Meta exposé author faces bankruptcy after ban on criticising company
108 comments
·September 21, 2025talkingtab
hliyan
I recently heard a US journalist/author named Chris Hedges say something to the effect that the US has the symbols, the iconography and the language of a democracy, but internally, corporates and oligarchs have seized all the levers of power, and that it is reminiscent of the end of the Roman Empire. He also went onto distinguish between corporates and oligarchs, claiming that the two political camps in the US actually represent these two sides (rather than democracy vs. facism or socialism).
koakuma-chan
And why would "corporate" and "oligarchs" fight? Can the same person not be a "corporate" and an oligarch at the same time?
mapt
Another way of looking at this would be in terms of the millionaire managerial and professional class holding up the Democratic Party versus the interests of the billionaire aristocratic and executive class holding up the Republican Party.
imiric
Isn't that obvious?
When corporations can lobby to influence legislation, pay to get a candidate elected, and CEOs hold positions of power, including the presidency itself, any semblance of democracy is an illusion.
Lio
> Meta has described the book as a “mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company...”
Sounds like another way of saying stuff they acknowledge is true. :P
docdeek
The headline: Meta exposé author faces bankruptcy after ban on criticising company.
The article: “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.”
A little deeper in the article: 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. Meta said that to date, Wynn-Williams had not been forced to make any payments under the agreement.
Alternative: Woman voluntarily signs non-disparagement agreenment with $50K penalty for each breach. Goes on to repeatedly breach agreement, publish a book full of disparaging commentary. Has yet to pay a cent to the company.
Eddy_Viscosity2
"voluntarily" is doing a lot of work there. I don't disagree with the facts here, but I do with this particular qualifier which implies a level of willingness to sign away rights was something that she (or anyone in that position) wanted. She was likely very strongly pressured to sign it with various threats and consequences if she didn't. So she did sign it, but lets not pretend her choices at that moment were many and/or equal when faced with the law team of a trillion dollar company.
jordanb
The book talks about the conditions when she was fired. She was suffering from life threatening medical problems from complications from a pregnancy. Not hard to see these terms as coerced given the medical and financial problems she was facing at the time.
crazygringo
Can you elaborate on the financial problems she was facing? She seems to have been a highly paid Facebook exec who would have had great health insurance. And if her employment was in the US she could keep that insurance through COBRA for between 18 and 36 months.
Life threatening medical problems are obviously horrific and she has my full sympathies. But I'm having a tough time drawing a from that to "coercion" for someone who was a director at Facebook.
mbostleman
What’s likely is that she was offered more generous compensation in return for things this. This is pretty standard stuff. What “threats and consequences” are you suggesting?
jwsteigerwalt
In all likelihood the “voluntary” part was an exchange for accelerated stock vesting or similar. Could have walked away without that financial gain, signed the non-disparagement agreement to walk with the stock vested.
zukzuk
Further up in this thread someone remarked that she did not receive any equity as part of her original compensation.
crazygringo
> She was likely very strongly pressured to sign it with various threats and consequences if she didn't.
Like what? If it's something you sign when you leave, it generally comes down to whether you want some level of severance payments/accelerated vesting or not, even when you're fired (when you're at the executive level).
Basically, the company says: if you agree not to sue us or disparage us, here's a bunch of money.
There are no threats. The consequence is, if you don't sign, you don't get the extra money. It's completely and entirely voluntary.
She was a highly paid executive who chose to get even more money in exchange for keeping her mouth shut. Now I think it's great she wrote the book, I love transparency. But nobody can be surprised Facebook is taking legal action when she presumably took their money under an agreement not to disparage. Nobody made her take the extra money.
__turbobrew__
I don’t really feel bad for the author. Most of these separation agreements - especially at higher levels - are generous golden parachutes with the stipulation that you don’t do damaging things like working for a competitor (while on garden leave) or disparage the company.
I am not aware of their separation agreement being published, but you have to be a special type of stupid to work for Facebook as an exec, get a $500k advance on a book you wrote about Meta, and then go bankrupt. From the limited information I have I can see why Facebook fired her.
hshdhdhj4444
You don’t need to feel bad for the author.
You need to feel afraid for the ability for a corporation to so easily get you to surrender your own fundamental rights.
