> Described by its publisher as an “explosive insider account,” Wynn-Williams reveals some new details about Mark Zuckerberg’s push to bring Facebook to China a decade ago. She also alleges that Meta's current policy chief, Joel Kaplan, acted inappropriately, and reveals embarrassing details about Zuckerberg’s awkward encounters with world leaders
I'm interested in the topic but this sounds gossipy. I've been burned enough times by these insider journalism books whose only good parts become headlines within the first week and the rest is some random person's life story.
I listened to her interview on the Free Press, and to be totally honest, the way it was discussed does feel “gossipy.” [0]
One thing that rubs me the wrong way is her decision to wait to share this information.
When asked that by Weiss during the podcast, her response was effectively, “because AI is getting so powerful, and everyone should know what these companies are doing.”
Don’t get me wrong - I believe what she claims to have happened, and I sympathize with her difficult experience at the company. But what she discussed doesn’t feel like it’s very substantive beyond what could already be deduced or observed.
It’s easier to be principled when you can afford to not have to find work anymore. People who publically criticize tech billionaires tend to not have an easy time with that.
There’s no way to know, as someone who doesn’t know the writer, what her truest motivations are, but it’s probably a good bet that whatever she does she’ll never wield power and influence over the lives of so many people as Mark, who’s dedicated his life to extracting as many resources as he can for his personal empire.
> But what she discussed doesn’t feel like it’s very substantive beyond what could already be deduced or observed.
There is still value in having a primary source for it. Even if it's not news to you.
Even on HN when you see an industry open-secret discussed, you'll occasionally have one sub-thread saying "you must be a paranoid conspiracy theorist to even suggest that" while another is the "everyone be knowing that already" sub-thread.
"I've been burned enough times by these journalism books whose other good parts become headlines the first week and the rest is some random person's life story."
This one also meets that description, to some extent. The author calls herself a "random New Zealander".
Not sure what "burned" means. Maybe try libraries.
This is not a "journalism book". The author is not a journalist and is not reporting on the "news of the day". It is an autobiography covering a period of the author's life. The author worked at Facebook as a lawyer focused on diplomacy from 2011.
The recounted events concerning Facebook staff often involve multiple persons who are still alive and the facts could easily be corroborated. Alas, non-disparagement clauses may be an impediment.
However, this HN submission, like others on the topic, is not about the book itself. It is about Meta's efforts to stop the book's promotion.
Why try to stop its promotion. If privacy is dead according to Zuckerberg (2010)^1 then why is Meta concerned about this book.
There appear to be some allegations of harassment and retaliation in this book by someone still working and recently promoted at Meta. Maybe this is why Meta is trying to stop the book's promotion.
HN comments may focus on the quality of the book or the author but these HN story submissions are about Meta's attempt to stop promotion of the book, not the book itself.
Libro.fm rules, been using it for years now. Same price as Amazon, has a vast majority of the books I've been interested in, and you get to pick a local bookstore to support and some portion of your subscription goes to them. Since we're on HN, you can actually download the audio files from Libro.fm as an officially-supported feature also for backups.
Not for audiobooks sold through Audible, for reasons Cory Doctorow has discussed at length:
Today, Audible dominates the audiobook market. In some verticals, their market-share is over 90 percent! And Audible will not let authors or publishers opt out of DRM. If you want to publish an audiobook with Audible, you must let them add their DRM to it. That means that every time one of your readers buys one of your books, they’re locking themselves further into Audible. If you sell a million bucks’ worth of audiobooks on Audible, that’s a million bucks your readers have to forfeit to follow you to a rival platform.
Buying a physical book through bookshop.org supports a user chosen local bookshop or, if none is selected, supports a nation wide collection of bookshops. The goal being that it's similar to if you went to the bookshop to buy the book directly.
Ebooks are the same concept, but they're still sold with DRM (AFAIK), so I haven't dove into their app to test it out.
