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Meta Forcefully Responds to ‘Searing’ Memoir From Former Facebook Official
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A “searing” insider account of Meta’s company culture is slated to arrive on Tuesday. Careless People is subtitled “A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism” and is written by Sarah Sarah Wynn-Williams, the former director of global public policy at Facebook. Wynn-Williams was fired before the company’s rebrand as Meta and worked at the social media giant for “seven critical years.”
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According to publisher Flatiron Books, the book is “a deeply personal account of why and how things have gone so horribly wrong in the past decade—told in a sharp, candid, and utterly disarming voice.” It’s available to preorder now from bookstores like Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.
Meta has since responded to the book’s publication, releasing a statement that read in part, “This book is a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives.”
ARRIVES MARCH 11
Careless People
While books are typically announced months in advance, publisher Flatiron kept Careless People under tight wraps, announcing the book less than a week before its publication date. The URL of the Amazon listing of the book, for example, is simply “Untitled-Flatiron-Author-Revealed-March.”
Details on the book’s contents are slowly emerging, with Wynn-Williams alleging sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior. She also discusses Facebook’s response to violence against Rohingya people in Myanmar, which was stoked by hateful speech on the platform, as well as its efforts to operate in China. The publisher’s notes detail a “rotten company culture” and “shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards.” According to the Instagram post from Flatiron Books announcing the book, “Careless People reveals the truth about the executives Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and Joel Kaplan as callously indifferent to the price others would pay for their own enrichment.”
Wynn-Williams is a diplomat, policy expert, and international lawyer, with previous roles including serving as the Chief Negotiator for the United Nations on biosafety liability, according to her bio on the World Economic Forum.
Prior to publishing her memoir, Wynn-Williams filed a whistleblower complaint with the SEC, according to The Washington Post. The complaint alleges that Facebook was willing to censor content and bend privacy rules to accommodate China.
Since the book’s announcement, Meta has forcefully responded to the book’s allegations in a statement, which reads, “This book is a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives. Eight years ago, Sarah Wynn-Williams was fired for poor performance and toxic behavior, and an investigation at the time determined she made misleading and unfounded allegations of harassment. Since then, she has been paid by anti-Facebook activists and this is simply a continuation of that work. Whistleblower status protects communications to the government, not disgruntled activists trying to sell books.”
Update March 10: This article has been updated to include Meta’s response
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