Discussion

Meta stole Sarah Wynn-Williams’s voice. It couldn’t stop her exposé

giwook: I'm going to place an order for the book right now. I encourage you all to do the same.We the people hold the power to keep in check the immoral companies, governments, and other unscrupulous entities that would exploit the collective to enrich the few. And ultimately that's through our money and how we spend it.Screw Meta and their anti-human business model.

fsloth: [delayed]

ceejayoz: > The ruling, awarded without proper notice by an emergency arbitrator (a non-court mediator that is part of the American Arbitration Association), actually said nothing about the truth or otherwise of Sarah’s devastating claims in her book. It made no mention of defamation. Instead, it relied on a non-disparagement clause in her severance agreement with Facebook to silence her.It's well past time to rein in arbitration.It really should be treated like small claims court; only permissible up to a point. Once it's high-stakes enough, real courts should be in play.

Invictus0: she agreed to it to get a severance payment

ceejayoz: That should be illegal, too.

renewiltord: This is going to be one of those threads with LLM-grade comments about stealing your information and arbitration and this and that but I'm early enough that I can shame all of you first by at least having read the first page of this book so I can tell you that the author has had an interesting life. The book starts with an actual shark attack. It's pretty famous, it's in the news and stuff: https://www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/360667776/sister-hits-bac...The story is pretty close to this one in TAL: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/476/transcript so many people on reddit speculate it's the same. I never verified or I missed that in the book if it says so.Then she apparently nearly died again giving birth to one of her children. And then here with the Zuckexposé. I'm reminded that people live all sorts of lives full of detail and story. Great stuff.

SauntSolaire: A good reminder not to sign contracts with non-disparagement clauses, if you can help it. Seems like good territory for California to ban like they did with non-competes. At the very least they should be restricted from inclusion in severance agreements - at that point the company already has you over a barrel.

surprisetalk: This book was SO GOOD.It's bleak. I always imagined that rich/powerful people only created suffering if that suffering was required for certain goals. It's easier for me to bear injustice when it's a zero-sum game. But the story of Facebook is not that. Facebook didn't make ethical sacrifices for profit -- its executives just didn't care to understand the consequences of their actions. I wish those folks could feel how much harm they've caused.

chamomeal: I guess I just don’t understand contracts and laws. Your employment agreement can include stuff like “if you say anything bad about us, even to your family in your own home, you owe us $50,000”.What in the world?? I guess NDA’s are like that, and used everywhere. Still it just seems wild

kubb: Free speech on one hand, legal system capture on the other.

wkat4242: https://archive.is/DmiOw

0x3f: I'm not sure these are functionally any different. Perhaps not caring is required to achieve certain goals.

jamiequint: This book is a great illustration about the dangers of letting people infected with the woke mind virus into your company. Unfortunately seems to be much more of a risk within the soft-skills areas of HR, policy, comms, than in EPD, but no company is immune.

pants2: So what happens if the author ignores this judgement? Surely arbitration can't send someone to prison. According to the web they still need a court to even confirm a monetary penalty.

ceejayoz: Per the article:"facing fines of $50,000 for every statement that could be seen to be “negative or otherwise detrimental” to Meta"> According to the web they still need a court to even confirm a monetary penalty.No, not necessarily with arbitration. The judgement itself may need to be confirmed in some states; it likely already has.

petcat: My understanding is that as part of a severance package she received in 2017 she agreed to some kind of "non-disparagement" clause. She then went on to write a book disparaging the company. The arbiter didn't rule on the disparagement itself or if anything was true or false. Only ruled that she had to abide by the contract she signed.It sounds like an interesting book, and I'll add it to the list. But it also sounds like she agreed to this in exchange for a lump-sum severance payment, and then broke the contract anyway. I'm not sure if this is really that principled of a thing. She sought-out and accepted a lot of money for this agreement.

zoklet-enjoyer: It's great that she spoke out, but she was complicit in all of this too.https://restofworld.org/2025/careless-people-book-review-fac...

ppseafield: She had serious debilitating medical issues from pregnancy where she lost a ton of blood and was in a coma for several days and nearly died. Of course she's going to take her severance to help care for her family given the atrocious state of our healthcare system.

gortok: Having listened to the book on Audible, I'm both shocked at the behavior of the executive team, and not surprised all at the same time. What bothers me about all of this is what it says about us. It says we're willing to give rich and powerful people a pass just because they make overtures towards something we care about.We wouldn't give our children a pass like this, nor would we teach our children to act this way, but we're perfectly willing to allow fully grown adults to act like this.Here's just one example, there are plenty more:Cheryl Sandberg inviting the author of the book to sleep in her bed next to her on the company jet, and the petulent and vindictive behavior when the author said 'no'.Everyone in the orbit of the executive team knew about this behavior, and everyone gave it a pass, even going so far as to defend it and to protect Cheryl. This behavior should be universally deplored, and yet is not.

