In her book “Careless People”, a former employee of Meta levies serious allegations against the group and its top staff. Meta rejects the allegations and is now taking legal action against the publication.
What is the book about? Sarah Wynn-Williams worked from 2011 to 2017 as the Director of Public Policy on Facebook (today Meta). In this position it was u. responsible for communication with governments and political strategies of the company.
Wynn-Williams describes in her recently published book “Careless People: A CaUionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism” (freely translated into German: “Careless people: a warning story about power, greed and lost ideals”) Internal processes and questionable decisions of the group management of Meta.
In her book, the author describes an enemy work environment as well as abuse of power and personal misconduct that attributes high-ranking meta managers
Her statements about Mark Zuckerberg are particularly explosive. According to Wynn-Williams, Zuckerberg has considered to adapt to the Chinese government in terms of censorship and user data to open up the market. In addition, Facebook played a role in spreading hate speeches, which in their view is said to have contributed to the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar (via Guardian).
And the former Meta-Coo Sheryl Sandberg as well as other high-ranking managers are also confronted with serious allegations in the book (via Themirrorinspires).
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Meta is legally based on publication
How does Meta proceed against the book? Meta has started legal steps to prevent the publication of the book. According to the FAZ, the group is based on a confidentiality clause that Wynn-Williams is said to have signed after it is left. The company argues that its revelations violate this agreement.
In a first success, Meta was able to obtain an injunction against the author in court. This means that for the time being, it is not allowed to talk about certain content from the book and that it has to restrict her statements about Meta and its management staff. The injunction is in advance of a private arbitration process, which must finally judge the complaint.
Meta itself rejects the allegations as “unfounded” and describes the book as “a mixture of outdated and already published claims about the company” and “false accusations” about the managers. (via Sfgate). In addition, Meta has published a document in which the company reproduces some of the information contained in the book and tries to put in context (via Guardian).
How does the public react? Despite the legal measures, “Careless People” has already made high waves. The discussions about the book are further heating the debate about the handling of tech giants with critics.
The publisher MacMillan, which is published by the book and is not affected by the injunction, criticizes the approach in Metas. According to MacMillan, the book was carefully edited and checked. The publisher emphasizes that the publication and application continues to record important works such as this (via BBC).
Possible string effect
Attention through oppression: The stringing effect describes a phenomenon in which things that are deliberately kept (or suppressed) are obtained exactly the opposite effect-they become all the more visible.
A similar effect could now also occur in the book of Wynn-Williams by drawing meta’s procedure for additional attention to the work. The book is currently one of the top bestsellers in several book categories on Amazon.com. Both in the US and European marketing space.
It remains to be seen whether and how far the meta group and Mark Zuckerberg will proceed against Sarah Wynn-Williams. However, it is certain that the Meta and Mark Zuckerberg case is once again in a bad light. Most recently, Mark Zuckerberg even announced that Ki wanted to replace programmers: Mark Zuckerberg announced the beginning of the end for programmers at Meta