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.
>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.
As discussed umpteenth times in every free speech debate ever, "free speech" as enshrined in the legal system only offers protection from the government. There's a broader principle of free speech in general, but it's unclear whether that should be applicable in this case, where two private entities entered into an agreement where one side agreed to cease speech in exchange for money.
We have a legal system that allows for private agreements of restricted speech, which can be and is frequently abused by the party in a position of power (in this case, a 2 trillion dollar company). And these agreements are enforced by the government. So it is in a round-about way the government infringing on rights, both by allowing it to happen and also enforcing it.
Is it that meta is anti-democracy or is it just that Mark Zuckerberg is kind of an idiot? The feeling I get from the book is more towards the latter.
Speaking personally, the moment I knew that Zuckerberg knew nothing about politics was circa 2010, when he announced his plan to join forces with Chris Christie to "fix Newark schools". I don't care if you support team red or team blue, but it was obvious to anyone who knew politics at that time that Christie was a con artist. Why waste any amount of time and money on this project destined to fail? If Zuck had any insight and had a goal to do an actual thing and see it work, he would not have. He spent $100 million on that.
Not trying to defend him but this isn’t a fair characterization of his intellect since he was 15 years younger and tech industry was very interested in doing good back then.
I am of similar age to him and was in the tech industry at the time. It struck me at the time as a collosally dumb move and proof that he wasn't a smart guy. That is literally the point of my comment.
There are a number of possible interpretations. One is that he was incapable of researching how stupid he was being in that moment. Another is that he didn't care about that and he did it only to improve his image. Few of the interpretations I can think of have him looking great.
I would say using the court system rather than abusing, simple because IMHO the courts primarily exist to defend corporate rights contrary to the marketing.
What about requiring new employees to sign non-disparagement agreements? Maybe companies are getting “smarter” and requiring employees to agree to not say anything negative about their employer from day 1 … not sure about the legality here.
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).
There is a great documentary called “The Century of the Self”, which is about the rise of consumerism in lockstep with politics in the United States.
The initial primary focus is Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, who is known as the father of public relations. He was incredibly influential during his time, having been a key advisor on most federal administrations from the 20s to the 70s. On the corporate side, early big wins were getting women to smoke at the dawn of the Great Depression, and changing the 'American breakfast' to bacon and eggs.
A core thesis of his is freedom in a large democratic state is a bit of an illusion… it needs to be controlled by consumerist impulses, or in other words, indirectly by corporations. Otherwise the all-encompassing hand of totalitarianism is needed. Without one of these mediating factors, the masses become unruly and descend into anarchy and chaos.
His late 20s book "Propaganda" is an interesting insight into his early, free from public scorn, view on the matter. It seems overwhelmingly cynical and puppet-masterish, if you will, and he somewhat stepped back from it after finding out how much it had influenced Goebbels. Still, I think it holds strongly as a guidebook for how the US evolved to present day.
Meta are a US company. They took legal action against the author in the US also. And hliyan may have trusted readers to consider if UK politics had the same property.
Are you sure he didn’t mean the end of the Roman Republic, which was the beginning of the Principate? The Western Empire would last about another 400 years.
We definitely are tracking the end of the Roman Republic. At that point, all constitutional norms had been violated so many times that they were mere suggestions, and political infighting by oligarchs was tearing the republic apart, to the point that people were relieved when Augustus took power. They still had a senate. They still had all the old offices and structures. But everyone knew who was in power.
Much like today in the US. We don’t have one Princeps, but we all know that the oligarchs and corporations own the entire political and economic process. They write the rules to suit themselves.
And they have common people fighting each other over cultural issues instead of fighting them for the stuff that matters — economic and political power. It’s a fantastic divide and conquer strategy. Unless common people start waking up to who their real enemies are, the American Republic is effectively over.
I've been hearing this for thirty years and I think that people just like to predict the end times and the Roman empire is what's taught most closely in school
Eh, since the founders were explicitly inspired by the Roman Republic, it’s always been fun to wonder “where are we on the Roman timeline”. But it was about 150 years from when the Gracchi brothers were murdered until Augustus seized power. These things happen over time, not all at once.
I don’t see any way to view today’s politics as normal. There is nothing but naked greed and hunger for power at play now. It wasn’t like this even 15 years ago. We’ve been a frog in a pot of water and it’s just starting to boil.