fwipsy: The theme of the book is "power corrupts." Wynn-Williams is not an exception. Sometimes she acknowledges it, sometimes she glosses over it, but the way the job compromised her own morality is one of the most fascinating parts of the book.I am not sure I would have done better in her place. When it's your livelihood (or your friends,) it's so much easier to just fall in line. If she'd gotten along personally with the other execs, the book wouldn't even exist.

RIMR: I mean, a reasonable non-disparagement clause for your current employees makes sense. You don't want your employees actively undermining the company in public. If they don't believe in what you're doing, they should be able to quit and say whatever they want. It should end immediately when your employment ends. It should be illegal to make it compulsary for severance packages, as many companies do.And there need to be serious regulations about how these agreements can be used, and those regulations should protect whistleblowers at all costs. Like a public figure suing for libel/slander/defamation, the burden of proving statements false should rest entirely with the company.

SauntSolaire: What's the need for a non-disparagement clause then? If they're a current employee, you have their continued employment as leverage.

SauntSolaire: There's unfortunately nothing stopping you from signing away your freedom of speech.

FpUser: In a normal society courts should be protecting from signing away basic freedoms

0x3f: What are 'basic freedoms'?

ceejayoz: Free speech?

mcbutterbunz: I understand freedom of speech and I understand she's free to speak but there may be consequences. I understand that there are huge complexities in the legal system. I understand you can enter into agreements (part of your speech) that effectively gives away your speech. But if you step back and look at this situation, it's just fucked up that a corporation can do this to you. If freedom of speech is supposed to be inalienable, these types of agreements should not be legal.disclaimer: She lives in the UK and I'm speaking from a US perspective.

oliwarner: Is it freedom if you can't make an informed choice to sell it?

thejazzman: “Sign this or starve” isn’t much of a stretch when you think about it

0x3f: As if Meta employees live on the cusp of starving.

ceejayoz: https://www.npr.org/2020/05/12/854998616/in-settlement-faceb...> Some of the content moderators were earning $28,800 a year, the technology news site The Verge found last year.In this particular case, the legal costs are probably pretty ruinous.

0x3f: Voluntary agreements should be illegal.-- 'Hacker' News.

LightBug1: On behalf Ms. Wynn-Williams' but without her say so ...FUCK META.Is that allowed?

RIMR: YC is run by these kinds of careless people, so in a literal sense it probably isn't allowed, but we should say it anyway:FUCK META

ipython: These tools, quite frankly, are simply mechanisms for the already rich and powerful to cement their position and sweep any misdeeds under the rug.While I agree that you are technically correct, I also think we will look back on this period with disgust just as we did when we considered women unworthy of franchise.

cmiles74: I'm not sure we can hold individuals responsible for signing these non-disparagement clauses. They often don't have a lawyer to review the paperwork and, I am sure, employers like Facebook aren't going to wait for a new hire to have a lawyer review that paperwork. There's a real pressure to sign everything with HR and get on to starting your new role.Plus the power imbalance.

beepbooptheory: [delayed]

RIMR: It should not be legal to enforce this kind of thing 9 years after a person leaves your company. I get that it currently is legal, but have some principles. Just because this is legal doesn't mean it isn't morally reprehensible, and its legality should be challenged.

williamDafoe: These non dis6paragement contracts are typical in silicon valley. Data bricks offere a tiny amount of money and expected me to sign when they fired me on a whim after my stock grant quadrupled in 9 months. There was no warning and no review, n7st fired. They fired my 2 managers within the year, too

Fricken: Careless indeed. Mark Zuckerberg and Meta are complicit in the Rohingya genocidehttps://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...

jeffbee: That's a ridiculous constraint to put on the freedom to enter into contracts.

Avicebron: So allowing someone to sign themselves into slavery should be "legal" because it's "impinging on someone's right to enter contracts"? I get that some people balk at "morally reprehensible" as some sort of slippery slope, but c'mon we as individuals have to function somewhat coherently. As a social species reliant on some form of social cohesion (how much oil did you refine this morning?) we have to have some guidelines.

truegoric: Why injustice being a zero-sum game would make it easier to bear?

0x3f: I think you'll find the person in question's title is quite far from content moderator.

ceejayoz: I think you'll find that's why the "in this particular case" line is there.

