FRESH

Hacker News

Home

Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta

820 points by macleginn

by gortok

15 subcomments

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.

by petcat

8 subcomments

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 arbitrator 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.

by surprisetalk

9 subcomments

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.

by dmschulman

2 subcomments

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.

by dang

0 subcomment

Related. Others? (pretty sure there are others)
Meta exposé author faces $50k fine per breach of non-disparagement agreement - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45322050 - Sept 2025 (352 comments)
An ex-Facebook exec said staff let Zuckerberg win at board games - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44757228 - Aug 2025 (2 comments)
Careless People - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43780363 - April 2025 (537 comments)
Lawmakers are skeptical of Zuckerberg's commitment to free speech - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43643387 - April 2025 (63 comments)
How 'Careless People' is becoming a bigger problem for Meta - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43440449 - March 2025 (41 comments)
Meta puts stop on promotion of tell-all book by former employee - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43387325 - March 2025 (88 comments)
Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43360024 - March 2025 (336 comments)
Meta is trying to stop a former employee from promoting her book about Facebook - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43349473 - March 2025 (108 comments)

by chamomeal

6 subcomments

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

by grokcodec

2 subcomments

“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

by SauntSolaire

2 subcomments

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.

by garethsprice

0 subcomment

Ordered a hard copy of the book, don't trust that an eBook version won't get revoked or edited at some point.
Timely given I just tried to sign into Meta for the first time in a year or two as I am being required to work on a Marketing API integration, got prompted for a video selfie(!) and my account is now in "Community Review" as maybe my expression was too grumpy about being required to present myself for inspection. Abhorrent company.

by macleginn

1 subcomments

https://archive.is/DmiOw

by liendolucas

1 subcomments

The book is so good that once picked up you can't stop reading it. I've left Facebook many many many years ago and ever came back. The book just reinforced my aversion to any product that's out there that is designed to waste your time and manipulate your head. I sincerely hope that whoever ruled the gag on the author reverses the decision and at least reads the book and understands how nasty and evil Facebook is.

by AugustoCAS

1 subcomments

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.

by orochimaaru

4 subcomments

I don't agree with this ban. I also don't understand how a non-judicial US arbitration applies to the UK or in Europe. It shouldn't.
From the book authors perspective, signing the severance (and by definition taking the payout) means you're giving up the rights of disparagement and legal action against the company. This happens a lot of times. For example, if you have a legal employment complaints against your supervisors in a US company and have filed for external legal action, signing severance (if the company lays you off) means you give up your legal action and agree not to disparage company leaders.
The solution here was to not sign the severance and write the book.
Fwiw - I believe severance should be like non-competes. It cannot come with these clauses unless the value of the severance is over some set amount (e.g. above $10m).
I think the publisher should just make the book freely downloadable and distribute it via torrents and any other means.

by zx8080

0 subcomment

Is it some specific kind of masochism to still use FB? Why do people trust their digital lifes and private and personal messages to Meta?

by jedberg

0 subcomment

My friends who work at Meta said that they bought 100s of copies of the book and were passing it around to make sure everyone read it.

by CalChris

1 subcomments

Well, $50,000 is just not that much money. Sarah Wynn-Williams could open a Patreon account; scrape together $50,000; do an interview and cut Zuck a check.

by thisisrida

0 subcomment

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

by ceejayoz

5 subcomments

> 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.

by rorylawless

0 subcomment

A couple of podcasts in my rotation had Sarah Wynn-Williams on as a guest [1] [2], with the caveat that she was unable to talk about the book or comment on the Meta. Absurd.
I need to give this a read soon.
[1] https://www.ppfideas.com/episodes/live-special%3A-who-rules-...
[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002mz5f

by lucasay

0 subcomment

non-disparagement clauses doing a lot of heavy lifting here

by Nevermark

0 subcomment

Can he compliment and celebrate Meta? For the great and awesome harms they do? So efficient! So effective!
And the Senate misdirection! Brazen and bold. Even when they saw right through him, Zuck's stone face hardly slipped!

by bicepjai

0 subcomment

Streisand effect. I didn’t care about the book but I will have listened to this book by this weekend.

by Fairburn

1 subcomments

Would be really cool if that book made its way to Youtube. Immortalize it.

by zeroonetwothree

0 subcomment

She’s not actually “banned”, she just has to pay a penalty based on an agreement she voluntarily signed. Now I’m not saying that good on Meta’s part but the title is misleading.

by gnarlouse

0 subcomment

This shark story the book opens with seems... implausibly Hollywood. But alright I guess.

by newscracker

0 subcomment

> But when readers realised that Meta was trying to suppress it, the book became a global phenomenon. To date we’ve sold almost 200,000 copies.
The number of copies sold seems quite low for this book. It’s difficult to believe that across paperback, hardcover, ebooks and audiobooks, it hasn’t sold several million copies. This report is from February 2026 (just a month and a half ago).