This case is from the UK. Is there some quote you can pull about someone critiquing the governmental system over there and how that’s reflected in this case?
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.
>and that it is reminiscent of the end of the Roman Empire
What a totally ridiculous comparison. The roman empire always was an explicit a dictatorial state. Its end took hundreds of years of internal and external forces tearing it apart as coherent entity. Characterizing it as two factions fighting for power is just bizarre.
That’s far from accurate. Augustus positioned himself as the restorer of the Republic after a horrific period of civil war, and cobbled together his authority from existing Republican magistracies, especially the Tribune of the Plebs. The Julio-Claudians at least attempted to maintain the fiction that the Republic was still functioning. Explicitly dictatorial it wasn’t, although actually dictatorial it certainly was.
It's dangerous to make sloppy comparisons like that.
Augustus seized all the levers of power to create the Roman Empire and even developed a cult-like following.
Similarly, claiming there aren't two political camps is sloppy in the current environment.
Corporates and oligarchs are a completely different animal, and they deserve treatment as such.
They are not some homogenous, totalitarian entity: they're more akin to what Rome was before the Empire--a melange of senators fighting about everything while trying to stay rich.
Octavian was given the levers of power by Julius Caesar. Pompey and Crassus teamed up with Caesar to breakdown the republic. They made huge amounts of cash doing it.
I think constantly repeating negativity that undermines faith in institutions and our ability to effect change is harmful because it’s self fulfilling.
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.
The billionaires are far less numerous, have far better ability to coordinate and summon resources, and have interests that diverge farther from the thousandaires who actually do most of the voting, compared to the millionaires.
The term "holding up" is doing a lot of work here. The Republican party has an extremely enthusiastic voter base. Billionaire money might encourage the enthusiasm but in the end the voters turn out and pull levers. They are sincere in their voting.
The Democrats are a bit less enthusiastic, at least at the moment, but in the end it's not the millionaires who pull the levers. It's the rank and file.
It's hard to tell how different it would be if we could somehow get the money out of it. But I am wary of assuming that the voters would dramatically change their attitudes. The millionaires and billionaires tune the party's message to what the voters want. They get the spoils but they're also making their voters happy, assuming they win. If they didn't do that, they'd lose.
It's possible that the Democrats are more conspicuously failing to give their voters what they want when they win. But it's not obvious to me how they could do that. Most of the suggestions I hear are naive and impractical, and come down to "do the thing I want and many millions of others will see how great that is."
For election to work you would have to read [all of] the [not legally binding] election programs, ponder the offerings and make up your own mind.
You won't find a single person who does this.
Apparently everyone votes by a different mechanism. One that involves a lot of money.
Even if everyone was well informed and able to objectively make their own choices that are truly their own. You don't actually have to do anything you wrote in your election program.
We don't become legal experts to run a business, we hire lawyers. We don’t become doctors to aid in our own health either. So too should people find ways to delegate and evaluate economic and policy analysis.
> it's not the millionaires who pull the levers. It's the rank and file.
“People can vote whichever side they prefer, as long as their opinions are based on fake news.” It's difficult to talk about rank and file pulling the levers, when millionaires manufacture the news.
You say that because you know that the news is fake, and you know that because it's not really that difficult to figure out at least an approximation of the truth. You know who are the abject liars (because they routinely tell outright falsehoods), and you know who at least tries to get it right even if they sometimes fail at it.
It's not that hard. People seek out the fake news; the millionaires and billionaires are just providing slightly better versions of it. They could be doing really sophisticated propaganda but they just don't have to. People are pleased to believe the most outlandish lies if it affirms their egos.
Corporates understand that a strong economy is important for the system to be viable long term and that some kind of middle class is a necessary part of it, which they can skim off the top of. Oligarchs don't care about that nearly as much, and are more acutely focused on accumulation of power and wealth and are happy to disassemble productive capacity and force the middle class down to an a working poor class in the process.
It's basically the difference between "every one of my workers needs to be able to buy one of my cars" industrial Fordism and what Varoufakis coined techno-feudalism, which does not utilize markets or independent workers but tries to extract value from what are effectively serfs directly. Zuckerberg et al. are obviously emblematic of the latter.
I wouldn't say corporations and oligarchs are going to fight. I'd say elites infight all the time, but they all agree that the other humans are simply "human resources" and they have the common interests to extract as much value from those fellow humans as possible.