0x3f: Nobody forced her to break her contract and thus come up against that. She would have been perfectly fine on the leftovers from ~$500k/y while searching for her next job. The parent makes out like she simply had to get the extra money, lest she starve to death. Which is patently ridiculous.

indymike: I hate seeing this down-voted. It is such an important warning to people here. Severance agreements are pretty strong. Also, be very careful of snap settlement offers.So many of the greatest tragedies I've seen inflicted on people come from accepting an expedient way to get what is really a small amount of money quickly. So often the drive is paying the rent/mortgage or fear of losing health benefits. If you are in a bad situation and offered a settlement and you really feel like something isn't right please talk to an employment lawyer. Most US States have expedited processes for quickly resolving these cases, and the lawyer can help you a lot when you feel like your only choice is to take the severance.

righthand: FUCK METAFUCK YC TOOFUCK ALL THESE TYPES OF PEOPLE

ceejayoz: "Yes, sometimes."— the law (https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/unconscionability)

0x3f: Your response to me saying this forum is not very 'Hacker'-ey is to literally appeal to the man.

ceejayoz: It's Hacker News, not I'm Thirteen And Just Discovered Anarchism And It Sounds Cool Because Now My Parents Can't Tell Me To Brush My Teeth Before Bed News.

ethin: Honestly, I would be all for outright abolishing arbitration. I have yet to see anything actually good come out of arbitration other than a ruling that protects the entity that forced arbitration in the first place.

asgraham: The good is hidden: court systems are already overwhelmed. If the arbitration cases were added, then it’d take even longer to get a court date.(Which isn’t to say I think the system as it is is good, just that there is a good)

mcbutterbunz: Those that are deemed inalienable.

0x3f: Please enumerate these inaliable basic freedoms that I should not be able to deal in.

mcbutterbunz: If you'd like to research basic freedoms, I would suggest starting here.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_rights

macleginn: https://archive.is/DmiOw

philprx: Recaptcha is taking ages

AugustoCAS: This is common across all corporations. My go-to example is Unilever or Nestle pushing products that are 100% unhealthy.In Asia, it's not uncommon to see healthy drinks for children that are sugar+artificial flavouring with huge marketing campaigns targetting the parents . The corporation makes millions and then advertises how they donated $10k to an obesity charity.

jeffbee: It's a condition of the severance payment. She didn't need to sign it. She wanted the money. Then she violated the terms of the contract.

ghostpepper: I'm not a lawyer but even if it was, eg. a year's salary at the time she accepted it, is that really a fair price for a lifetime of silence?

jeffbee: Yes?

SauntSolaire: That would also preclude non-disclosure agreements. I'm curious if you also find those unreasonable?

blitzar: Across America, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.

AndrewKemendo: The majority of people will self-alienate themselves in exchange for power or even just survivalThink of a person digging their own grave under threat of immediate murder (tons of well documented examples). This is the maximum self alienation: do work to make life easier for your oppressors.In my 41 years it seems like the majority of people are content digging their own graves

SauntSolaire: Freedom of speech is far from inalienable. Non-disclosure agreements are most relevant, but every country on earth also has at least some regulations regarding hate speech, threats, incitement, purjury, or defamation — not to mention security clearances or state secrets.

mcbutterbunz: And that's where the complexity arises in this argument that I don't know how to resolve. In the case of this woman vs Meta, to me it doesn't "feel" legal that one disparaging comment costs $50K. It feels that there's something wrong here that should not be allowed despite her entering the agreement. Maybe I don't believe she should have been allowed to enter the agreement.But I understand that my point of view doesn't match legal code. Just feels fucked.

qnleigh: Also if you use Instagram regularly, consider replacing that time with something else. Does it really offer anything of value to you, compared to the harm Meta has caused?

cwillu: This sort of ridiculous “criticism” is why I have a hard time taking libertarians seriously.

mindslight: [delayed]

FpUser: Depends on what type of non-disclosure. Disclosing technical guarded and not publicly known technical know-how - I am ok with those. Disclosing that boss treats people like trash should be allowed and I think lawmakers should have enough intelligence in their brains to make laws accordingly.

SauntSolaire: I get that you're not a free speech maximalist, but that's still signing away a basic freedom.