Corporations are never truly your friends and should be treated accordingly. For some reason, we once believed that tech companies were different, but in reality, it was always just a more sophisticated facade. It’s good to see that facade being torn down—this should be obvious to everyone. You wouldn’t expect good behavior from BP Oil, so why expect it from Meta or any other tech giant? They all operate under the same logic: profit first, everything else is just a convenient disguise. Hope Streisand effects work fully for her!
what would be an example of a tech company (for a fair comparison, a large one would be nice), and how is it different in the sense of not exhibiting the behaviors of this book?
> Corporations are never truly your friends and should be treated accordingly. For some reason, we once believed that tech companies were different, but in reality, it was always just a more sophisticated facade.
Are those companies you listed counterexamples to this?
Actually I agree wholeheartedly with the above statement.
But I also believe that some companies will be more predatory in their actions depending on what’s their source of revenue, size of company, leadership etc.
I would say Google in 2000 is very different from Google 2025.
Back then Google seemed to me like an ally, maybe not a friend, but definitely we were on the same side.
As soon as they became an ad company instead of a search engine, it slowly went down hill.
Now I treat Google as part of the global elites surveillance machine instead of a trusted ally.
The problem is, how do you make profit online without slipping into predatory action? How do you build an organisation resistant to this?
I don’t think that tech companies are inherently different by virtue of being tech companies. There are good ones and bad ones just like in other industries. There’s nothing special about “tech” that makes it a better place to work.
Well, in a sense, yes. The threat model isn't quite identical between the two sorts of companies. However, SV-style companies who are are not ad-dependent still tend to be highly problematic in their behavior. In my view, it's more a difference in style than anything.
There are tons of different kinds of tech companies, and I think they make more sense if you align them on the spectrum I proposed.
I assume we are talking about product design behaviors and enshitiffication.
Advertising isn't the only competing interests with users. Sometimes it's another product line or business interest. I think Windows OS would fall into this group. I think The OS intentionally designed to enfeeble users and push them into MS product lines.
> From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite.
Maybe just the hypocrisy of making themselves the moral moderator of Western civilization / having a COO write a femanifesto* while internally being no better than other other old boys club
>this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite
I wonder how many time it should be revealed to stop being an eye-opening and a revelation.
Brief look over the article and the photos, and it seems like a usual story - somebody is happy to be a part of the viper nest at the very top until they get kicked out, and then "eye-opening revelations" come out (of course i think that Meta shouldn't be able to block it, until it is some NDA stuff)
In fairness that’s how most power structures crumble throughout history. The USSR didn’t collapse because of low level revolution - disenfranchised senior leadership lost the handle. The mistake of using people for a time and thinking they won’t come back to haunt you is naive and I’m all for it.
Many of my hardest life lessons learned was because I was willingly working for people who were keeping me blind to their actual nature and motives and it was disguised at the time. The alternative wheee people just shrug and don’t document it for history - gossip or not - is a bad alternative.
> to the extent within Respondent Wynn-Williams' control, from further publishing or distributing Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, including with respect to electronic and audio versions of the book;
People may be interested in the interview with Wynn-Williams (the whistleblower) on the News Agents podcast: https://www.globalplayer.com/podcasts/episodes/7DrpKCA/ (it's a UK news/political podcast very popular in the UK).
From what they said at the beginning I think this is her first big podcast interview about the book/her claims. I wonder if she chose a UK podcast because of the US arbiter ruling.
The summary I read mentioned arbitration, which she probably agreed to when she signed her employment contract. Not surprisingly, the arbiter ruled against her. I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but IMHO she should ignore their ruling and the let FB sue her, where she would get a fair hearing and probably win.
That explains why after Zuck started calling for return of masculinity to the workplace, the former accused exec immediately sided with him. It's all tit for tat.
The full interview is a bit more nuanced, he talked about how they need to keep rising up women in leadership and how they have been very important to FBs success which he wants to keep promoting but he had some concerns they got caught up and went a bit too far in some ways. The context was semi personal as he was being asked about his entry into MMA and how it has shaped his personal life.
No it is not. This is PR speak. Here is his exact quote: “I think that having a culture that celebrates the aggression has its merits”
He knew what he was talking about.