It’s not a coincidence you rarely hear stories like this in Scandinavian or even broader European countries because they have basic safety nets that mean you don’t need to sign away your rights in order to just live peacefully.
hliyan
Should a private contract that requires a citizen to sign away a fundamental right (the right to say something that is not confidential, is objectively true and does not incite violence) be enforceable?
Not sure if all three conditions apply here though.
twoodfin
She wasn’t required. She had the agency to choose not to sign it.
JKCalhoun
I don't think that matters in terms of whether it is even enforceable. I could sign a document allowing management to take my first born son but them doing so is not legal. "But he signed it!"
hliyan
Consider that you have no agency if a gun is pointed at you, and that you do have agency if the gun is a water pistol. In your mind, does everything in between exist in a spectrum, or do they fall into one of the two buckets into which the above two scenarios fell? I.e. is your conception of agency binary or continuous?
jowea
We aren't allowed to sell ourselves into slavery.
2muchcoffeeman
I have not read the book.
But this line of argument doesn’t always hold with me. At some point, the behaviour of a company or person could be so heinous, that no amount of voluntary signing of an agreement should prevent you from exposing them.
casenmgreen
You can read into this something like mugger says "my victim, whom when I was holding a knife out promised not to tell anyone about the robbery, went on to tell the police".
"I then sued my victim for causing me harm."
But it's hard to know about a situation when it's complex and you're a long way away from it. Maybe the book was unfair. Maybe it was fair. Or both. Maybe what happened was so bad it should supersede this kind of agreement. Who decides, and how?
dh2022
This is a false (and dare I say dishonest?) analogy. Reporting crimes is protected by law [0]
If the author would report a crime she would be protected. The author is just airing some dirty laundry. She was paid money in exchange for not airing said dirty laundry. Hence her troubles now. Cry me a river.
[0] Whisleblower protections: https://www.dol.gov/general/topics/whistleblower
JKCalhoun
Is it even legal? Like, can I sign away my 1st Amendment rights? I mean, I'm sure a corporate lawyer thinks so.
simonh
The 1st amendment is about what laws the government can or cannot pass restricting your rights. It doesn’t say anything about what rights you can choose to give up by entering into a contract. There may be other laws governing the validity of such contracts though.
Dumblydorr
Parent comment cares more about Zuckerberg’s lawyers’ paperwork than calling out a terrible company for its terrible actions. Maybe if we play nice those lawyers could help Zuck buy another Hawaiian island?
dh2022
Cry me a river. The person who wants to get rich here is Sarah. If she was motivated by exposing some dirty laundry inside Meta she could have started a blog or podcast. But she went for the book deal.
zelphirkalt
I wonder, is stating the truth qualifying as "disparaging"? According to https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disparaging:
> meant to belittle the value or importance of someone or something : serving or intended to disparage someone or something
Maybe it is not meant to belittle, but merely uncovering the truth. Who is to know, what her intention was, when releasing a book? I guess one would have to read that book and check how she formulated things, to know, whether it is intentionally belittling the "value" of Meta.
Also, subjectively speaking: How does one belittle the value of something that already has net negative value for society?
Maybe the waters are a little bit murky there.
But anyway, this goes to show, how these companies consume your soul. Trying to prevent you from ever revealing the truth about them and their illegal activities.
rwmj
Non-disparagement clauses (common for executives) are clauses found in contracts that just state you can't say anything bad about the company, doesn't matter if it's true or not. Some examples here: https://contracts.justia.com/contract-clauses/non-disparagem...
I think it's a case where the law should simply say such clauses are not enforcible.
jordanb
Non disparagement clauses are put in every severance agreement in the US as a matter of course. It's not just for executives. They'll put it in the severance agreement of a sandwich artist in exchange for one more paycheck -- or sometimes in exchange for nothing at all: "mutual non-disparagement"
ndriscoll
Clearly the solution is to write everything you have to say through an ancap lens and make it sound as if you think they were really smart for doing all the things they did.
nickpsecurity
It's basically a ban on exposing evil to protect the money of those committing the evil. God commands us to expose, correct, and punish evil. That makes for a better society.
So, reporting evil should always be allowed.
mystraline
In the UK, even the truth isn't a sufficient defense for libel or slander.
The fact that you can't speak the 100% truth, and not get sued there is quite disgusting. The truth should always be permitted speech.
mextrezza
> Has yet to pay a cent to the company.