0x3f: Ah yes, the pro-copyright, pro-weed-jail-time, traditional Hacker Collective.It is the law after all.

ceejayoz: Hackers should absolutely oppose unconscionable contracts, yes.As we should and do oppose unconscionable punishments like jail for marijuana or the current copyright setup. Because they're wrong.

thisisrida: https://web.archive.org/web/20260222004907/https://www.theti...

the__alchemist: Done

Joker_vD: Ah, don't worry, we have a concept of "onerous clause doctrine" to help with that. Of course, it's almost entirely up to a judge's discretion what is and is not onerous, so...

sbarre: And you might spend more than $50,000 challenging it in court, because the billion dollar corporation you signed it with would rather spend the money against you than set a precedent everyone else could use against them in the future.

grokcodec: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

jauntywundrkind: Much easier to do when you exist 40ms and a firewall away from the world. The cloud companies ability to not share the experience of those using the service, to be remote, is a much greater retreat than what was possible 101 years ago, it feels like.

simpaticoder: I hear lots of talk about concentration of power, but too little about its amplification. It was a quieter world before amplifiers, both literally and figuratively.

thayne: > She lives in the UK and I'm speaking from a US perspective.But the contract is being enforced from the US.

vntok: The book is most probably downloadable for free on Anna's Archive.

loloquwowndueo: Maybe part of the point is to support the authors a bit through purchasing the book.

mikkupikku: In Germany, this sort of thinking is the reason you can't release anything into the public domain. People are presumed to be too stupid to be trusted with the decision to renounce their copyright and so they are "protected" from this possibility.

jonahx: Fwiw, I think making such non-disparagement clauses illegal is an interesting idea, and could be a net positive. That said, I think the slavery comparison is a stretch. The situation up for debate is: Should you be able to voluntarily accept money in exchange for promising not to say bad things about someone or some company? I don't see a good faith interpretation of that as "signing yourself into slavery".

dragonwriter: > Fwiw, I think making such non-disparagement clauses illegal is an interesting idea, and could be a net positive. That said, I think the slavery comparison is a stretch.Arguably, its more like non-compete agreements but with the added fact that state enforcement of the agreements is in tension with freedom of speech.But, you know, lots of jurisdictions sharply restrict enforceability of non-competes, too.

maximinus_thrax: > "non-disparagement" clauseDo you believe a civil contract should be able to stop a person from disclosing potential illegal activities?

0x3f: > I guess I just don’t understand contracts and laws.What's to understand? Person agrees to thing. Person is held to thing.

idop: Except that a well functioning society that expects its laws to be respected cannot allow the law to be circumvented by commercial agreements.If a country passes a law that guarantees all its citizens the right to free speech, and now a company forces (!) a citizen to sign a contract saying they waive that right in order to receive the compensation they're entitled to anyway, why should the country accept that? Why should that person lose their right to free speech? Did the country give the company the authority to cancel its own laws at will?It's the same with companies forcing candidates to sign non-compete agreements in order to be hired, if and when the company fires them. If you're a lawyer, and your employer fires you, what do you do? Work as a cashier for 3 years until the NCC expires? Change your career?No company should have the authority to make the illegal legal (or vice-versa), and no country should accept its own citizens giving away their rights to some for-profit company. That's mafia shit.

simpaticoder: Because at least someone benefits. It's why theft is arguably better than vandalism. If you steal the thing, at least someone gets to use it. If it's vandalized, no-one does.

bluefirebrand: > Because at least someone benefitsArguably this makes it worse, not better

SauntSolaire: To be clear, I do agree with everything you've said here — I just disagree that freedom of speech is an inalienable right, and I don't think there's ever been a time or place where it has actually been considered one.If it were up to me, I would require non-disparagement agreements to be standalone contracts, and cap the damages a company can claim to the amount they paid you to sign it. Once that number is met, the contract is void. That way the company only gets as much leverage as they're willing to pay for.

pwdisswordfishy: It should not be legal to enforce full stop. If you don't want to be disparaged, make your conduct worthy of not being disparaged. When you're being lied about, sue for defamation; "non-disparagement clauses" are redundant at best, an attack on free speech at worst.

mikkupikku: I don't think such clauses have ever been held to prevent people from testifying in criminal trials. Signing book deals on the other hand...If it's true that she signed a severance deal, e.g. signed this when she was leaving and therefore already knew she was agreeing to protect a bunch of snakes.. Well she fucked up. At the point when she signed that agreement she was already informed and aware of what kind of people she was agreeing to not disparage.

BeetleB: I doubt such clauses can prevent you from disclosing them to relevant authorities. Disclosing them to the public is a whole other matter.