Also from that JRE podcast with the masculinity and workplace conversation, he's working the bow and arrow chit chat from that long form interview in a recent podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQZjrVEOpOk
It's a pretty common narrative for CEOs to get into fitness later in life, especially running. I'd imagine it's pretty hard to be successful at a demanding job after 40+ if you're not in decent physical shape. Easier to go hard in your 20s.
This type of heavy handed action always leads to the same outcome for the popularity of the verboten material.
Would love to see the actual severance contract too. It must have some kind of expiration date. Otherwise that kind of indefinite non-disparagement clause is one hell of a sword of Damocles.
Agreed, this has Streisand effect written all over it. I don't know how effective book marketing campaigns normally are, but this type of exposure will blow that out of the water.
If they care so much about stopping this book then it must mean they really care about preventing the truth to see the light and for people to know what really goes behind closed doors.
EDIT: Also, I believe they stopped promotion, but not selling.
> Wynn-Williams sees Zuckerberg change while she’s at Facebook. Desperate to be liked, he becomes increasingly hungry for attention and adulation, shifting his focus from coding and engineering to politics. On a tour of Asia, she is directed to gather a crowd of more than one million so that he can be “gently mobbed.”
Well, now I'll have to buy it, I suppose. Streisand at it again.
I didn’t plan on buying this but after reading the comments here and the NYT review, went for it. Am 90 odd pages into it and the author describes sending “talking points” to the FB COO while in the delivery room, moments before her daughter was born.
What really grabs you, she’s using a laptop. Not a phone.
The thing is that’s not really specific to Meta, but exemplifies the “dedicated, hard working” worker who is more likely to be promoted (and eventually make big bucks) because they are willing to sacrifice their life/family/children for the company. It’s a cultural thing particularly strong in the US and goes along with Americans having so few paid days off etc. It’s horrible how our worth as humans becomes wrapped up in this.
""This ruling affirms that Sarah Wynn Williams’ false and defamatory book should never have been published,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement.""
Whistleblowing is often a traumatic experience for whistleblowers and it's often a last-ditch resort done out of desperation after a long struggle with their conscience and or after they've tried to right wrongs and have failed.
To make matters worse it's almost inevitable those who are the subject of the whistleblowing (employers, institutions/entities or persons) will attempt to make life very difficult for the whilstleblower by discrediting both the person and everything he or she says. Add to all that the fact that the target of the whistleblowing is inevitably the more powerful of the parties.
Whistleblowing isn't for the fainthearted. For the most part, whistleblowers aren't aware of all the problems they'll encounter let alone their full extent, thus they'll often be stressed and emotionally traumatized by events, some of which are quite unexpected.
First, is that employees with whom they're friendly and who also know the issues will often turn against them and side with employers with the result that few will publicly support the whistleblower's claims. This is often unexpected and comes as quite a shock. Effectively, whistleblowers are usually on their own. Second, they'll likely have considerable difficulty in seeking further employment. Third, whistleblowing legislation in many places is grossely inadequate which leaves whistleblowers exposed, for them the law offers little or no protection. There's more but that'll do for now.
That said, not all whistleblowers are lily-white and some seek vengeance for various reasons; there may be a modicum of truth in what they say but with these people sorting fact from fiction is often difficult. Also, whistleblowers with a genuine grievance do themselves and their cause harm by exaggerating the facts for emphasis. There's also another class of whistleblower who exasperates just about everybody, they're the people who have a genuine complaint but which turns out to be trivial or inconsequential.
I'm of the opinion they're one of the reasons why whistleblowing legislation is lacking. As it is, it's often hard to know where to draw the line. That which constitutes an issue of enough importance to warrant whistleblowing and to not only draw public attention but also bring on an investigation is often not clearcut and these 'nuisances' muddy the waters.
Moreover, that whistleblowing is often viewed negatively as tittle-tattle even by those who welcome the whistleblower's revelations is another factor whistleblowers have to contend with. Both the distaste and ambivalence that a large percentage of the US public showed towards Snowden is evidence of that.
Eventually, truth will out and we will learn whether Sarah Wynn-Williams’ claims are false and defamatory or are factual—either in full or in part. If her claims are genuine, well motivated and factual she'll nevertheless be in for a pretty rotten time.
