- Meta won an emergency arbitration decision regarding the book “Careless People.”
- The decision, in part, bars Sarah Wynn-Williams from promoting the book.
- A Meta spokesperson said the “false and defamatory book should never have been published.”
Meta just scored a win against a new memoir written by a former Facebook executive.
“Careless People,” which was published Tuesday, was written by Sarah Wynn-Williams, who worked at Facebook from 2011 to 2017.
Meta on Wednesday shared an emergency arbitrator’s decision that bars the author from promoting the book. Her memoir has already generated headlines, including a positive review in The New York Times.
The ruling was issued by the International Centre for Dispute Resolution, which is the international division of the American Arbitration Association.
The arbitrator wrote that the decision bars Wynn-Williams from making disparaging comments about Meta or from further publishing the book to the extent she has control over it.
“This ruling affirms that Sarah Wynn Williams’ false and defamatory book should never have been published,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement to Business Insider.
At the time of writing, the book was still available for purchase from retailers like Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Wynn-Williams and the publisher, Macmillan, did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider outside regular business hours.
The book includes vivid descriptions of the leadership styles and behaviors of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, then-chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, and other top leaders.
Wynn-Williams, a former New Zealand diplomat and international lawyer, was a global public policy director at Meta and detailed having close contact with Meta’s top brass.
In one part of the book, the writer described how 200 Meta women employees formed a secret Facebook group in 2017 called “Feminist Fight Club.” She also included several descriptions of being personally harassed by her superiors.
The writer also detailed Zuckerberg’s awkward interactions with world leaders including former US president Barack Obama and China’s leader, Xi Jinping.
The author recalled Xi using a ‘a human Chinese wall’ of soldiers at the 2016 APEC summit in Lima, Peru, to avoid interacting with Zuckerberg. Another section explains an incident when Zuckerberg said he didn’t want to talk to then-New Zealand Prime Minister John Key in front of Key.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone called the book “a mix of old claims and false accusations about our executives” and said Wynn-Williams was fired for poor performance and behavior.