Aurornis: > Your employment agreement can include stuff like “if you say anything bad about us, even to your family in your own home, you owe us $50,000”.Non-disparagement clauses are limited by the law, which in the United States is augmented by state-level restrictions. There have been some recent developments from the NRLB limiting how severance agreements can be attached to non-disparagement clauses, too.So it's not generally true that you can be liable for $50K for saying anything bad about your employer in your own home.The situation with this author is on the other end of "in your own home" spectrum: They went out and wrote a whole book against their employer that violates NDAs, too. Regardless of what you think about Meta or the author, this was clearly a calculated move on their part to draw out a lawsuit because it provides further press coverage and therefore book sales (just look at all the comments in this thread from people claiming they're motivated to go buy it it now). Whether the gamble pays off or not remains to be seen.

Esophagus4: That would be up to her, wouldn’t it?And she signed it, so presumably it was for her.

torton: I think people living outside the US don't realize how few disputes here are actually allowed to use the official legal system when dealing with companies of non-trivial size. Many employment contracts, many service contracts, and even website terms of use require mandatory arbitration in lieu of pursuing one's claims in court.And arbitrator companies (some of which are explicitly for-profit) know the hand that feeds them.

khalic: Well I know what I’m reading tonight.

Aurornis: > This book was SO GOOD.One of the (very valid, IMO) criticisms of the book is that the author tries to set herself apart from the culture she was deeply embedded within. I think it's becoming a trap to hold the author up as a hero when she was clearly part of it all to the very core. It was only after she got separated from the inner circle club that she tried to distance herself from it.So while reading it, be careful about who you hold up as a hero. In a situation like this it's possible for everyone to be untrustworthy narrators.

zaphar: There is nuance here though. Taking a step back and learning from an experience is something to be celebrated.

seneca: Why would it not be legal to enforce a contract after 9 years? If she didn't want it enforced after a duration, she could have negotiated for that, or just not signed it.I don't see how it's principled to legally swear to not do something, then turn around and do it anyways. She's an adult, she has agency, and she chose to enter that contract.It's also not like we're talking about a legal whistleblower here. That act DOES (and should) have a lot of legal protections. This is someone writing a book that they personally profit from.

materielle: There are all sorts of contracts that are deemed non-enforceable. Our government should pass a law that bans non-disparagement clauses.One of the most pressing problems of our time is that these large corporations, on balance, have too much power compared to the electorate.

andrewaylett: There would have been a power imbalance at the point of signing. I can well imagine that the implications of that particular clause weren't apparent at the time.As a society (more so here in the UK than in the US, I'll grant) we have laws governing what one party may demand of the other. They don't prevent a genuine meeting of the minds, because enforcement of a contract will only be an issue if at least one party doesn't follow through. But they do limit the ability of the company to impose sanctions beyond a point.One limitation in the UK is that penalty clauses that are "private fines", like this one, must be based on the actual damage caused.In this case, as in the non-compete case, I would say that if a company wants to continue to influence what someone does, they should continue to pay them.

fmajid: The UK is far worse, with draconian libel laws where the burden of proof is on the defendant. Originally designed to stop uppity commoners from challenging the aristocrats, now used by oligarchs to silence journalists.

SoftTalker: I basically agree but as a civil instrument, a contract is not a law. The only consequence of violating a contract should be having to pay back whatever damages were caused. Not prohibitions on behavior or other freedoms. Enforced by whom?Corporations will violate contracts all the time as a cost of business if the cost of the violation is less than the benefit gained.

jancsika: You read the book. Did she have the receipts or not?

Esophagus4: It’s kind of murky.NLRB under Biden seemed to say that yeah you can disclose this to the media, and broad non-disparagements are unenforceable. But it’s also kind of a toss up depending on the NLRB, courts, administration, etc.Trump’s NLRB has rescinded a bunch of that Biden-era guidance, so what is enforceable and what isn’t? Kind of hard to say at this point.Arbitration agreed with Meta, but who knows what courts would say.https://www.whitecase.com/insight-alert/nlrb-requires-change...https://www.mintz.com/insights-center/viewpoints/2226/2025-0...

ryandrake: The fact that she did end up setting herself apart is what's remarkable. For every one of her who was able to self-reflect, become horrified of the ethics of what she was doing, and took the hard steps of stopping and breaking away, how many current and former Meta employees don't do this reflection and remain contributors to the problem? 1:100? 1:1,000? 1:10,000?

ethin: Then fix the court system? Create more courts, hire more judges/clerks... I mean, I know it isn't "as simple" as that, but that's the proper solution instead of creating a half-legal half-favoritist system where a company can force you into arbitration where, more often than not, the arbitrator is paid by the company, and therefore rules in it's favor.