Unfortunately, that's the usual lot for most whistleblowers, very few benefit from having been one and many end up regretting having so acted.
I wonder what on earth these people are dreaming of when they try to stop one person promoting a book by making a move guaranteed to kick off the Streisand Effect and having the whole media machine do it for her?
Maybe they're getting paid royalties on the publication?
Also, .torrent file available on TPB in 3 2 1 ... (It wasn't at time of posting).
> Described by its publisher as an “explosive insider account,” Wynn-Williams reveals some new details about Mark Zuckerberg’s push to bring Facebook to China a decade ago. She also alleges that Meta's current policy chief, Joel Kaplan, acted inappropriately, and reveals embarrassing details about Zuckerberg’s awkward encounters with world leaders
I'm interested in the topic but this sounds gossipy. I've been burned enough times by these insider journalism books whose only good parts become headlines within the first week and the rest is some random person's life story.
I listened to her interview on the Free Press, and to be totally honest, the way it was discussed does feel “gossipy.” [0]
One thing that rubs me the wrong way is her decision to wait to share this information.
When asked that by Weiss during the podcast, her response was effectively, “because AI is getting so powerful, and everyone should know what these companies are doing.”
Don’t get me wrong - I believe what she claims to have happened, and I sympathize with her difficult experience at the company. But what she discussed doesn’t feel like it’s very substantive beyond what could already be deduced or observed.
[0] https://www.thefp.com/p/meet-sarah-wynn-williams-facebooks
Assuming positive intent, many times the reason for a long wait is to allow NDAs to expire.
Some NDAs can effectively be life-long. (It's the non-solicits that are time-bound.)
Fair point. I didn’t hear her mention this in the podcast, but maybe she does in the book.
It’s easier to be principled when you can afford to not have to find work anymore. People who publically criticize tech billionaires tend to not have an easy time with that.
There’s no way to know, as someone who doesn’t know the writer, what her truest motivations are, but it’s probably a good bet that whatever she does she’ll never wield power and influence over the lives of so many people as Mark, who’s dedicated his life to extracting as many resources as he can for his personal empire.
> But what she discussed doesn’t feel like it’s very substantive beyond what could already be deduced or observed.
There is still value in having a primary source for it. Even if it's not news to you.
Even on HN when you see an industry open-secret discussed, you'll occasionally have one sub-thread saying "you must be a paranoid conspiracy theorist to even suggest that" while another is the "everyone be knowing that already" sub-thread.
"I've been burned enough times by these journalism books whose other good parts become headlines the first week and the rest is some random person's life story."
This one also meets that description, to some extent. The author calls herself a "random New Zealander".
Not sure what "burned" means. Maybe try libraries.
This is not a "journalism book". The author is not a journalist and is not reporting on the "news of the day". It is an autobiography covering a period of the author's life. The author worked at Facebook as a lawyer focused on diplomacy from 2011.
The recounted events concerning Facebook staff often involve multiple persons who are still alive and the facts could easily be corroborated. Alas, non-disparagement clauses may be an impediment.
However, this HN submission, like others on the topic, is not about the book itself. It is about Meta's efforts to stop the book's promotion.
Why try to stop its promotion. If privacy is dead according to Zuckerberg (2010)^1 then why is Meta concerned about this book.
1. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/external/readwri...
Perhaps Meta wants to send a message to other terminated Meta employees who might also write books critical of their former employer.
Zuckerberg is wrong of course. Privacy is not dead.^2 These days, Meta fights for its own privacy to the point of absurdity.
2. https://iapp.org/news/a/privacy-is-not-dead-its-powerful/
There appear to be some allegations of harassment and retaliation in this book by someone still working and recently promoted at Meta. Maybe this is why Meta is trying to stop the book's promotion.
HN comments may focus on the quality of the book or the author but these HN story submissions are about Meta's attempt to stop promotion of the book, not the book itself.
Sure, but that doesn't mean Meta should be able to quash it.
I wasn't planning on buying the book but ...
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250391237?psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DE...
