We the people hold the power to keep in check the immoral companies, governments, and other unscrupulous entities that would exploit the collective to enrich the few. And ultimately that's through our money and how we spend it.
Screw Meta and their anti-human business model.
More like Catch-22 than a cheap ”spill the tea” ride.
What in the world?? I guess NDA’s are like that, and used everywhere. Still it just seems wild
I'm not clear on the newspaper example; do you think reporters aren't allowed to write stuff outside their job? Plenty of reporters publish books.
You can argue that contract law is essentially a battle of relative political and economic power, and IP and employment contracts will always be unfair unless limits are set by statute and enforced enthusiastically.
And personally I would.
But generally you're signing away the rights to specific text, not the insights or commentary in that text, and if you freelance there's nothing to stop you making your points through some other channel, and/or some other text.
If you're a full-time employee then the usual agreement is that your words (code) are work product and owned by your employer, and you're in that situation because your political and economic power is relatively limited.
Good. We have "enumerate[d] [at least one] inaliable basic [freedom] that peopke should be able to deal in".
Of course, we can quibble over the permissible duration of such timespans, but I think the point has been made clear.
That's not how this works.
Unconscionability is a bit like obscenity; hard to perfectly define, but sometimes quite clear.
You have a strange definition of "inalienable".
I have the inalienable right to not be defamed and defrauded.
Now we have to resolve the contradiction as a society. That it's sometimes messy doesn't mean we ditch the concept of rights.
They also could have mentioned: NDA's, hate speech, threats, incitement, purjury, defamation, security-clearances or state secrets.
No.
"Inalienable right", like the "right to bear arms", has never meant you get to do anything with it. Free speech doesn't extend to defamation; free expression doesn't extend to murder; freedom of the press doesn't extend to sneaking into the CIA's archives, freedom of movement doesn't apply to jails.
I'm of the opinion that arbitration clauses and non-disparagement agreements of the scope involved in this particular case are unconsionable, because they unreasonably infringe upon such inalienable rights.
Good. We have "enumerate[d] [at least one] inaliable basic [freedom] that I should not be able to deal in".
Well I wouldn't call it a strong argument...
Nonetheless the goalposts were never shifted. The question was always 'should'. So I'm very confused by your confusion.
Should is an opinion. You're welcome to feel "slavery should be legal". I'm welcome to (and should) think you're insane for holding that opinion.
Well that would seem to make the rights in question not particularly inalienable. In fact if we're talking about the US slavery _is_ legal in certain contexts. So it's definitely not inalienable. Only in the context of voluntary agreements between private citizens.
You should read up on what "inalienable rights" are about. Even the first couple of paragraphs on Wikipedia will suffice.
They get violated all the time and need constant protecting.
This has nothing to do with the founding fathers. The Ancient Greeks talked about natural law. The UN passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 193 countries have ratified at least parts of it.
Again, I beg you to at least read a paragraph or two off Wikipedia.
https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
> Preamble
> Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world...
But I understand that my point of view doesn't match legal code. Just feels fucked.
If it were up to me, I would require non-disparagement agreements to be standalone contracts, and cap the damages a company can claim to the amount they paid you to sign it. Once that number is met, the contract is void. That way the company only gets as much leverage as they're willing to pay for.
Think of a person digging their own grave under threat of immediate murder (tons of well documented examples). This is the maximum self alienation: do work to make life easier for your oppressors.
In my 41 years it seems like the majority of people are content digging their own graves
What you shouldn't do is pretend not to understand.
We sell ourselves into a form of slavery every day. Some would argue that is a big driver of our current society and way of life.
One can still give up their basic rights if they so choose. The woman in question can cease from disparaging Meta for the rest of her life. A person can opt to enter in to being a slave to another for the rest of their life. I can choose to follow one religion or another or none at all. But one should never have those options taken from them.
disclaimer: She lives in the UK and I'm speaking from a US perspective.
But the contract is being enforced from the US.
What's to understand? Person agrees to thing. Person is held to thing.
Other countries have fairness doctrines with allow/disallow lists of things that can be included in contracts.
There are other ways.
Some contracts are illegal, and purely made to intimidate the other party - and completely rests on the fact that said other party will never challenge or even check if the contract is valid in the first place. Hence why so many of these contracts also have arbitration clauses which stipulate that the parties must resolve through private arbitration.
Any time someone has the balls to challenge these things is also a win for the working man.
You mean, like the one in the article the GP is pretending not to understand?