Exactly the same model for pretty much all large countries, each with a bit of different "flavour" that the elites learned throughout the centuries, and conveniently serves as one of the topics to divide the human resources.
I prefer “workforce” over “human resources,” and I believe lots of people voluntarily choose to remain a member of the workforce, as they would rather have a family and live a “simple” life than spend effort to become some kind of entrepreneur or politician.
Why wouldn't they fight? Some level of conflict always occurs within all groups or affiliations. It would be completely unnatural for there to be no conflict.
I would say that the distinction between the two groups is, roughly:
"Corporates" are the leaders of the many large corporations in this country. They want broad protections for corporate power against labour, corporate profits, lowered regulations, etc.
"Oligarchs" are the leaders of the few titanic corporations, like Bezos, Musk, and Zuckerberg. They want to become the zaibatsu of modern America, essentially being given total control over the economy divided up between them.
There are many things they want that are in common (for instance, the removal of regulations), but that prime desire of the oligarchs is directly at odds with the continued existence and livelihoods of the corporates.
Free speech has always been about the government. Do you not think it is acceptable for companies to fire people for their speech? Should employers just have to keep silent and do nothing when their employees e.g. glorify violence, promote fascism or attack human rights?
>Requiring non-disclosure in order to get a severance (or to get a settlement for abuse) is not an excuse for doing this.
This seems very reasonable? If you want to attack your employer you are free to do so, why should they pay you for that?
>More and more corporations are resorting to the predatory practice of abusing the court system to protect their hide their actions.
What are you on about? Companies have always tried to get what they can, it is not some recent trend that companies go after their own (former) employees in court.
> This seems very reasonable? If you want to attack your employer you are free to do so, why should they pay you for that?
The two issues I see here are: NDAs without a public-good exception and forced confidential arbitration.
I think there should always be an exception to NDAs when the information is in the public good. I think it’s reasonable to disagree on where that line should be; that’s what legislation and court cases are for.
Also, forcing the resolution of this to go through confidential arbitration hides the issues from the public, and doesn’t let us make good decisions on where that line should be.
> This seems very reasonable? If you want to attack your employer you are free to do so, why should they pay you for that?
She wrote the book after she left. So, is it OK for someone to expose a company for illicit and illegal activities in this regard? And if not then why is it OK for these companies to use illicit or illegal tactics to silence former, or even, current employees?
According to the article the gag order was part of her severance. So it's not as if she signed something before being employed, discovered something shady, and couldn't speak out. In this case, she saw something shady, signed an agreement not to say anything, but reneged on that agreement. I'm much less sympathetic to the latter than the former.
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.
"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.
It's doing even more work when you're aware that, at one point, the NLRB had banned non-disparagement clauses in severances and employment agreements outright, stating that even offering these terms amounted to coercive behavior that prevented people from discussing their working conditions. [1]
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.
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.
She reported not being particularly high paid compared to her peers. When she was hired Facebook didn't care at all about her area (government relations).
As that became more important her role grew but she was never really promoted.
She also was not well informed about how tech compensation works and negotiated poorly (no stock) she came from an NGO background in New Zealand.
Her salary was probably quite a bit more than the average American but she was living in expensive areas (DC and SV) and interacting with extremely wealthy people. At one point Sheryl Sandburg got annoyed that she was leaving work for childcare and told her to hire a live-in nanny. She was living paycheck-to-paycheck on a high income with no wealth accumulation (many such cases).
OK, then honestly it's hard for me to have any sympathy for the idea that she was "coerced". She was being paid lots... but wasn't getting paid even more?
If you're an executive at Facebook, you should know how to research negotiation and compensation, and figure out a living situation where you're saving money. You're in the big leagues. If Sheryl expected her to be able to hire a full time nanny, then that's an excellent time to renegotiate a salary than can afford that.
If you're an entry-level worker who can't make ends meet in San Fran then of course I sympathize greatly! But if you're an executive at Facebook making enough money that you can even consider a full time nanny... you're not facing any level of "hardship" by which an offer of even more money in exchange for non-disparagement could be considered "coercion". Nobody is in poverty here. Nobody is going to wind up hungry or on the street.
COBRA means you pay the full cost of the insurance. So suddenly instead of paying $150 you are now seeing a $500 or more bill, especially if your employer is a major company that pays for all sorts of benefits. COBRA is a joke when you consider you just lost all source of income.