Also here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/careless-people-a-cautionary-ta...
thanks, placed an order through bookshop
Hadn’t heard of it until this article about them wanting to block promotion. Instant buy
Streisand Effect in full force.
I’m buying the book, but definitely not from AMZN.
Found it on back order at a local shop and ordered there.
Bookshop.org is a pretty good alternative to AMZN.
And for ebooks, I’ve found Kobo to be an absolutely fantastic replacement. They also widely support Adobe Editions if that is your jam.
Is there a good replacement for Audible?
Libro.fm rules, been using it for years now. Same price as Amazon, has a vast majority of the books I've been interested in, and you get to pick a local bookstore to support and some portion of your subscription goes to them. Since we're on HN, you can actually download the audio files from Libro.fm as an officially-supported feature also for backups.
https://libro.fm/
Not for audiobooks sold through Audible, for reasons Cory Doctorow has discussed at length:
Today, Audible dominates the audiobook market. In some verticals, their market-share is over 90 percent! And Audible will not let authors or publishers opt out of DRM. If you want to publish an audiobook with Audible, you must let them add their DRM to it. That means that every time one of your readers buys one of your books, they’re locking themselves further into Audible. If you sell a million bucks’ worth of audiobooks on Audible, that’s a million bucks your readers have to forfeit to follow you to a rival platform.
<https://doctorow.medium.com/why-none-of-my-books-are-availab...>
Kobo also has audiobooks
Does Kobo allow you to keep pdfs or epubs of the books? Or is an account always required (DRM)?
If the publisher decides to release them without DRM, yes.
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/p/drm-free
In other cases it's not difficult to remove the DRM yourself.
For anyone else looking at it: US and UK only
Others have mentioned bookshop. Why do you prefer it?
Buying a physical book through bookshop.org supports a user chosen local bookshop or, if none is selected, supports a nation wide collection of bookshops. The goal being that it's similar to if you went to the bookshop to buy the book directly.
Ebooks are the same concept, but they're still sold with DRM (AFAIK), so I haven't dove into their app to test it out.
Besides not being AMZN. They act as a middleman to redirect purchases to local bookstores in your area.
Plus registered/certified as a B-corporation is a plus in my book — https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/find-a-b-corp/company/boo...
Is that an affiliate link? Clever, if so.
Tracking-free link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250391237
Yup, I have to listen to the audio book now.
Corporations are never truly your friends and should be treated accordingly. For some reason, we once believed that tech companies were different, but in reality, it was always just a more sophisticated facade. It’s good to see that facade being torn down—this should be obvious to everyone. You wouldn’t expect good behavior from BP Oil, so why expect it from Meta or any other tech giant? They all operate under the same logic: profit first, everything else is just a convenient disguise. Hope Streisand effects work fully for her!
Tech companies were different and still are.
The problem is that for some reason, advertising companies such as Meta and Google are considered tech companies by some.
You wouldn’t call red bull an extreme sports company, just because they fund extreme sport events?
I bet Rocket Lab is a great company to work at for a nerd.
> Tech companies were different and still are.
what would be an example of a tech company (for a fair comparison, a large one would be nice), and how is it different in the sense of not exhibiting the behaviors of this book?
An example would be a company with a primary stream is technology, not selling advertisements or data from social media users.
Siemens, Nvidia, AMD, etc.
> Corporations are never truly your friends and should be treated accordingly. For some reason, we once believed that tech companies were different, but in reality, it was always just a more sophisticated facade.
Are those companies you listed counterexamples to this?
Actually I agree wholeheartedly with the above statement.
But I also believe that some companies will be more predatory in their actions depending on what’s their source of revenue, size of company, leadership etc.
I would say Google in 2000 is very different from Google 2025.
Back then Google seemed to me like an ally, maybe not a friend, but definitely we were on the same side.
As soon as they became an ad company instead of a search engine, it slowly went down hill.
Now I treat Google as part of the global elites surveillance machine instead of a trusted ally.
The problem is, how do you make profit online without slipping into predatory action? How do you build an organisation resistant to this?