SauntSolaire: If you can't hold individuals responsible for signing contracts on the premise that they might not read them, you've simultaneously invalidated most contracts, increased the cost to enter a contract (essentially subsidizing the law industry), and severely limited the ability for individuals to enter into contracts — not to mention infantilizing adults who are fully capable of reading a contract.Furthermore, this was a severance agreement, not employment agreement, so reading the contract is not going to delay you from starting your role.Also, power imbalances are a very good reason to have contracts in the first place — it's a good thing to be able to enter into agreements, and to have them set down on paper before hand so they're reviewable by all parties!

devilbunny: Maybe? Is your argument that there is no fair price, or that it wasn’t enough? The former makes NDAs unenforceable.

fmajid: NDAs cannot cover whistleblowing of actual criminality, including sexual harassment, which is why modern NDAs take pains to disclaim that, so they wouldn't be invalidated on that basis. Presumably the behavior exposed in the book, while arguably immoral or amoral, doesn't rise to the standard of criminality.

loeg: Writing a book isn't covered whistleblowing. If she wants to go to the FBI or whatever, no one can stop her.

renewiltord: Huh, I didn't think of that. If you are aware of the Streisand Effect, it is only logical to use it to your own advantage. Just like Cunningham's Law, you can often get the right answer by posting the wrong one. In fact, this is probably the first time someone is knowingly using the Streisand Effect to their own advantage. There are no prior examples.

zaphar: The corporation did not do this to her. It was a two party agreement. She bears just as much blame for the agreement as the corporation. She entered into it willingly. And that does and should have consequences.Morally speaking I think the company is reprehensible. But nor do I think contact law should be changed because of it.

rkomorn: I'd agree with you if there wasn't a significant power imbalance that virtually always skews way more in favor of the corporation.It is far more likely that an individual would do best to agree to a corporation's terms even if they favor the corporation than the other way around.

ryandrake: Unlike an elected government, who the common people at least in theory have a chance to replace via elections, the public pretty much has no say in what these companies and their leadership are allowed to do. Nobody voted for Meta. Nobody voted for Palantir. Nobody voted for Philip Morris. You can say that someone "voted with their wallet," but that doesn't point to a viable solution. "Not voting with your wallet" essentially means becoming a hermit and living isolated in the woods. Because there are no alternate companies that are ethical. Ethics have costs, and the nature of competition means that ethical companies will always be outcompeted and die to companies who don't care to pay those cost.

mindslight: [delayed]

troyvit: The article covers this:Instead, [the arbitration ruling] relied on a non-disparagement clause in her severance agreement with Facebook to silence her. Which it did, from March 13, 2025, her publication day. We could still publish the book, but our author could not talk about it.So she followed the clause.Personally I don't care. If she can publish the ugly truth about Meta and snag a pile of their money in the process I say power to her.

jamiequint: No, principled would be refusing to sign the exit agreement and forefeiting the money, then writing the book.

beepbooptheory: [delayed]

yoyohello13: By allowing powerful adults to act this way, we are in a sense teaching our children to act this way too.

mykowebhn: To all future whistle-blowers: Please ignore comments like this one! What you are doing is a valuable service to society.

matthewdgreen: If we require every whistleblower to be a saint, then we’ll never hear a whistle. It’s fine to raise doubts about people if you have a serious criticism of their credibility that’s potentially different, the rest is irrelevant.

b00ty4breakfast: I haven't read the book, but I don't think there's anything dishonest about needing distance to see the context of what she was a part of. Now, if she is trying to paint herself as completely outside of that even while she was knee-deep in it, that's a different matter but hindsight isn't something to be dismissed.

ddtaylor: It's available on libgen as well.To anyone salty about that, free advertising cuts both ways. I support their work and it would appear that their goal is to spread the ideas and messages, as it should be with all publishing.

wtallis: Nobody was trying to equate non-disparagement clauses with slavery. The relevance of slavery here is as an example of the kind of contract terms that everyone should be able to agree are rightly invalid and unenforceable. Any argument in favor of contract enforceability that would apply to a slavery contract just as easily as it applies to a non-disparagement contract is a bad argument, or at least woefully incomplete. Bringing up slavery serves as a necessary reminder that the details and nuance of the contract terms and their effects need to be discussed and argued, and that an unqualified "contracts should be valid" position is untenable and oversimplified.

ryandrake: The general principle is that you shouldn't be able to "sign away" something that's a constitutional or human right. Like the right to freely speak, the right to practice a religion, the right to be paid for work, and so on. Imagine if the severance contract specified that she had to convert to Islam in order to get her severance, or that she had to sacrifice a child. No court in the country would consider those clauses conscionable. Yet, somehow companies are allowed to gag your free speech as a condition in a contract? It makes no sense why this is allowed.