> The point is, you're not suddenly facing ruinous bankrupting medical expenses.
This is a powerful assumption given how expensive medicine is in the US - even with insurance - and how often people in their adulthood need medical treatment.
IIRC, part of the reason that so many countries have specific "here's money specifically for retirement" things (pensions, 401k here in the US) is that many people just don't plan far ahead very well.
If entry-level and lower-paid workers aren't saving money then that's understandable. That's why these government programs exist.
If you're an executive at Facebook, I think you have the ability to plan things well. If you still can't save any money, at that point it's hard to see how it's not just your fault.
She wasn't an executive in the sense you're thinking and certainly wasn't hired as one. She was hired to work in an area Zuckerberg never cared about and never gave anywhere near sufficient resources to.
She's described as an executive and as a director in articles.
I don't know what other sense there is? And what possible relevance is there of the relationship between her role and what Zuck thought? I'm sure Zuck doesn't care much about accounting or HR either. Lots of well paid executives work in areas of corporations that aren't the founder's main focus. That's the kind of problem most people would love to have.
Directing an area is very different from the title (or compensation) of Director, and it's certainly not equivalent to Director in a tech organization. SWW was hired as "Manager of Global Public Policy" but the book never indicates that she ever has reports or is a manager in that sense, which is generally a requirement to be understood or perceived as a "Director".
If you're surprised media articles don't ask questions and get basic facts wrong, go read any article about a topic you have direct experience with.
The articles don't seem to have gotten any basic facts wrong.
She had director in her title and reported directly to a vice president, Joel Kaplan, who is now a C-level officer. She managed staff.
That's seriously high up in the corporate hierarchy at Facebook. Feel free to read more:
"She managed a growing staff and oversaw government relations for entire continents, including Asia and South America. She reported to corporate vice presidents and had direct contact with Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, then the chief operating officer."
So again, I don't what you mean by "wasn't an executive in the sense you're thinking". She's seems to be exactly an executive in the sense that everyone thinks.
> She's described as an executive and as a director in articles.
I once met with a person who used to be a vice president in a major US bank. I was impressed, until much later when I discovered that there were three thousand “vice presidents” in that bank.
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?
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.
How it's not voluntary? She didn't face prison if she didn't sign, she faced having less money. She chose more money. What other threat coukd facebook apply beyond not paying severance?
But then Facebook would have had no incentive to offer the agreement to her. And she must have been very happy with what she got in the deal, given she gave up the option of talking about all the apparently horrible misdeeds she witnessed while they were still fresh, rather than a decade later.
I don't think that's true in most situations. I think most companies would still pay a severance out of a general effort to smooth things over, and some sense of social loyalties.
And some aspects of the agreement would be fine. No spilling actual business relevant secrets, nothing that would count as libel or slander, etc.
> 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.
Remember this next time you have cancer and get fired, and then have the option to “voluntarily” sign something to keep receiving money until hopefully you’re well enough to look for a new job.
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.
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.
They are using the same kind of exit NDA used to coerce OpenAI employees who left that organization. We should all be afraid for ourselves as these organizations turn into black boxes where the only people who could speak out feel they cannot. This thing where you stop working for a company but they can still penalize you financially if they don’t like your annual “post-employee performance” evaluations is Kafka-esque.
Just to clarify, OpenAI did change their agreement (to some degree) after the SEC put pressure on them. In Facebook’s case the SEC has been notably silent despite the calls from US senators (AFAICT).
I am all for safety nets, and I actually live in a country with stronger safety nets than the USA, but I still don’t feel sorry for the author who basically has had every card to be extremely wealthy and squandered it.
Also realize that it isn’t private companies job to fix the broken social system in the USA, usually separation agreements for high paid employees offer severance well above and beyond the legal requirements (I have seen 3 months to a year including accelerated vesting in some cases), and a condition of accepting those benefits above and beyond the laws is you don’t disparage your employer. If you don’t accept the agreement you get the bare minimum according to the laws but you are then not bound to the disparage clauses.
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.
You can’t be forced to sign away your rights, but you can make an agreement to enter into an arrangement with confidential information with another party and agree to penalties if the contract is broken.
Making anyone free to reveal anything without consequences even after entering into an agreement about it isn’t going to work. You’re probably thinking only about the narrow case where a company is wrong and the employee is whistleblowing, but that is protected when done through the right channels.