I don’t think that tech companies are inherently different by virtue of being tech companies. There are good ones and bad ones just like in other industries. There’s nothing special about “tech” that makes it a better place to work.
> Tech companies were different and still are.
It sure doesn't look like it to me.
Different from advertising companies.
There is a pretty clear difference in attitude and behavior when you are the customer vs the product.
Your run of the mill B2C will be more responsive to customer desires than a company with differentiated users and customers.
By way of example, the company like Netflix might has viewers as a customer. The company like Facebook has users, but the advertisers are customers.
Well, in a sense, yes. The threat model isn't quite identical between the two sorts of companies. However, SV-style companies who are are not ad-dependent still tend to be highly problematic in their behavior. In my view, it's more a difference in style than anything.
There are tons of different kinds of tech companies, and I think they make more sense if you align them on the spectrum I proposed.
I assume we are talking about product design behaviors and enshitiffication.
Advertising isn't the only competing interests with users. Sometimes it's another product line or business interest. I think Windows OS would fall into this group. I think The OS intentionally designed to enfeeble users and push them into MS product lines.
What do you think defines a SV type company?
Why doesn’t Meta just put community notes on FB for the book?
Problem solved.
> From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite.
Hell of a pitch. I'll buy.
Why is misogyny such a cenrral thing? They cooperate with dictators and kill people , yet the sales atrocity is internal discrimination ?
Maybe just the hypocrisy of making themselves the moral moderator of Western civilization / having a COO write a femanifesto* while internally being no better than other other old boys club
*lean in
It appears to cover the Burma stuff, too.
However, to an extent, that's old news; everyone already knows about it to at least some extent, and thus it is a bad subject for a tell-all memoir.
>this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite
I wonder how many time it should be revealed to stop being an eye-opening and a revelation.
Brief look over the article and the photos, and it seems like a usual story - somebody is happy to be a part of the viper nest at the very top until they get kicked out, and then "eye-opening revelations" come out (of course i think that Meta shouldn't be able to block it, until it is some NDA stuff)
In fairness that’s how most power structures crumble throughout history. The USSR didn’t collapse because of low level revolution - disenfranchised senior leadership lost the handle. The mistake of using people for a time and thinking they won’t come back to haunt you is naive and I’m all for it.
Many of my hardest life lessons learned was because I was willingly working for people who were keeping me blind to their actual nature and motives and it was disguised at the time. The alternative wheee people just shrug and don’t document it for history - gossip or not - is a bad alternative.
Not just promoting but:
> to the extent within Respondent Wynn-Williams' control, from further publishing or distributing Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, including with respect to electronic and audio versions of the book;
https://about.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Arbitration-...
Book review at the NYT: https://archive.is/vN0Jp#selection-1333.0-1333.13
FWIW, it is on libgen.
This review is TL;DR of the book. Thanks.
People may be interested in the interview with Wynn-Williams (the whistleblower) on the News Agents podcast: https://www.globalplayer.com/podcasts/episodes/7DrpKCA/ (it's a UK news/political podcast very popular in the UK).
From what they said at the beginning I think this is her first big podcast interview about the book/her claims. I wonder if she chose a UK podcast because of the US arbiter ruling.
The News Agents are political hacks. Not a good source of balanced information.
The summary I read mentioned arbitration, which she probably agreed to when she signed her employment contract. Not surprisingly, the arbiter ruled against her. I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but IMHO she should ignore their ruling and the let FB sue her, where she would get a fair hearing and probably win.
That explains why after Zuck started calling for return of masculinity to the workplace, the former accused exec immediately sided with him. It's all tit for tat.
The full interview is a bit more nuanced, he talked about how they need to keep rising up women in leadership and how they have been very important to FBs success which he wants to keep promoting but he had some concerns they got caught up and went a bit too far in some ways. The context was semi personal as he was being asked about his entry into MMA and how it has shaped his personal life.
No it is not. This is PR speak. Here is his exact quote: “I think that having a culture that celebrates the aggression has its merits” He knew what he was talking about.
The image makeover is unprecedented for a CEO.