CalChris: [delayed]

robrain: Bought it on Kobo the day of the initial ban, mostly as a screw-you and reaction to corporate censorship. The fact that it's a good book and tells an interesting story in a clear manner was a side-benefit. Strongly recommend.

jmull: A strange response.Rather than address the comment you change the subject, “whaddabout the author!”Why do the dark work of deflecting on behalf of “Meta”?(lol, that name gets me every time. Might as well have renamed themselves NoIdeaWhatToDoNow)

Nifty3929: Because recognizing the author as conflicted and an unreliable narrator changes how you should weight and consider the information they are providing. It doesn't necessarily mean anything is untrue - but it does add extra, valuable information to how much you trust it.If someone tells me something, I'm mostly likely to believe it without further investigation. But not always.

jmull: Another one. Deflecting the criticism of Meta with a “whaddabout the author!”Formed as an answer to a question, but not one that was asked.A different account than last time, though, so I’ll ask you too: Why do the dark work of deflecting on behalf of Meta (lol)?

CPLX: The solution is to not allow concentration of corporate power at this level and to break it up when it happens anyways.The root cause under all this IS government policy. All the giant tech companies are the product of years of already illegal behavior that was not enforced.

bad_haircut72: This is legalized buying people off, yes these contracts ought to be illegal and the comparison to slavery (a worse, but same category of morally reprehensible power dynamic) is completely valid

thayne: You just lost your job, through no fault of your own, or maybe because you did the right thing and blew the whistle on illegal and/or unethical behavior. You don't know how long it will be before you find a new job or how you are going to pay the bills until then. Your employer offers you some money to tie you over, and maybe some resources to tide you over until you get a new job, but you have to agree to a hundred pages of legalese. And you only have a few hours to decide, not enough time to have a lawyer look at it, even if you could afford to pay a lawyer. You are highly stressed, so even if you take the time to read it, you probably don't take it all in, and feel pressured to agree. And your employer also makes vague threats that about what will happen if you don't sign it, like having a hard time finding a new job or maybe having legal action taken against you.Does that seem like a free informed decision?Looking at it another way, anti-disparagement agreements are basically bribes to keep quiet even if disclosure would benefit the general population.

raincole: At the end the book is published.

b00ty4breakfast: Are we shocked that a private entity, when given control of the public square, is using it's position to manipulate the discourse that goes in it's square? You think the quadspillion dollar megacorp is just going to let you criticize them?The naivety in tech is downright embarrassing sometimes. This isn't the 90s or even the 2010s, we should know the lay of the land by now

ryandrake: The leadership team of Meta (and all other giant mega corps) are much more isolated from the real world than 40ms and a firewall. These people don't interact in any way with normal people. They live in a different world than us, and don't even think about us, let alone wonder if their actions are hurting us. Do you think Zucc does his own shopping and has to interact with store employees? Do you think he talks to any of the staff of plumbers, electricians, HVAC repair people, gardeners, who maintain his homes? Do you think he goes down to the DMV and stands in line to renew his driver's license? These guys have staff in their orbit who arrange for all these things to just magically happen, so royalty doesn't have to come into direct contact with the commoners. The billionaire class is thoroughly insulated from us through multiple layers of staff and staff of staff.

brcmthrowaway: How great it is to write an expose after already making millions there...

rectang: Indeed, that's why "salting the earth" is an age-old military tactic. "If I can't have it, then neither can you."But I can also see why someone might wish for there to be a reason behind suffering.

zaphar: The antidote to a power imbalance is to recognize that there is no power imbalance and go about your life that way.Pretending there is one lands you in an imaginary trap. Build a society where we recognize that and you build a society where the imaginary trap disappears.

ktimespi: Yeah, the fact that she realized what's going on and still worked tirelessly to give Mark / Facebook more negotiating power speaks volumes. I also can't buy the whole "I have financial woes and can't escape" spin that she puts on her situation.Otherwise, great book.

SilverElfin: You are probably right that she was part of it all. There what money and power do to you. We need to limit it. The eat the rich stuff is the wrong messaging but the right goal. We need to reduce concentration of wealth and power.

ipython: It’s funny as I see this argument from people who at the same time excuse Snowden for publicly exposing government surveillance overreach when he had similar tools (disclosure to relevant authorities) available to him.

everybodyknows: Still looking for the part where, in acknowledgement of her own culpability, she assigns all book royalties to some charity that, say, provides counseling to troubled teenagers ...

ipython: So she’s expected to not only put her own financial life in jeopardy to publish this information, but then to take the money that she does have and donate it all to charity?One has to live. And there are not a lot of commercial enterprises that pay well that will hire someone who publicly flaunts an employment or severance contract.Give her a break. It’s amazing how many nits we have to pick with those with little power when they choose to exercise it, that we end up excusing wholesale abuses of power by those who actually monopolize it.

bena: She didn’t set herself apart. She was fired. She was forced apart.That’s the issue here. Is this someone who found their morals or someone who found a stick with which to strike back at those who hurt her?One of those doesn’t require her to change at all.

popalchemist: Waking up from a cult doesn't make you a hero, but stopping the cult might.

