An abitrator has temporarily granted an emergency petition by Meta to stop the promotion of a former employee’s memoir, in which she alleges that she was fired after reporting she was sexually harassed by her boss.
Sarah Wynn-Williams’ “Careless People,” which details her time at Facebook from 2011 to 2017, accuses Joel Kaplan, the company’s current policy chief, of making number of inappropriate comments. Meta sought arbitration, arguing that the book is prohibited under a non-disparagment clause in Wynn-Williams’ severance agreement.
An emergency arbitrator ruled against Wynn-Williams on Wednesday, prohibiting her from promoting the book, published Tuesday by Flatiron Books, an imprint of publisher Macmillan Books. The two parties will now move into private arbitration and the ruling will remain in place unless said arbitration reverses it.
In the ruling, the arbitrator said that Meta “has established a likelihood of success on the merits of its contractual non-disparagement claim against Respondent Wynn-Williams, and that immediate and irreparable loss will result in the absence of emergency relief.” Read the decision here.
Additionally, the arbitrator ruled that Wynn-Williams is prohibited from further publishing or distributing the book and from further disparaging Meta and its officers or repeating previous disparaging remarks. The arbitrator also ruled that Wynn-Williams is to retract her previous disparaging remarks, specifically noting her podcast appearance on “Honestly with Bari Weiss.”
The decision does not restrict the publisher’s actions. In 2023 the National Labor Review Board ruled that it is illegal for companies to require non-disparagement clauses in exchange for severance. The NLRB is now under the Trump administration, which is likely to back Meta, particularly given CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s now full throated support for Trump.
Wynn-Williams also chronicled in her book the company’s various attempts to enter the Chinese market, including building tools that would censor content to appease the Chinese government. Wynn-Williams addressed some of these China-specific claims in a whistleblower complaint that she filed in April with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a post to threads that the legal motion “affirms that Sarah Wynn Williams’ false and defamatory book should never have been published.”
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