However this wasn’t really whistleblowing. This was someone trying to make profit on her own book and sell more copies by sharing info she agreed not to.
In this article, I believe the UK is asking this same question. It will be interesting to see where they land; I suspect this is why the author hasn’t had to pay any fines yet.
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!"
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?
A significant difference is that it is not legal to own slaves or trade in slaves. That makes contracts for the sale of slaves inherently unenforceable.
It is not illegal to refrain from speaking. If you want to enter into a contract that requires you not to speak under certain circumstances there is probably nothing inherently unenforceable about it.
I'm pretty sure for example it would be legal for the Diogenes Club [1] to expel you if you violated their no talking rule, if someone would actually make a real Diogenes Club.
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.
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?
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.
I don’t take a position on this because I don’t know it but I think you’re (willfully?) misunderstanding the point. I don’t think all ethical problems can be legally defined. Something may be legal and wrong or illegal and not wrong. If she was indeed forced out for reporting sexual harassment, then what ethical responsibility does she still bear towards that company, regardless of what they ask her to sign as she leaves? The point isn’t that she’s right or wrong for sure, it’s that the problem is complex and legalities cannot account for all situations.
I read the book and can recommend it. It was both interesting and, in places, had a good sense of humor. It was interesting to see the intersection of news coverage I had read with the author’s inside perspective.
IMHO, the book has little or nothing about the kind of things we usually see called out in NDA breaches: ideas or code names from products, details on contract negotiations with competitors, internal processes, etc. The author was involved with managing relationships between Facebook and foreign governments and this makes up the meat of the book.
The freedom of contract is pretty fundamental. The entire point of a contract is to force you to do something it's your right not to do or to not do something you have the right to do.
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.
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?
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.
> 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.
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.
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"
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.
Maybe, but if you couldn't rationalize whatever makes you the most money being ethical then you probably wouldn't take a job at a place like Facebook in the first place.
Conveniently, that makes it easy to write your praise. It doesn't take much to go from "demographics like 'teenage girls with body insecurities' want relevant ads like beauty products! We're helping consumers to satisfy their needs!" to "showing teen girls aspirational images that drive them to buy beauty products (and happen to drive insecurities) is just helping them reach their potential! We're helping consumers to uncover needs they didn't know they had!" Wherever your comfort line was to decide to work there, you can probably drive it a little further with similar reasoning.
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.
Same in many EU countries. Poland and Germany are two examples.
For example if someone robs you (or do worse things to you) and you call them out publicly you can be liable if you can't prove it happened.
In practice the law defends the offenders. You can't speak up if you don't have a hard proof. I think it's ridiculous but so is a lot of civil law. Americans often don't appreciate how well they have it in comparison.
I think that true statements could be considered disparaging. Consider something like:
"Zelphirkalt claims they do not abuse their child. Despite this their kid has been seen at the ER for broken bones multiple times in the last 10 years, and spent a few months in therapy."
Even if I know that your kid's ER visits were for:
1) a broken leg from a fall out of a tree
2) a broken finger from their martial arts lessons
3) a broken nose from defending themselves in a fight
and that the therapy was mandated by the school system as a result of the fight and a "zero tolerance" policy, the text of the statements in question are still absolute truth. I've just phrased it in such a way (and declined to report on other truths) that a reader is encouraged to draw the conclusion that you abuse your kid physically and emotionally. I think if I published something like that in a book, you'd certainly consider it disparaging, and I think a court might agree if you were enforcing a non-disparagement contract I had signed with you.
That said (at least in the US) I doubt a court would find it to be "libel" or "slander", since those are MUCH higher bars to clear by default and assuming you were a famous individual (or company like facebook) the bar is even higher. Something like this would likely hinge on my own reputation and how likely a reader is to assume I'm speaking from "hidden knowledge" as opposed to coming to a given conclusion from public knowledge.
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 :)
Non-disparagement agreements should be made illegal. It significantly reduces the chance that people can bring criminal actions to justice due to fear of lawsuits. But also, it just doesn't align with American society, where free speech is the most important and foundational value.
Not all immoral, abusive and exploitative acts are illegal. In fact, most are not, because companies have whole legal departments dedicated to figuring out just how they can exploit the system and other people without getting punished legally.
There should be no such thing as a non-disparagement clause.