Also from that JRE podcast with the masculinity and workplace conversation, he's working the bow and arrow chit chat from that long form interview in a recent podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQZjrVEOpOk
It's a pretty common narrative for CEOs to get into fitness later in life, especially running. I'd imagine it's pretty hard to be successful at a demanding job after 40+ if you're not in decent physical shape. Easier to go hard in your 20s.
He's been running for at least a decade.
Bezos?
Yes their end game appears different. Meta has created a new archetype.
The News Agents podcast just did an interview with Wynn-Williams
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/special-episode-inside...
Thanks. This is excellent, as you'd expect from Emily Maitlis.
This type of heavy handed action always leads to the same outcome for the popularity of the verboten material.
Would love to see the actual severance contract too. It must have some kind of expiration date. Otherwise that kind of indefinite non-disparagement clause is one hell of a sword of Damocles.
Agreed, this has Streisand effect written all over it. I don't know how effective book marketing campaigns normally are, but this type of exposure will blow that out of the water.
In case of Meta I really doubt. These guys are constantly growing despite of Facebook being nothing more than ads-disguised-as-friends' scrapyard.
> Additionally, the arbitrator ruled that so much as Wynn-Williams can control, she is prohibited from further publishing or distributing the book
So she can't do press. I wonder if this means there will be only one run, or if the publisher can print as many copies as it wants.
20 points, 3 comments... a bit too early to declare Streisand on this.
This story has be posted to HN several times. The earlier story has 220 points and 50 comments
29 points, five commments & on HN's front page. Still early, but it is growing fast.
One comment thread is not the entire internet you know. There are other websites out there
We can do it!
[dead]
Did Zuck buy a copy or just torrent it?
Stating that 'Meta will suffer “immediate and irreparable loss”' from the promotion of this book is almost certain to trigger the Streisand effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
“This ruling affirms that Sarah Wynn Williams’ false and defamatory book should never have been published”
No. The arbiter didn’t say Williams was warned about libel and proceeded anyway.
Meta is starting to have a whistleblower problem:
- Sarah Wynn-Williams (2025)
- Arturo Bejar (2023)
- Frances Haugen (2021)
- Sophie Zhang (2020)
- Chris Hughes, Co-Founder (2019)
- Roger McNamee, Investor (2019)
- Christopher Wylie (2018)
- Alex Stamos, ex-CSO (2018)
- Brian Acton, Co-Founder WhatsApp (2017)
- Sean Parker, ex-President (2017)
- Chamath Palihapitiya (2017)
- Justin Rosenstein (2017)
Ex-Meta executive: ‘People deserve to know what this company is really like’
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/11/tech/meta-whistleblower-book-...
Meta’s Response to Explosive Tell-All Is Ripped From a Familiar PR Playbook
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/metas-response-explosi...
Don't forget the very first whistleblower:
- Mark Zuckerberg (2004)
"People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks"
Brian Acton ensures I'll never use Whatsapp. Clear antitrust case
I saw about the book earlier, didn't care about reading it. Then I saw about the arbitration on the news and immediately ordered a copy.
If they care so much about stopping this book then it must mean they really care about preventing the truth to see the light and for people to know what really goes behind closed doors.
EDIT: Also, I believe they stopped promotion, but not selling.
They've now insured the book will get lots of additional promotion.
> Wynn-Williams sees Zuckerberg change while she’s at Facebook. Desperate to be liked, he becomes increasingly hungry for attention and adulation, shifting his focus from coding and engineering to politics. On a tour of Asia, she is directed to gather a crowd of more than one million so that he can be “gently mobbed.”
Well, now I'll have to buy it, I suppose. Streisand at it again.
I didn't know about this book before, now I do, and I'm going to read it. Thanks Meta!
“…rush it to shelves after waiting for eight years.”
Jumbo shrimp.
Where can I buy this book? I'll get one now, even if I never read it.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Careless-People-story-where-used/dp...
They're still available from most bookstores, and Amazon.
Queued it at my local library and already there is a huge queue. Hopefully will be able to read it this year
I would really not care, but now I'm quite interested.