If a country passes a law that guarantees all its citizens the right to free speech, and now a company forces (!) a citizen to sign a contract saying they waive that right in order to receive the compensation they're entitled to anyway, why should the country accept that? Why should that person lose their right to free speech? Did the country give the company the authority to cancel its own laws at will?
It's the same with companies forcing candidates to sign non-compete agreements in order to be hired, if and when the company fires them. If you're a lawyer, and your employer fires you, what do you do? Work as a cashier for 3 years until the NCC expires? Change your career?
No company should have the authority to make the illegal legal (or vice-versa), and no country should accept its own citizens giving away their rights to some for-profit company. That's mafia shit: "If you excercise your right to free speech to expose our crimes, we will withhold the money we owe you and ruin your life in court".
Sign me up!!
And she signed it, so presumably it was for her.
And arbitrator companies (some of which are explicitly for-profit) know the hand that feeds them.
Non-disparagement clauses are limited by the law, which in the United States is augmented by state-level restrictions. There have been some recent developments from the NRLB limiting how severance agreements can be attached to non-disparagement clauses, too.
So it's not generally true that you can be liable for $50K for saying anything bad about your employer in your own home.
The situation with this author is on the other end of "in your own home" spectrum: They went out and wrote a whole book against their employer that violates NDAs, too. Regardless of what you think about Meta or the author, this was clearly a calculated move on their part to draw out a lawsuit because it provides further press coverage and therefore book sales (just look at all the comments in this thread from people claiming they're motivated to go buy it it now). Whether the gamble pays off or not remains to be seen.
It's well past time to rein in arbitration.
It really should be treated like small claims court; only permissible up to a point. Once it's high-stakes enough, real courts should be in play.
> Some of the content moderators were earning $28,800 a year, the technology news site The Verge found last year.
In this particular case, the legal costs are probably pretty ruinous.
So many of the greatest tragedies I've seen inflicted on people come from accepting an expedient way to get what is really a small amount of money quickly. So often the drive is paying the rent/mortgage or fear of losing health benefits. If you are in a bad situation and offered a settlement and you really feel like something isn't right please talk to an employment lawyer. Most US States have expedited processes for quickly resolving these cases, and the lawyer can help you a lot when you feel like your only choice is to take the severance.
"facing fines of $50,000 for every statement that could be seen to be “negative or otherwise detrimental” to Meta"
> According to the web they still need a court to even confirm a monetary penalty.
No, not necessarily with arbitration. The judgement itself may need to be confirmed in some states; it likely already has.
(Which isn’t to say I think the system as it is is good, just that there is a good)
https://inist.org/library/1982-03-21.Illich.Silence%20is%20a...
It's bleak. I always imagined that rich/powerful people only created suffering if that suffering was required for certain goals. It's easier for me to bear injustice when it's a zero-sum game. But the story of Facebook is not that. Facebook didn't make ethical sacrifices for profit -- its executives just didn't care to understand the consequences of their actions. I wish those folks could feel how much harm they've caused.
Arguably this makes it worse, not better
Also, understanding creates culpability. So that's a downside. It's like people who walk in front of you on the road and pretend to not notice you. If I don't see the badness then I am not responsible for the badness.
And thirdly, never underestimate people's power to ignore.
One of the (very valid, IMO) criticisms of the book is that the author tries to set herself apart from the culture she was deeply embedded within. I think it's becoming a trap to hold the author up as a hero when she was clearly part of it all to the very core. It was only after she got separated from the inner circle club that she tried to distance herself from it.
So while reading it, be careful about who you hold up as a hero. In a situation like this it's possible for everyone to be untrustworthy narrators.
Rather than address the comment you change the subject, “whaddabout the author!”
Why do the dark work of deflecting on behalf of “Meta”?
(lol, that name gets me every time. Might as well have renamed themselves NoIdeaWhatToDoNow)
And there need to be serious regulations about how these agreements can be used, and those regulations should protect whistleblowers at all costs. Like a public figure suing for libel/slander/defamation, the burden of proving statements false should rest entirely with the company.
Plus the power imbalance.
The story is pretty close to this one in TAL: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/476/transcript so many people on reddit speculate it's the same. I never verified or I missed that in the book if it says so.
Then she apparently nearly died again giving birth to one of her children. And then here with the Zuckexposé. I'm reminded that people live all sorts of lives full of detail and story. Great stuff.
FUCK META.
Is that allowed?
FUCK META
FUCK YC TOO
FUCK ALL THESE TYPES OF PEOPLE
Timely given I just tried to sign into Meta for the first time in a year or two as I am being required to work on a Marketing API integration, got prompted for a video selfie(!) and my account is now in "Community Review" as maybe my expression was too grumpy about being required to present myself for inspection. Abhorrent company.