It's a gag, pure and simple. You should always be able to tell your own story -- what you lived through, what you lost, who failed you. But these clauses are everywhere now, slipped into contracts and settlements, letting corporations bury their mistakes and keep the next person in line from knowing what's coming.
I learned this the hard way.
I grew up believing USAA was the gold standard of insurance. My grandfather used to say, "I won't always be around, but USAA will always have your back." So when my house flooded, I trusted them. They assigned me a contractor and promised -- in writing, on their website (it's still there: https://www.usaa.com/perks/home-solutions/contractor/) -- that I'd get a five-year workmanship warranty on the repairs.
What I got was a disaster.
Their contractor turned my house into a construction horror show. They cracked my foundation slab by drilling into it to move a drain -- cutting tension cables in the process. They killed two huge front-yard trees by dumping chemicals on them. They didn't scrape off the old glue before laying new flooring, so the planks bent and shifted underfoot. They painted latex over oil, so the paint peeled off in sheets. They tiled the bathroom directly onto the subfloor with no moisture barrier, ignored termite damage behind the walls, dropped and damaged new appliances -- cook top and oven were both damaged. Since they used multiple sub-contractors, their crews even the new cabinets they installed were cracked and chipped in over a dozen places. They stole everything from my garage -- even stole the ice cube maker from my fridge!
It got worse.
They cracked the gas line and left it leaking (I had to call the fire department). They installed two sinks with the hot and cold lines reversed. Messed up all of my GCFI outlets, and they left the entire upstairs without electricity and without working outlets at all. They even covered electrical outlets with drywall instead of cutting openings where the plugs had been. Every corner I turned revealed something new, often dangerous -- and I documented it all with photos, videos, emails, and texts. I thought having a paper trail meant I was safe.
When I complained, we went into mediation. The contractor -- a steam-cleaning company that had only recently started doing restoration work -- admitted they'd screwed up. One of their managers even wrote, "Look, the situation at your house is unfortunate. We hired subcontractors we thought we could trust, but clearly we didn't supervise them correctly. This isn't how we normally operate, but we'll make this right."
We built a punch list of fixes. They agreed to pay my living expenses while I was displaced.
Then they vanished.
No crews. No repairs. No communication. No reimbursement. I kept sending receipts -- just like we agreed -- and got nothing. USAA went quiet too. Three months later, someone at USAA finally said, "Look, I can't help you, but why haven't you hired a lawyer yet?"
I said, "Because I trusted you."
After a year of silence, USAA's mediation team -- who had never set foot in my house and were based in another state -- emailed me: "Your house had issues no contractor could have foreseen," they said. The work, while clearly bad, was apparently "about what you could expect from the average contractor in Austin right now." They knocked $2,000 off the bill. I had to spend $80,000 fixing the foundation slab alone. (All told, I've spent over $300k repairing my house to date, and there's still more to do... just for context, I only paid $275k for my house in 2010...)
And here's what I didn't know: the "mediation" wasn't neutral. It was run through Contractor Connection -- a company that exists to serve insurance carriers. I was never really their customer. USAA was. Any pressure to do the right thing had to come from USAA -- and USAA simply didn't care.
So I finally hired a lawyer. Expensive. Slow. A year later, we finally had our "day in court." Except it wasn't court -- there's no public record, no evidence allowed (meaning my entire photo slide deck showing all the issues wasn't even looked at!), no jury of sane peers who could see this from a human angle. Just arbitration with a "neutral" retired judge who had spent the past two years doing nothing but USAA cases. (Think she'd have had that job for two years if she ever ruled against the insurance company?) At one point she said, "We have to give the benefit of the doubt to these hard-working contractors who came to aid you in your hour of need. If we don't protect them, they won't be there when others need them."
You can imagine how her ruling went.
(Another thing everyone should know about Texas before moving here: there are no "Licensed Contractors." So even though I had a professional inspection outlining all the issues, when it came time to present it, I said, "It's clear a professional didn't do this work." And the contractor's lawyer was able to shamelessly say, "Nowhere in the contract does it say a professional would do the work." So shady.)
The contractor wanted me to pay their legal fees. Pay for the full amount of the repairs -- wouldn't even tell me what the insurance company had agreed to pay, but claimed the value of their work was three times higher than any number I had seen until that point. It still bothers me that they were allowed to just make up a number -- and all the written emails and texts saying they'd make things right, pay my living expenses, were just ignored.