Does that matter at all? They can destroy this whistleblower financially without ever having the "non-disparagement agreement" enforced.
james_marks
In the definition of bankruptcy, you don’t have to pay anything, just have your liability (debts) > assets (ability to pay).
So No, it doesn’t matter if she’s paid it or not. Just being asked to pay in a way that is defensible in court, could make you bankrupt.
dh2022
This liability would most likely prevent Sarah from getting a new loan (for example to move away from it all). And in theory bankruptcy means not being able to fulfill existing liabilities-which Sarah is most likely not able to.
But practically Meta probably wants Sarah to not publish the book. Sarah may get even more money from another deal with Meta :)
RobotToaster
Such gagging orders should be illegal, they only serve to hide corporate malfeasance.
dh2022
Reporting crimes is protected by law: see the whistleblower act. What is being hidden here is some dirty laundry.
Ekaros
And on other hand any bribes that is payments attached to such contracts should as well.
Quarrel
Which is perhaps also why:
> An MP has claimed in parliament that Mark Zuckerberg’s company was trying to “silence and punish” Sarah Wynn-Williams
By doing so in parliament they have immunity (presumably the worry would be defamation) for pushing this, true or false.
I'm not much of a Meta fan, but there seems to be less to this story every paragraph you read of the article.
jagged-chisel
Is it “disparagement” if it’s a list of facts? I’m not saying hers is a list of facts, I’m only asking the question.
whycombinetor
Rule number one when you get fired is don't sign anything on your way out the door. Crazy that a Facebook exec wouldn't be aware of that advice or ignored it.
I got offered a small severance after a recent layoff. Severance agreement contained a non-disparagement clause. I didn't sign. You don't get corporate goons coming to your house to threaten you if you don't sign your severance/termination agreement.
vvpan
Non-competes are being challenged and will be history soon and hopefully so will non-disperagement clauses. Those are just coercive anti-freedom practices.
Tostino
You think that will happen with this administration?
vvpan
There are certainly headwinds but it could be state laws too. If California passes something - that would be big. But in general culture heads in a certain direction and reactionaries are just a bump in the road or so I prefer to think.
bigmadshoe
What do you mean? Non-competes have been unenforceable in California for a long time and are entirely banned as of 2024.
qoez
Never been better streisand effect making me want to read a book
aix1
I just finished the audiobook. Didn't have any particular expectations but couldn't put it down (so to speak).
The audiobook is narrated by the author, which adds an extra dimension to the story.
Would highly recommend.
ethagnawl
It's a "great" read. However bad you assume their behavior was, it was (probably) so much worse. The executive suite was full of creeps and their inability to do any substantive moderation in Myanmar was horrifically negligent.
gherkinnn
I stopped listening half way. The writing was tedious and Meta too revolting.
Would recommend anyway.
z3c0
Just purchased it. I never would have read it otherwise.
lotsofpulp
Seems like the marketing strategy for the book worked.
maximinus_thrax
This is exactly the reason I read it. I also bought the hardcover just in case Facebook manages to get it pulled off digital marketplaces.
It's a good book, everyone should read it.
shrubby
Too big to care, just like Sarah stated in the book.
Meta and the likes don't need to care anymore.
nextworddev
Just ordered the book. Streisand effect in full force
firesteelrain
“New York magazine has previously reported that Wynn-Williams was paid an advance for the book of more than $500,000 (£370,000).”
That’s the part they buried. If you’re handed half a million up front, it’s hard to square “bankruptcy” with some kind of noble crusade. The article frames it like she’s sacrificing everything to expose Meta, but it reads more like poor money management than pure altruism. Meta’s behavior might still be heavy-handed, but leaving that payout until halfway down makes the story feel slanted.
jordanb
That would be the minimum you'd need to even get the retainer paid to fight the SLAPP you're guaranteed to get from one of the most powerful and vindictive companies on earth
dh2022
She could have started a blog if she was motivated by truth. But she chose the book deal. Quoting from Casino: “It’s always the dollars. Always the %$!@ dollars.”
boomboomsubban
I assume a hefty chunk of that has gone towards court costs for the fight to publish the book.
firesteelrain
With $500k advance, she has 10 free times to do it.
boomboomsubban
That's not how legal fees work. Hiring lawyers to oppose Facebook and allow your book to be published is expensive, and currently she seems to be losing the fight.
