Meta’s Whistleblower Was Silent Onstage. But Her Tell-All Keeps Selling

“Working on policy at Facebook was way less like enacting a chapter from Machiavelli and way more like watching a bunch of 14-year-olds who’ve been given superpowers and an ungodly amount of money, as they jet around the world to figure out what power has bought and brought them,” she wrote in the first chapter of the book.

A Meta spokesperson told KQED that Wynn-Williams signed a binding arbitration agreement, which explicitly prohibited her from promoting her book.

Shortly thereafter, in a post on the social media platform X, Meta Vice President of Communications Andy Stone wrote, “This ruling affirms that Sarah Wynn Williams’ false and defamatory book should never have been published.”

When Wynn-Williams left the company in 2017, she signed a severance agreement that included a non-disparagement clause — which Meta is now enforcing — and received an undisclosed severance payment in exchange. She was also paid an advance of more than $500,000 for the book, according to New York Magazine’s Vulture.

Meta secured an emergency legal order on the eve of the book’s publication, preventing Wynn-Williams from publicly promoting it. She faces fines of $50,000 each time she breaches the order.

The emergency arbitrator whom Meta appealed to ahead of the Hay Festival found that Meta had “established a likelihood of success on the merits of its contractual non-disparagement claim.” Meta’s motion argued that she violates that order “any time she appears in public in a place where she should know that her book is available for sale.”

The book, which appeared on numerous “Best Of” lists, including one published by NPR, was on sale at the Hay Festival, although it was pulled from sale while she was there.

Tim Wu, who served under former President Joe Biden as Special Assistant for Technology and Competition Policy, wrote an email to KQED condemning Meta’s actions. “How can we say we have freedom of speech and also accept such blatant private censorship?” He wrote.

Wu has criticized Big Tech in his own book, The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity. He added, “Is there any real difference between this [and] the authoritarian state that seeks to silence its critics?”

According to the Guardian, which first reported on the Hay Festival incident, Cadwalladr said onstage, “We have an author in a hostage situation. Blink once if you can hear us, Sarah, twice if Zuckerberg is an asshole.” At the end of the event, Wynn-Williams received a standing ovation from the audience.

Cadwalladr, famous for her role in breaking the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, mocked Meta at the event. “This is not how you conduct crisis comms,” she said. “Crisis comms would just be simply to ignore this and deprive it of oxygen.”

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.

But under the Trump administration’s NLRB, that ruling is effectively suspended.