But what killed my will to fight... mid-way through, my lawyer told me that if I wanted to proceed to trial, I'd need a $250,000 retainer up front -- and it would drag on for two or three more years. And I wouldn't be allowed to fix or move back into my house until it was done because they would need the house as evidence. By then I was exhausted, broke, and just wanted it over. Ten hours into a marathon arbitration session -- literally as the building's janitorial staff was locking doors -- I agreed to a deal to just make all this stop. We'd all just walk away. I'd keep the house in the state it was, we'd never have to go through mediation again or do another blue-tape walk-through, but they weren't paying for anything -- not even the expenses they'd already agreed to pay, certainly not the damages to my house.
At the end my lawyer pointed me to a DocuSign field and said, "Sign here." After I said, "Well, at least I can warn other people with a brutal Yelp review," my lawyer said: "No, you can't. You signed a non-disparagement clause." At no point was this talked about before I signed it. When I asked, "Why didn't you tell me?" my lawyer just said, "Oh, these are really standard..."
And apparently, she didn't think it was worth bringing up because another one had already been in the original contract I signed while standing in two inches of water in my living room. Looking back, it feels like they knew from the start they weren't going to deliver quality work -- and they wanted to make sure anyone who went through mediation could never speak publicly about it again. (Technically it doesn't cover USAA, but calling them "independent" is like calling a husband and wife independent -- legally separate maybe, but joined at the hip in every way that matters.)
That's the real power of these clauses: they don't just close your case, they erase it. They wipe away the evidence, silence the people who lived it, and make sure the next homeowner walks into the same trap with no warning. And there's a power dynamic. They've done this a hundred times. They show up with the contract they want. You're acting in the moment, often stressed or panicked. You think you're just signing to pay them -- but really, you're signing to let them off the hook for any damages, and do things in the shadiest way they can do them. And no matter what they say or do after that, the only thing that matters is the original contract.
So I can't name the contractor in Austin. But I can tell you it was USAA's contractor. And everything I went through was part of a process that USAA designed. =P
Insurance companies aren't there to help you. They're there to protect their balance sheet. If you get crushed in the process, that's acceptable collateral damage. They don't care about making you whole -- only about checking boxes in a process designed to minimize payouts and keep the stock price climbing.
And non-disparagement clauses? They're how corporations make sure no one ever finds out -- so they can keep getting away with it.
read the book. her allegations are important and she's a brave woman. Low point: zuckerberg pressuring the author, while she is suffering from late pregnancy complications, to travel to Myanmar with a callow sales pitch for their dictators. Following which they failed to appoint a native-language speaker to monitor usage in the country, while facebook became a very clear vector for racially motivated violence.
Another low point: MZ working with communist party chiefs to engineer a "chinese" version of facebook where the government could see all citizens' private information at will.
She REALLY stuck her neck out for millions/billions of people's basic rights. The fact that she is facing bankruptcy for it just makes her that much more of a badass.
She is almost as bad as the people she writes about unfortunately. She enabled the Facebook machine and even when she saw highly unethical things she wouldn't leave because she didn't want to miss out on her unvested stock. She wasn't some lowly employee getting coerced into taking actions she didn't agree with - she was a highly ranked exec flying on private jets with Zuck because she wanted the money. She could have taken another high ranked tech job at any time. Instead she put her life and unborn child's life at risk multiple times. For the money.
I think this is the wrong take. I don’t agree that people are good or bad, I think actions are, and there are lots of reasons and motivations a person can end up enabling a bad situation, some of those motivations can even at the time be justified.
I do believe Meta is very bad for the world and has way too much power. Anything that can get people to open their eyes to this is important. Dividing those that are trying isn’t helping.
Frankly, who gives a damn about the motivations? This is clearly in the public's best interest to know, and nobody deserves to be bankrupted over that.
You still don’t have to like it or go on message boards advocating on behalf of the company.
There’s no principle saying that you have to be on the side of an organization being exposed for behavior that is horrible for society, just because they may have a legally sound argument in court.
Laws and rules and courts are fully arbitrary and exist in search of justice.
If the rules brought us to this place, of what use were the rules?
It’s not really wrong, though. The book wasn’t an “explosive” reveal like all of these news articles say. It was mostly a bland rehashing of old news combined with some weird office hearsay that felt like forced gossip about the company, not an actual first-hand whistleblower reveal.