Noaidi: > "Not voting with your wallet" essentially means becoming a hermit and living isolated in the woods.This is a total exaggeration and just gives power to these companies. You can start here:https://www.resistandunsubscribe.com/YOU voted for Facebook when you use it, by not installing a hosts file that blocks it and all advertisements. We do not need to use these platforms, and the less people that use them the less you will need to use it.All we have to do is start making their profit fall and they will change. But it must be a strong and unified effort.

bena: I think the point is that up until she was fired, she was Meta. She wasn’t a random employee, she was their global public policy director. She wasn’t just implementing policy, she was responsible for creating it.The question remains whether or not she would have written this book had she not been fired.It’s not like she quit due to her ethical objections

jmull: A third “whaddabout the author”!It’s almost as if…

petre: Even if she was fired it was an act of courage and a step in the right direction to write a book about it. The company is cancer, no wonder they named it Meta.

dmschulman: It's been interesting to watch some of Wynn-William's claims be vindicated by recent court decisions about the addictive and manipulative qualities of Meta and Google's products. She left the company in 2017, and along with her many other allegations about Facebook and their executive team, had a good amount of information in the book about the reasoning, rationale, and management decisions that led to allowing advertisers to hyper target "coveted" demographics of tweens and children (among other claims).Facebook, according to Wynn-Williams, sold advertisers on the fact that they could target young girls who post and then remove selfies from their services in order to market to demographics who were likely experiencing depression and negative feelings about their body image.

bena: She didn’t leave, she was fired. A significant difference.

sillyfluke: If your first priority is judging the author then yes. If your first priority is judging the company, as it is with many people in this thread, then it is less so. In that case, it only suffices to ascertain the truth of the author's statements.To take a more extreme example, if a mob hitman turned FBI informant blows the lid on the corruption within the FBI, if there is truth in their statements, then them having benefitted from the corruption they are exposing is frankly secondary to my primary focus in the matter.

jamiequint: If you become massively rich from working somewhere, then suddenly discover your conscience when you're fired, you're bitter, not principled.

tyronehed: This is a great book. I thoroughly enjoyed reading. She was extremely fair to Facebook executives.

croes: The fate of every whistleblower

pests: > The question remains whether or not she would have written this book had she not been fired.Assume the answer is no. What does this change about any of this?

avidiax: Arbitration does help with the problem of overwhelmed and expensive courts. What is needed is fair arbitration.The outcome should approximate the outcome of the full court proceeding.Make the arbitration rulings appealable in court on the basis of factual errors, errors of law, corruption, and potential errors by omission (i.e. failure of discovery). And make the company responsible for the full costs of the litigation if the arbiter's judgement is overturned. And punish the arbiter, perhaps a 2 year ban on accepting any case from that industry.I'm sure more adjustments would be needed, but it should be possible to get both the arbiters and the companies to want arbitration to be a faster, cheaper route to the same outcome as the courts, rather than a steamroller that avoids all accountability for the company.

mathgradthrow: You don't have to agree to a disparagement clause... She accepted a lot of money to agree to it.

alterom: Yeah, clearly the employee and the company have the same leverage in negotiation here.It's a free market! If she didn't like the offer, she could've just gotten herself fired from some other company instead. /s

analog8374: Understanding takes effort too, effort that might be better spent creating value.Also, understanding creates culpability. So that's a downside. It's like people who walk in front of you on the road and pretend to not notice you. If I don't see the badness then I am not responsible for the badness.And thirdly, never underestimate people's power to ignore.

rectang: > never underestimate people's power to ignore.One of the hardest things to do is to put yourself in the place of those you see as villains and recognize that they generally see themselves as heroes. The human capacity for self-justification is extremely powerful.

margalabargala: Different entities having different amounts of leverage in a negotiation is neither unusual nor inherently immoral.If someone gives you the option to accept $ to sign a contract agreeing not talk about something that is legal but morally bad, and you say yes, then talk about the thing, you will correctly be losing the lawsuit, no matter how bad the thing is.