- Kelly Stonelake, a former Meta director, is suing the company for allegedly fostering a toxic environment that silences women. She says watching Mark Zuckerberg's recent changes at Meta has been heartbreaking.
In 2009, Kelly Stonelake landed a job at a fast-growing company that would later become the trillion-dollar tech giant, Meta.
Over 15 years at the company, she progressed from a product marketing position to a director role in Meta's Horizon Worlds team. Stonelake was laid off in January 2024 while on medical leave—now, she's suing the company over what she alleges is a "toxic pattern" of silencing women.
In a lawsuit filed in the state of Washington, she claims that Meta neglected to act after she reported sexual harassment, retaliated against her for raising concerns about a product she deemed potentially harmful to minors, and overlooked her for promotions in favor of male colleagues on her team.
Stonelake has seen the company grow through several stages: a rapidly growing start-up, its awkward teenage years, and into a full-fledged tech conglomerate. She says watching Meta's most recent changes have been demoralizing.
Over the last few months, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has ushered in a series of reforms, including scrapping third-party fact-checkers, pulling back on DEI initiatives, and advocating for more "masculine energy" in the workplace.
"It surprised me, just as much as anyone, how much my lawsuit is at the bull's eye of what's happening right now," Stonelake told Fortune. "I can show what happens when we want more masculine workplaces—that it doesn't just harm those who aren't masculine—it harms vulnerable people around the world who trust tech companies to protect them."
Representatives for Meta declined to comment on pending litigation.
Masculinity at Meta
Stonelake's lawsuit alleges Meta has engaged in a "toxic pattern of silencing women who identify problems."
She told Fortune that over the course of her career, she had attributed many of the bad experiences she had to individual bad actors.
However, after taking time away from the company, she said she realized that the "behavior was grounded in a disregard for women, and that same disregard for women is what contributed to and drove an extremely toxic environment within Horizon where women didn't feel safe to do their jobs."
She said her lawsuit aimed to address: "The experience of disregarding women, how that impacts women who work at the company, and then also how it impacts vulnerable groups inside the company and vulnerable groups outside the company."
The suit comes at a time of change for the tech giant. Zuckerberg has been trying to overhaul the company's content moderation system and has moved to scrap several culture initiatives, including diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
Last month, Zuckerberg also appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast to discuss gender roles in corporate America.
The Meta CEO said that corporate America has gone “too far” in embracing “feminine energy," had become “culturally neutered," and that companies have lacked “masculine energy.”
He said: “It’s one thing to say we want to be welcoming and make a good environment for everyone, and it’s another to basically say masculinity is bad. We swung culturally to that part of the spectrum—masculinity is toxic, we have to get rid of it.”
Stonelake said while Zuckerberg may have intended to encourage people to be more decisive or aggressive—qualities she respects in a professional environment—the comments were personally "heartbreaking."
"If you have a rampant problem of women not feeling safe doing their jobs at all and your solution is to call for more masculinity, it's irresponsible, it's reckless, and it will hurt people," she said.
Meta goes MAGA
Zuckerberg's decision to turn against content moderation and embrace free speech policies appears, at least in part, to be an attempt to win over the new Trump administration.
The tech boss has installed Republican allies within Meta's leadership, including replacing former global affairs chief Nick Clegg with prominent conservative Joel Kaplan. Meta has also agreed to pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit with Trump over the suspension of his accounts after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot in 2021.
Zuckerberg has argued the changes will mean less “censorship” on Meta's platforms. An updated company policy on hateful content shows that this lack of censorship will allow Facebook and Instagram users to call LGBTQ people “mentally ill," describe women as “household objects," and demean underrepresented groups like transgender people.
Reflecting on the recent content moderation overhaul, Stonelake said she was "embarrassed about how naive I was and how much I trusted Mark."
"Meta was aware of the harm that hate speech, especially unmanaged hate speech, has on the platform," Stonelake said.
"I watched someone I trusted use the company history, cite first principles, and go back to our roots to defend a regression of responsibility and an abdication of accountability that will be violent," she said. "Hate speech incites violence."
Are you an employee at Meta? Contact this reporter from a non-work device at bea.nolan@fortune.com or securely via Signal at beatricenolan.08.