I didn’t plan on buying this but after reading the comments here and the NYT review, went for it. Am 90 odd pages into it and the author describes sending “talking points” to the FB COO while in the delivery room, moments before her daughter was born.
What really grabs you, she’s using a laptop. Not a phone.
The thing is that’s not really specific to Meta, but exemplifies the “dedicated, hard working” worker who is more likely to be promoted (and eventually make big bucks) because they are willing to sacrifice their life/family/children for the company. It’s a cultural thing particularly strong in the US and goes along with Americans having so few paid days off etc. It’s horrible how our worth as humans becomes wrapped up in this.
""This ruling affirms that Sarah Wynn Williams’ false and defamatory book should never have been published,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement.""
Whistleblowing is often a traumatic experience for whistleblowers and it's often a last-ditch resort done out of desperation after a long struggle with their conscience and or after they've tried to right wrongs and have failed.
To make matters worse it's almost inevitable those who are the subject of the whistleblowing (employers, institutions/entities or persons) will attempt to make life very difficult for the whilstleblower by discrediting both the person and everything he or she says. Add to all that the fact that the target of the whistleblowing is inevitably the more powerful of the parties.
Whistleblowing isn't for the fainthearted. For the most part, whistleblowers aren't aware of all the problems they'll encounter let alone their full extent, thus they'll often be stressed and emotionally traumatized by events, some of which are quite unexpected.
First, is that employees with whom they're friendly and who also know the issues will often turn against them and side with employers with the result that few will publicly support the whistleblower's claims. This is often unexpected and comes as quite a shock. Effectively, whistleblowers are usually on their own. Second, they'll likely have considerable difficulty in seeking further employment. Third, whistleblowing legislation in many places is grossely inadequate which leaves whistleblowers exposed, for them the law offers little or no protection. There's more but that'll do for now.
That said, not all whistleblowers are lily-white and some seek vengeance for various reasons; there may be a modicum of truth in what they say but with these people sorting fact from fiction is often difficult. Also, whistleblowers with a genuine grievance do themselves and their cause harm by exaggerating the facts for emphasis. There's also another class of whistleblower who exasperates just about everybody, they're the people who have a genuine complaint but which turns out to be trivial or inconsequential.
I'm of the opinion they're one of the reasons why whistleblowing legislation is lacking. As it is, it's often hard to know where to draw the line. That which constitutes an issue of enough importance to warrant whistleblowing and to not only draw public attention but also bring on an investigation is often not clearcut and these 'nuisances' muddy the waters.
Moreover, that whistleblowing is often viewed negatively as tittle-tattle even by those who welcome the whistleblower's revelations is another factor whistleblowers have to contend with. Both the distaste and ambivalence that a large percentage of the US public showed towards Snowden is evidence of that.
Eventually, truth will out and we will learn whether Sarah Wynn-Williams’ claims are false and defamatory or are factual—either in full or in part. If her claims are genuine, well motivated and factual she'll nevertheless be in for a pretty rotten time.
Unfortunately, that's the usual lot for most whistleblowers, very few benefit from having been one and many end up regretting having so acted.
I wonder what on earth these people are dreaming of when they try to stop one person promoting a book by making a move guaranteed to kick off the Streisand Effect and having the whole media machine do it for her?
Maybe they're getting paid royalties on the publication?
Also, .torrent file available on TPB in 3 2 1 ... (It wasn't at time of posting).
I bought this book yesterday as a result of their suppression efforts. In all likelihood, I wouldn't have really even been aware of it otherwise.
Alternative title:
Meta promotes new book about Barbra Streisand's Beach House
Sarah Wynn-Williams is about to become a NYT best seller.
And you can help: https://read.macmillan.com/fib/careless-people/
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I have some audible credits to spend. One spent.
if meta is trying to stop it then it must be true! Data be damned.
> Numerous former employees have publicly disputed Wynn-Williams’ account of events that transpired while she worked at Facebook.
As usual, the most important information is buried deep in the article to ensure the outrage bait title brings in the clicks.
Not really. That doesn't disprove anything. "Company defends itself" is not the real story
Does "former employees" mean that they are not employees now?
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freeze peach amirite?