We wouldn't give our children a pass like this, nor would we teach our children to act this way, but we're perfectly willing to allow fully grown adults to act like this.
Here's just one example, there are plenty more:
Cheryl Sandberg inviting the author of the book to sleep in her bed next to her on the company jet, and the petulent and vindictive behavior when the author said 'no'.
Everyone in the orbit of the executive team knew about this behavior, and everyone gave it a pass, even going so far as to defend it and to protect Cheryl. This behavior should be universally deplored, and yet is not.
https://restofworld.org/2025/careless-people-book-review-fac...
I am not sure I would have done better in her place. When it's your livelihood (or your friends,) it's so much easier to just fall in line. If she'd gotten along personally with the other execs, the book wouldn't even exist.
It sounds like an interesting book, and I'll add it to the list. But it also sounds like she agreed to this in exchange for a lump-sum severance payment, and then broke the contract anyway. I'm not sure if this is really that principled of a thing. She sought-out and accepted a lot of money for this agreement.
Arguably, its more like non-compete agreements but with the added fact that state enforcement of the agreements is in tension with freedom of speech.
But, you know, lots of jurisdictions sharply restrict enforceability of non-competes, too.
The only sensible way to approach libertarianism is to qualitatively evaluate individual liberty. And being prohibited from speaking 8 years after the fact, especially when there is a compelling public interest, is in no way equitable. If they want her continued silence, they should have to buy that on the order of year to year.
I don't see how it's principled to legally swear to not do something, then turn around and do it anyways. She's an adult, she has agency, and she chose to enter that contract.
It's also not like we're talking about a legal whistleblower here. That act DOES (and should) have a lot of legal protections. This is someone writing a book that they personally profit from.
Corporations will violate contracts all the time as a cost of business if the cost of the violation is less than the benefit gained.
As a society (more so here in the UK than in the US, I'll grant) we have laws governing what one party may demand of the other. They don't prevent a genuine meeting of the minds, because enforcement of a contract will only be an issue if at least one party doesn't follow through. But they do limit the ability of the company to impose sanctions beyond a point.
One limitation in the UK is that penalty clauses that are "private fines", like this one, must be based on the actual damage caused.
In this case, as in the non-compete case, I would say that if a company wants to continue to influence what someone does, they should continue to pay them.
One of the most pressing problems of our time is that these large corporations, on balance, have too much power compared to the electorate.
While I agree that you are technically correct, I also think we will look back on this period with disgust just as we did when we considered women unworthy of franchise.
Do you believe a civil contract should be able to stop a person from disclosing potential illegal activities?
NLRB under Biden seemed to say that yeah you can disclose this to the media, and broad non-disparagements are unenforceable. But it’s also kind of a toss up depending on the NLRB, courts, administration, etc.
Trump’s NLRB has rescinded a bunch of that Biden-era guidance, so what is enforceable and what isn’t? Kind of hard to say at this point.
Arbitration agreed with Meta, but who knows what courts would say.
https://www.whitecase.com/insight-alert/nlrb-requires-change...
https://www.mintz.com/insights-center/viewpoints/2226/2025-0...
If it's true that she signed a severance deal, e.g. signed this when she was leaving and therefore already knew she was agreeing to protect a bunch of snakes.. Well she fucked up. At the point when she signed that agreement she was already informed and aware of what kind of people she was agreeing to not disparage.
For every case of "idiot billionaire tries to suppress story and fails" I suspect there are quite a few "billionaire successfully suppresses story" cases.
In Asia, it's not uncommon to see healthy drinks for children that are sugar+artificial flavouring with huge marketing campaigns targetting the parents . The corporation makes millions and then advertises how they donated $10k to an obesity charity.
If you're considering working for a billionaire, choose carefully whose fortune and influence you're helping expand. Caveat emptor applies to employees as well. Or even better, don't work for one at all.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...
I told them to fuck off. I should have continued with the lawsuit, probably.
But in american courts its "heads i win tails you lose" with labor laws - according to my lawyer wins are in the low single digits for discrimination lawsuits.
“Despite previous public statements that Meta no longer uses NDAs [non-disclosure agreements] in cases of sexual harassment – which Sarah has repeatedly alleged – she is being pushed to financial ruin through the arbitration system in the UK, as Meta seeks to silence and punish her for speaking out,” she said.
