of the most powerful companies on earth, you will still get something out of a book on the topic, even if it's "old news" — be that Facebook's attempts to crack the lucrative China market or stories about Ozzy Osbourne snorting ants.
Apart from the headline-grabbing claims, "Careless People" bills itself as an insider's perspective on a series of tiny moments from a specific period. It paints a picture of a company whose leadership was possibly somewhat ill-prepared to operate on the global stage and hasn't fully reckoned with its power.
It's a company whose business goals sometimes conflicted with doing the right thing for humanity, where there were often internal debates about what even was the right thing for humanity.
I don't think even Meta's strongest supporters would disagree with that assessment.