Hizonner
Honestly, I don't care if it made her richer than Zuckerberg and her only reason to do it was unrelated personal spite. It's contrary to public interest, and should be illegal, to bind anybody not to disclose truthful information about how a corporation operates. Full stop.
dh2022
Reporting crimes is protected by law. See the whistleblower act.
BolexNOLA
$500k is nothing to scoff at. However, it’s also not like they won the lottery. Depending on where she lives, her financial situation, how frequently she writes/publishes, etc. that number can mean very different things.
Also, at the very top before the article even begins:
> Sarah Wynn-Williams faces $50,000 fine every time she breaches order banning her from criticising Meta
And further down:
> However, the former diplomat was barred from publicising the memoir after Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, secured a ruling preventing her from doing so.
I think it’s fair of me to say that maybe we shouldn’t downplay her situation.
firesteelrain
> I think it’s fair of me to say that maybe we shouldn’t downplay her situation.
Right - if she had actually gone through the PIDA channels, the courts might treat it differently. But skipping straight to a $500k advance and a commercial book makes it harder to see this as whistleblowing. Truth or not, it looks less like a principled disclosure and more like monetizing criticism of Meta.
BolexNOLA
People have to make a living, that’s capitalism for you. You expect her to spend years on this and just release it for free? Then pay her rent and stock her fridge for her.
There is nothing wrong with making money writing a tell-all so far as the work is rigorous and truthful. Attacking her for profiting is a cheap way to discredit her without having to assess the merits of her work.
Yes it’s valid to critique the source and see where funding is coming from, that’s important information, but discrediting someone out the gate for making money on something is simply lazy and requires no critical assessment at all.
null
cm2012
I came to the comments to find the caveat. Thank you!
dh2022
I avoid reading the Guardian on principle. The HN discussion is more intelligent than whatever was on the article.
alisonatwork
It's literally a quote from the article, though?
cm2012
Didn't mean to imply is isn't in the article. I came to commentary after seeing the headline. Usually on HN there is a comment that shows why the headline is misleading in some way.
firesteelrain
The point is the article is burying the lede rather than upfront framing it in a different manner. It is easy to miss.
Edit: I am responding to the critique of a different person. I did read the article.
calibas
I had a company try to sneak in a non-disparagement clause when they were purchasing media rights from me. They immediately removed it when I said it was ridiculous and I wasn't going to sign.
If you're not allowed to criticize a person, you're in a cult. If you're not allowed to criticize the government, that's authoritarianism.
Being able to speak freely is supposed to be one of our core values, and when a business asks someone to forfeit that right, it's a sign there's something seriously wrong. You don't require someone to never speak ill of you unless you're planning on doing something they might speak ill about.
By my moral compass, the very act of requiring someone to never publicly say anything bad about you is itself unethical. It's psychopathic behavior, not something that should be normalized.
somelamer567
I had suspended judgement about Meta in the past; but every revelation in their media about their toxic behaviour makes me thankful I never seriously considering taking a job with them.
The clincher was when a colleague I worked with in a previous job joined Meta, and went from a fun and interesting person, to creepy and weird. As if he has joined a cult. Then a family member did the same -- the effect was subtle... their political opinions turned distinctly sinister -- like they'd downloaded the inherently un-egalitarian, anti-Western and anti-progress ideology of the founder into their own heads.
I've seen the same cult-like effect of Amazon on people. Literally 'selling' the idea of Jeff Bezos, and flogging his book like their company were some kind of dark techno Amway.
The FAANGs are NOT nice people, and I want nothing to do with them.
doublerabbit
What's the point in whistle blowing when you can't blow the whistle? I've always called bullshit to those whistle blowing hotlines.
Who's really going to go after a mega corp-entity when they do $bad? "Whistle Blower" is like an oxymoron to that the likes of "Friendly Fire".
dh2022
Because whatever Sarah reports in that book is probably not an actual crime. Look up Whistleblowers act for reference.
Meta is a corporation that is anti-democracy. In the US we have this thing called free speech. Requiring non-disclosure in order to get a severance (or to get a settlement for abuse) is not an excuse for doing this.
More and more corporations are resorting to the predatory practice of abusing the court system to protect their hide their actions. You may accept this kind of thing, I do not.