“Meta has served a gagging order on Sarah and is attempting to fine her $50,000 for every breach of that order. She is on the verge of bankruptcy. I am sure that the whole house and the government will stand with Sarah as we pass this legislation to ensure that whistleblowers and those with the moral courage to speak out are always protected.”
It is understood that the $50,000 figure represents the damages Wynn-Williams has to pay for material breaches of the separation agreement she signed when she left Meta in 2017. Meta has emphasised that Wynn-Williams entered into the non-disparagement agreement voluntarily as part of her departure."
...
"The ruling stated Wynn-Williams should stop promoting the book and, to the extent she could, stop further publication. It did not order any action by Pan Macmillan."
Source:[1]
----------------------------------
This would probably boil down to a "He said, she said" type of situation, albeit with one side being aggressively litigious, were it not for Facebook's long track record of casual and unthinking irresponsibility. e.g. Myanmar[2]. Second, the non-disparagement clause was apparently foisted upon Wynn-Williams when she was leaving the company, not when she was hired. That suggests Meta knew they'd treated her poorly and feared consequences. Finally, the book that resulted has come out at a time when multiple countries are starting to pass legislation to control the harm Facebook and other social media companies do (e.g. The social media ban for minors in Australia). Meta clearly does not want a book like "Careless People" trending right now.
Meta has both a history of bad behaviour and a strong motive to silence such a book. For these reasons, I'm disinclined to believe Meta's claims that these allegations are "false and defamatory". Wynn-Williams probably was "toxic". She was an executive at Meta after all. Her claims can be true at the same time.
________________________
[1]https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/21/meta-expo...
[2]https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...
---
She details the bizarrely intimate demands former COO Sheryl Sandberg placed on her young, female assistants - including demanding the author get into bed with her on a private jet:
"Sheryl recently instructed Sadie to buy lingerie for both of them with no budget, and Sadie obeyed, spending over $10,000 on lingerie for Sheryl and $3,000 on herself. ... 'Happy to treat your breasts as they should be treated,' Sheryl responds. ... Sheryl responds by asking her twenty-six-year-old assistant to come to her house to try on the underwear and have dinner. Later the invite becomes one to stay over. Lean in and lie back."
---
Facing open arrest warrants from the South Korean government over a regulatory dispute, Facebook's leadership team (including Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg) realize it is too legally dangerous for them to travel there. So VP of Communications Elliot Schrage proposes a sociopathic solution:
"It’s breathtaking to me, how casually leadership speaks of employees being jailed. As if it’s a fact of life like taxes...
'We need to get someone to test the appetite of the Korean authorities for arresting someone from headquarters. It can’t be someone located there. They need to fly in before Mark and Sheryl do. You know, a body,' Elliot states matter-of-factly. The room falls silent. It’s a weird thing to realize that the tech world, this most modern of industries, has cannon fodder."
---
A woman suffers a severe medical emergency in the middle of the open-plan office while everyone just keeps typing:
"She’s foaming at the mouth and her face is bleeding. She must’ve hit something when she fell from her desk. And she’s being completely ignored. She’s surrounded by desks and people at computers and no one’s helping her. Everyone types busily on their keyboards, pretending nothing is happening.
'Are you her manager?' I ask a woman at a nearby desk who seems to be studiously concentrating on her computer, while a woman convulses in pain at her feet. 'Yes. But I’m very busy,' she says brusquely. ... 'She’s a contractor. I don’t have that sort of information. Her contract’s coming to an end soon. I suggest you call HR.'"
---
She uncovers secret internal documents detailing Mark Zuckerberg's master plan to get Facebook into China:
"But the thing that gets me is where Facebook’s leadership states that one of the 'cons' of Facebook being the one who’s accountable for content moderation is this: 'Facebook employees will be responsible for user data responses that could lead to death, torture and incarceration.'
... And yet, despite the fact that our employees would be responsible for death, torture, and incarceration... the consensus among Mark and the Facebook leaders was that this was what they’d prefer..."
I need to give this a read soon.
[1] https://www.ppfideas.com/episodes/live-special%3A-who-rules-...
I am not sure which exec at meta thought that this would be a good idea.
They are, literally, giving the book the best publicity it could have ever had. She's probably happy to not talk about it. There will be plenty of proxies that only have to read out of the book, prefacing it with "This is what Mark Zuckerberg doesn't want you to hear."
Facebook, according to Wynn-Williams, sold advertisers on the fact that they could target young girls who post and then remove selfies from their services in order to market to demographics who were likely experiencing depression and negative feelings about their body image.
macleginn•2h ago
philprx•57m ago