by wkat4242

0 subcomment

https://archive.is/DmiOw

by khalic

0 subcomment

Well I know what I’m reading tonight.

by williamDafoe

0 subcomment

These non disparagement contracts are typical in silicon valley. Databricks offered me 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, just fired. They fired my 2 managers within the year, too, probably because they were fools.
I told them to fuck off. I should have continued with the lawsuit, probably.
But in american courts its "heads i win tails you lose" with labor laws - according to my lawyer wins are in the low single digits for discrimination lawsuits.

by fwipsy

2 subcomments

How the hell did Zuck run Facebook for so long without learning about the Streisand effect?

by blitzar

0 subcomment

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

by ordu

0 subcomment

How do these agreements works? Lets suppose she writes a fiction book about a fictional country, and then gives interview about the elites of the country. But by some tragic coincidence the elites are evil just like Meta executives. Could Meta prove in a court, that its executives are exactly as evil as fictional elites and they are evil in exactly the same way, which means Sarah really talked about Meta so she should be fined? Or such reasoning will not work in a court?

by ChrisMarshallNY

0 subcomment

Ms. Streisand. Paging Ms. Barbra Streisand. Please pick up the white courtesy phone.
I am not sure which exec at meta thought that this would be a good idea.
They are, literally, giving the book the best publicity it could have ever had. She's probably happy to not talk about it. There will be plenty of proxies that only have to read out of the book, prefacing it with "This is what Mark Zuckerberg doesn't want you to hear."

by alex1138

0 subcomment

Yeah so if you need any info on people at Harvard just ask https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692122

by threethirtytwo

2 subcomments

Wait you can legally ban someone from saying negative things? How does this work with the first amendment?

by tyronehed

0 subcomment

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

by next_xibalba

0 subcomment

I'll not that she is "banned" from saying negative things about Meta not by any law, but by a contract she willingly signed, and for which she likely received financial compensation (aka "severance"). I'd like to know the amount she was paid in severance (or really, was it above and beyond the standard severance policy at the time), in addition the amount of the fines she faces for disparagement that are reported here.
That said, Meta seems to have a really stupid strategy here. They are only drawing more attention to this woman and her book, and making themselves looking really bad in the process. I'm not sure I believe her victim narrative, but Meta sure does look dumb and vindictive here.

by brcmthrowaway

0 subcomment

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

by mnmnmn

0 subcomment

Fuck Zuck forever and ever. What a pathetic chump.

by zoklet-enjoyer

1 subcomments

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...

by giwook

12 subcomments

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.

by shevy-java

0 subcomment

There need to be new laws against megacorporations. They undermine too much in society when they can abuse individuals so easily. This is also a problem when the world wide web becomes a global walled garden - corporations decide who can say which (and gets exposure, or by censoring, no exposure). This is also why "age verification" is a censorship law (and, by the way, I recently saw on youtube two young girls create content, in a random video suggested; this was interesting in that age verification kind of censors away under-age people as content creators. The content itself was absolutely harmless, some random shit about what young people seem to be interested in. But I then wondered how the lobbyists can still try to sell "age verification" as "must-protect-kids" when at the same time underage people can create videos. This just confirms all suspiciouns that "age verification" has absolutely nothing to do with protecting children, but with spying and snifing after regular people.)

by throwanem

0 subcomment

She evidently signed a nondisparagement agreement with teeth. She won't martyr herself if she gets sued over it and loses. If she didn't know what she was getting into, that's only because she was too foolish to wield her resources to the minimal extent of hiring a lawyer, for a look over the contract before she signed. Everyone wants a hero here. Don't be a child! This is real life, and if you ask me, Careless People should be subtitled "Exhibit A in the trial of Federal Prisoner BOP #12345-098." Yet here we are.
Wynn-Williams is no one's hero. Nor need she be. Nor should we require she be, in order to make use of the windfall of information she provided. But it's no surprise crime has no consequences, when even we - who have some professional responsibility to expertise in drawing the distinction between uses and abuses of technologies like Meta's - are so unreliable on the basic difference between epistemology and People Magazine. Upton Sinclair really did call it with that old line about understanding and salaries, huh?

