The article: “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.”
A little deeper in the article: 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. Meta said that to date, Wynn-Williams had not been forced to make any payments under the agreement.
Alternative: Woman voluntarily signs non-disparagement agreenment with $50K penalty for each breach. Goes on to repeatedly breach agreement, publish a book full of disparaging commentary. Has yet to pay a cent to the company.
> An MP has claimed in parliament that Mark Zuckerberg’s company was trying to “silence and punish” Sarah Wynn-Williams
By doing so in parliament they have immunity (presumably the worry would be defamation) for pushing this, true or false.
I'm not much of a Meta fan, but there seems to be less to this story every paragraph you read of the article.
> meant to belittle the value or importance of someone or something : serving or intended to disparage someone or something
Maybe it is not meant to belittle, but merely uncovering the truth. Who is to know, what her intention was, when releasing a book? I guess one would have to read that book and check how she formulated things, to know, whether it is intentionally belittling the "value" of Meta.
Also, subjectively speaking: How does one belittle the value of something that already has net negative value for society?
Maybe the waters are a little bit murky there.
But anyway, this goes to show, how these companies consume your soul. Trying to prevent you from ever revealing the truth about them and their illegal activities.
I think it's a case where the law should simply say such clauses are not enforcible.
The fact that you can't speak the 100% truth, and not get sued there is quite disgusting. The truth should always be permitted speech.
Does that matter at all? They can destroy this whistleblower financially without ever having the "non-disparagement agreement" enforced.
So No, it doesn’t matter if she’s paid it or not. Just being asked to pay in a way that is defensible in court, could make you bankrupt.
There’s no principle saying that you have to be on the side of an organization being exposed for behavior that is horrible for society, just because they may have a legally sound argument in court.
Laws and rules and courts are fully arbitrary and exist in search of justice.
If the rules brought us to this place, of what use were the rules?
But this line of argument doesn’t always hold with me. At some point, the behaviour of a company or person could be so heinous, that no amount of voluntary signing of an agreement should prevent you from exposing them.
"I then sued my victim for causing me harm."
But it's hard to know about a situation when it's complex and you're a long way away from it. Maybe the book was unfair. Maybe it was fair. Or both. Maybe what happened was so bad it should supersede this kind of agreement. Who decides, and how?
I am not aware of their separation agreement being published, but you have to be a special type of stupid to work for Facebook as an exec, get a $500k advance on a book you wrote about Meta, and then go bankrupt. From the limited information I have I can see why Facebook fired her.
You need to feel afraid for the ability for a corporation to so easily get you to surrender your own fundamental rights.
It’s not a coincidence you rarely hear stories like this in Scandinavian or even broader European countries because they have basic safety nets that mean you don’t need to sign away your rights in order to just live peacefully.
I am all for safety nets, and I actually live in a country with stronger safety nets than the USA, but I still don’t feel sorry for the author who basically has had every card to be extremely wealthy and squandered it.
Also realize that it isn’t private companies job to fix the broken social system in the USA, usually separation agreements for high paid employees offer severance well above and beyond the legal requirements (I have seen 3 months to a year including accelerated vesting in some cases), and a condition of accepting those benefits above and beyond the laws is you don’t disparage your employer. If you don’t accept the agreement you get the bare minimum according to the laws but you are then not bound to the disparage clauses.
Life threatening medical problems are obviously horrific and she has my full sympathies. But I'm having a tough time drawing a from that to "coercion" for someone who was a director at Facebook.
Like what? If it's something you sign when you leave, it generally comes down to whether you want some level of severance payments/accelerated vesting or not, even when you're fired (when you're at the executive level).
Basically, the company says: if you agree not to sue us or disparage us, here's a bunch of money.
There are no threats. The consequence is, if you don't sign, you don't get the extra money. It's completely and entirely voluntary.
She was a highly paid executive who chose to get even more money in exchange for keeping her mouth shut. Now I think it's great she wrote the book, I love transparency. But nobody can be surprised Facebook is taking legal action when she presumably took their money under an agreement not to disparage. Nobody made her take the extra money.
Not sure if all three conditions apply here though.
Another low point: MZ working with communist party chiefs to engineer a "chinese" version of facebook where the government could see all citizens' private information at will.
She REALLY stuck her neck out for millions/billions of people's basic rights. The fact that she is facing bankruptcy for it just makes her that much more of a badass.
Sounds like another way of saying stuff they acknowledge is true. :P
-Out of date and previously reported, bro.
That’s the part they buried. If you’re handed half a million up front, it’s hard to square “bankruptcy” with some kind of noble crusade. The article frames it like she’s sacrificing everything to expose Meta, but it reads more like poor money management than pure altruism. Meta’s behavior might still be heavy-handed, but leaving that payout until halfway down makes the story feel slanted.
Also, at the very top before the article even begins:
> Sarah Wynn-Williams faces $50,000 fine every time she breaches order banning her from criticising Meta
And further down:
> However, the former diplomat was barred from publicising the memoir after Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, secured a ruling preventing her from doing so.
I think it’s fair of me to say that maybe we shouldn’t downplay her situation.
Right - if she had actually gone through the PIDA channels, the courts might treat it differently. But skipping straight to a $500k advance and a commercial book makes it harder to see this as whistleblowing. Truth or not, it looks less like a principled disclosure and more like monetizing criticism of Meta.
There is nothing wrong with making money writing a tell-all so far as the work is rigorous and truthful. Attacking her for profiting is a cheap way to discredit her without having to assess the merits of her work.
Yes it’s valid to critique the source and see where funding is coming from, that’s important information, but discrediting someone out the gate for making money on something is simply lazy and requires no critical assessment at all.
https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/whistleblower-pro...
What does making a living have to do with capitalism? What a strange thing to say.
Edit: I am responding to the critique of a different person. I did read the article.
The audiobook is narrated by the author, which adds an extra dimension to the story.
Would highly recommend.
Would recommend anyway.
It's a good book, everyone should read it.
Meta and the likes don't need to care anymore.
Who's really going to go after a mega corp-entity when they do $bad? "Whistle Blower" is like an oxymoron to that the likes of "Friendly Fire".
Wynn-Williams didn't come across as credible at all, including her personal anecdotes and the parts about Meta.
No doubt there is a kernel of truth to all of it alongside some mixture of misremembering, exaggeration, self image protection, projection and out-and-out lies. But for an expose it just wasn't believable and I came away feeling I'd read a complete fantasy by a disgruntled employee.
She does not defend Meta but the taste it left me with was: "well if she has to make this shit up there can't be anything that bad going on!". So maybe Meta should pay her for the good PR.
cap11235•1h ago
> Meta said that to date, Wynn-Williams had not been forced to make any payments under the agreement.
Unless the reporter and MP are willing to show that Meta is lying about that (which presumably can be easily shown by the book's author producing communications), looks like they are trying to imply causation by the framing of the article.