Meta’s Pursuit of the 'Careless People' Author Is Relentless and Self-Defeating
On May 31, Sarah Wynn-Williams took the stage as a panelist at the prestigious Hay Festival, alongside law professor Tim Wu and journalist Carole Cadwalladr
On May 31, Sarah Wynn-Williams took the stage as a panelist at the prestigious Hay Festival, alongside law professor Tim Wu and journalist Carole Cadwalladr. Before she said a word, she was greeted by cheers. She never did say a word, sitting in silence as the two other panelists discussed the evils of big tech. Nonetheless, her silent presence galvanized the audience, Wu later told me. ‘It’s the only time at a book panel that I’ve got a standing ovation.” Wynn-Williams did not speak—could not speak—because of an interim ruling by an arbitrator that prevented her from promoting or even mentioning her best-selling book about her time at Meta, where she worked as a director of global public policy. In 2017, the company fired her, and with her lawyers she negotiated an agreement where the company would pay her $780,000. The agreement stipulated that she would refrain from making any “disparaging, critical or otherwise detrimental comments” about Meta. In March 2025, Meta found out that Wynn-Williams was about to publish a memoir, Careless People, which was basically a 400-page disparaging comment.
Meta immediately called for an emergency arbitration, and the interim ruling was that Wynn-Williams could not promote her book in any way. That ruling is still in effect, with a more sweeping arbitration hearing scheduled for October. Now Wynn-Willliams has spoken at length, under the protection of a lawsuit filed on June 25. She is suing to essentially vacate the arbitration ruling and move the dispute to the public courts, on the grounds that the process has violated her right to free speech. Her professional prospects, she claims in her declaration, have been eviscerated because Meta alleges—with the arbitrator's backing—that almost anything she says regarding tech policy might be interpreted as promoting the book. Any time she does this, she risks incurring a $50,000 fine. Her lawyers assert that the ruling has “constrained Ms. Wynn-Williams’s speech for well over a year and prevented her from fully participating in increasingly urgent public conversations.” As she put it in her declaration, “It feels like Meta has open-ended control over my speech, livelihood, movements, and ability to associate with others.” Meta’s response filed this week calls her suit “a last-ditch effort to circumvent the bargained-for arbitration process and avoid a final merits determination.” It repeatedly cites the fact that Wynn-Williams agreed to both the non-disparagement clause and the arbitration process itself.
The BriefWire