by beloch

0 subcomment

"Haigh highlighted Wynn-Williams’s case in the House of Commons during a debate about employment rights on Monday. She said Wynn-Williams’s decision to speak out had plunged her into financial peril.
“Despite previous public statements that Meta no longer uses NDAs [non-disclosure agreements] in cases of sexual harassment – which Sarah has repeatedly alleged – she is being pushed to financial ruin through the arbitration system in the UK, as Meta seeks to silence and punish her for speaking out,” she said.
“Meta has served a gagging order on Sarah and is attempting to fine her $50,000 for every breach of that order. She is on the verge of bankruptcy. I am sure that the whole house and the government will stand with Sarah as we pass this legislation to ensure that whistleblowers and those with the moral courage to speak out are always protected.”
It is understood that the $50,000 figure represents the damages Wynn-Williams has to pay for material breaches of the separation agreement she signed when she left Meta in 2017. Meta has emphasised that Wynn-Williams entered into the non-disparagement agreement voluntarily as part of her departure."
...
"The ruling stated Wynn-Williams should stop promoting the book and, to the extent she could, stop further publication. It did not order any action by Pan Macmillan."
Source:[1]
----------------------------------
This would probably boil down to a "He said, she said" type of situation, albeit with one side being aggressively litigious, were it not for Facebook's long track record of casual and unthinking irresponsibility. e.g. Myanmar[2]. Second, the non-disparagement clause was apparently foisted upon Wynn-Williams when she was leaving the company, not when she was hired. That suggests Meta knew they'd treated her poorly and feared consequences. Finally, the book that resulted has come out at a time when multiple countries are starting to pass legislation to control the harm Facebook and other social media companies do (e.g. The social media ban for minors in Australia). Meta clearly does not want a book like "Careless People" trending right now.
Meta has both a history of bad behaviour and a strong motive to silence such a book. For these reasons, I'm disinclined to believe Meta's claims that these allegations are "false and defamatory". Wynn-Williams probably was "toxic". She was an executive at Meta after all. Her claims can be true at the same time.
________________________
[1]https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/21/meta-expo...
[2]https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...

by alex1138

0 subcomment

I am incredibly saddened by Facebook because "social" should have exploded along with the rest of the web. The web is this vast place (which Facebook is trying to change https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10791198) and there's no reason they should have been the winners (Friendster was apparently slow, Myspace had that awkward problem of discoverability with people using screen names and also the fact pages could be probably too excessively customized). I can think of several ways in which FB has hurt me directly and hurts other people. But we gave up our power to "they 'trust me', dumb fucks"

by mil22

0 subcomment

It's a great read. Here are some of the most salacious bits.
---
She details the bizarrely intimate demands former COO Sheryl Sandberg placed on her young, female assistants - including demanding the author get into bed with her on a private jet:
"Sheryl recently instructed Sadie to buy lingerie for both of them with no budget, and Sadie obeyed, spending over $10,000 on lingerie for Sheryl and $3,000 on herself. ... 'Happy to treat your breasts as they should be treated,' Sheryl responds. ... Sheryl responds by asking her twenty-six-year-old assistant to come to her house to try on the underwear and have dinner. Later the invite becomes one to stay over. Lean in and lie back."
---
Facing open arrest warrants from the South Korean government over a regulatory dispute, Facebook's leadership team (including Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg) realize it is too legally dangerous for them to travel there. So VP of Communications Elliot Schrage proposes a sociopathic solution:
"It’s breathtaking to me, how casually leadership speaks of employees being jailed. As if it’s a fact of life like taxes...
'We need to get someone to test the appetite of the Korean authorities for arresting someone from headquarters. It can’t be someone located there. They need to fly in before Mark and Sheryl do. You know, a body,' Elliot states matter-of-factly. The room falls silent. It’s a weird thing to realize that the tech world, this most modern of industries, has cannon fodder."
---
A woman suffers a severe medical emergency in the middle of the open-plan office while everyone just keeps typing:
"She’s foaming at the mouth and her face is bleeding. She must’ve hit something when she fell from her desk. And she’s being completely ignored. She’s surrounded by desks and people at computers and no one’s helping her. Everyone types busily on their keyboards, pretending nothing is happening.
'Are you her manager?' I ask a woman at a nearby desk who seems to be studiously concentrating on her computer, while a woman convulses in pain at her feet. 'Yes. But I’m very busy,' she says brusquely. ... 'She’s a contractor. I don’t have that sort of information. Her contract’s coming to an end soon. I suggest you call HR.'"
---
She uncovers secret internal documents detailing Mark Zuckerberg's master plan to get Facebook into China:
"But the thing that gets me is where Facebook’s leadership states that one of the 'cons' of Facebook being the one who’s accountable for content moderation is this: 'Facebook employees will be responsible for user data responses that could lead to death, torture and incarceration.'
... And yet, despite the fact that our employees would be responsible for death, torture, and incarceration... the consensus among Mark and the Facebook leaders was that this was what they’d prefer..."

by Fricken

0 subcomment

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

by renewiltord

0 subcomment

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.

by BLACKCRAB

0 subcomment

[dead]

by djoldman

0 subcomment

[dead]

by mrb00k

0 subcomment

[dead]

by LightBug1

2 subcomments

[flagged]

by lokinorkle

0 subcomment

[flagged]

by jamiequint

0 subcomment

[flagged]

by overrun11

0 subcomment

[flagged]

0 subcomment

by b00ty4breakfast

1 subcomments

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

by losvedir

1 subcomments

How do know she's telling the truth? I'm not inclined to give any high level Meta person (current or former) the benefit of the doubt. I haven't read the book, so I don't really know what kind of, like, proof or anything she includes (or could include). Is it just a "trust me not them" thing?