Never has a gag order been so ill-judged. Meta's attempts to quash Sarah Wynn-Williams' memoir, Careless People – the inside story of her six years at the company, which was then called Facebook – have made it a bigger hit than its former director of global public policy could ever have imagined.
An arbitrator ruled in Meta's favour in a case they brought against the author, whose book alleges several cases of misconduct. The interim ruling extends to Macmillan Publishers and its imprint Flatiron Books, and affirms the book is both "false" and "defamatory", according to Meta spokesperson Andy Stone. Wynn-Williams has been banned from promoting the book and giving interviews to the press; naturally, it shot right to the top of the New York Times bestseller list and is the topic on everyone’s lips among the chattering classes. North London dinner parties are now set to the hammerbeat of "But did you know this about Sheryl Sandberg?".
Careless People dishes up one bombshell after another – and we've rounded up the juiciest. If you think your own workplace is dysfunctional, think again. Here are just some of the things that Wynn-Williams says went down at Facebook from 2011 to 2017.
On Sheryl Sandberg
Wynn-Williams says that Sandberg, Facebook’s number two, would sometimes invite her PA, Sadie, to come to bed with her. She once allegedly extended the offer to Wynn-Williams on a flight home from Davos aboard her private jet. Wynn-Williams claims she refused, and their relationship irreparably soured after that. She was three months pregnant with her second child at the time.
Following the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, Sandberg is alleged to have sent the following message from Davos: "Terrorism means the conversation on privacy is 'basically dead' as policymakers are more concerned about intelligence/security." Wynn-Williams puts this more plainly: "terrorism is working to Facebook's advantage".
People don't lie about narrowly missing plane crashes, do they?
After a trip to Japan to promote her book, Lean In, Sandberg flew home to San Francisco on board a United Airlines plane. An Asiana plane that was making the same journey right before hers crashed at San Francisco Airport, killing three people. Sandberg posted on Facebook, claiming she and her team had been meant to fly home on board the Asiana plane, and counting her blessings. "Sheryl always flies United," a colleague is alleged to have told Wynn-Williams, who’d flown home separately to New York. "We never considered Asiana."
Like many others in Facebook's top brass, Sandberg was extremely strict about her own children's screen time and exposure to social media, Wynn-Williams says. The author suggests Sandberg knew exactly how addictive and corrosive the technology she was helping to build would become.
On Joel Kaplan
Joel Kaplan, Wynn-Williams' line manager, is alleged to have grinded on her at a party. After she reported him to HR and an investigation was opened into the incident, she was axed from her job. Kaplan, meanwhile, has risen the ranks and is now Meta's chief of global affairs – a role previously held by Nick Clegg. Facebook has said the investigation found Wynn-Williams’ claims to be “unfounded”, and that she was fired instead for “poor performance and toxic behaviour”.
Kaplan is also alleged to have taunted Wynn-Williams on the day she was meant to sit her American citizenship test, by asking her if she'd revised for the "dirty sanchez" question. Wynn-Williams had to Google what this was, as did I. We both wish we hadn't.
Kaplan is alleged to have forced Wynn-Williams to work throughout her maternity leave even though she suffered a near-fatal amniotic fluid embolism while giving birth. “You weren’t responsive enough,” Kaplan supposedly told her in a performance review. “In my defence,” she answered, “I was in a coma”.
Kaplan is said to have asked Wynn-Williams to establish political action committees in other countries. He was apparently surprised to find out that foreign interference in US politics, or "channelling money to key allies offshore", are both illegal.
On Mark Zuckerberg
Trump’s team worked together with a Facebook delegation enmeshed in their operations to “shitpost its way to the White House”. Allegedly, Zuckerberg was initially adamant that Facebook had played no part in supporting the Trump campaign; but after being convinced otherwise, he thought of running for President himself.
Zuckerberg also didn't seem to care that Facebook's vice president in Brazil, Diego Dzodan, was arrested over WhatsApp's failure to hand over encrypted messages to the authorities in a drug trafficking case. Although he lauded Dzodan's commitment to the company's privacy principles on his own Facebook page, he allegedly did nothing to help get him out of jail – where he spent one night in 2016. Instead, Wynn-Williams says, "he [obsessed] over some stupid post and then [went] out to dinner". When Zuckerberg later met Dzodan in person for the first time, Wynn-Williams says he had no idea who Dzodan was.
Careless People: A story of where I used to work (Macmillan), is out now