It also took a lot of little things and tried to make them sound like a really big deal, like how Meta spent money on measures to reduce Zuckerberg’s exposure to COVID. I guess these things sound bad to people who dislike CEOs, but it’s in any big company’s interest to take extra precautions to prevent their CEO from getting sick.
I think the “whistleblower” designation falls flat because there wasn’t really any whistleblowing in the book as far as I can tell. It was a disgruntled fired employee trying to mix up old news stories with some gossip and sell it for personal gain.
In general, the “whistleblowers” who write books and sell them to the public are very different than real whistleblowers who take evidence to the government or journalists. This person was firmly in the former group.
I don’t agree with the excessive restrictions the government there is putting on her. Sadly seems like par for the course for speech over there right now.
> measures to reduce Zuckerberg’s exposure to COVID.
Zika virus. This was before Covid.
> It was mostly a bland rehashing of old news combined with some weird office hearsay
Which is very much 1st amendment (yes I know private company etc. etc.).
But it wasn't bland, it was actually quite engaging. I get that you don't like her, but I don't think that its a good thing that a large company who values "freedom of expression" and trumpeted its unvarnished support for freedom of speech is trying to bankrupt an _author_.
Its not like there are industrial secrets there either.
> Which is very much 1st amendment (yes I know private company etc. etc.).
1st amendment to say it, yes, but 1st amendment does not guarantee freedom from repercussions as agreed upon by private contracts.
This detail from the article is also important:
> 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.
Given that Meta hasn't actually forced her to pay anything for the agreement, this whole "faces bankruptcy" article is starting to feel like another round of the PR tour for her book sales.
> I get that you don't like her
I'm just tired of people abusing the "whistleblower" label for personal profit with little substance. It undermines the importance of real whistleblowers who do actual whistleblowing activities.
> I'm just tired of people abusing the "whistleblower" label for personal profit with little substance. It undermines the importance of real whistleblowers who do actual whistleblowing activities.
That I get. At least shes not grifting like francis haugen. But clearly she wants to affect change, and saw that the only real way to do this is publicly shame the leadership.
> Given that Meta hasn't actually forced her to pay anything for the agreement, this whole "faces bankruptcy" article is starting to feel like another round of the PR tour for her book sales.
I mean yes, but also the implicit threat here is that meta can call in that debt at any time. Which for a company that prides it's self on freedom of expression, its an odd stance. Especially as the book doesn't really contain any secrets.
The voluntary agreement is rarely voluntary, sadly. given the situation of her departure, I can see why she took it. If I were here and not looking like I'd be able to work again, I'd be taking the cash too.
Non-competes are being challenged and will be history soon and hopefully so will non-disperagement clauses. Those are just coercive anti-freedom practices.
I read the book and I think it struck me as an accurate portrayal. With this bullying, Zuckerberg is showing how important it is to him that people not know about its contents.
Highly recommended. What you will find is that the title does the book justice. The top executives at Facebook aren't so much cartoonishly evil but rather hopelessly inept for the job at hand. They have no idea what they are doing, and little concern by way of the consequences of their actions, or their outsized impacts on individuals and the world in general.
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.
I read it and also highly recommend it. Knowing the book ends in 2017, the whole thing has something of a "Monster at the End of This Book" effect with both Trump and Myanmar.
It was an interesting book. I found it a tough read though. Every single chapter left me angry. A book about some of the worst people you could ever have the misfortune to meet - and unfortunately for her the author comes out looking just as bad. All just truly awful people.
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.
You don't face the consequences of violating a non-disparagement agreement if you don't violate said agreement (for example, by writing a disparaging book). It is pretty easy to avoid for most former employees. Of course, you can do the analysis for yourself on whether the offered severance money is worth it.
Actually its not. its just facebook doesn't enforce it. There is a difference between leaving voluntarily, and being given n months wage.
The agreement _must_ be kept secret from everyone apart from your designated spouse and legal representative.
The only thing you are allowed to talk about in relation to meta is that you worked for them, and the dates.
You cannot, using any written or recorded medium give an opinion about meta, its products, employees past and present, positive or otherwise, without prior written agreement.
In return facebook promises not to disparage you, and pays a peppercorn to guarantee that.
the only difference between the pleb agreements and hers is that pleb agreements are only liable for the money that they paid you, (ie 3-9 months wage, but that could also be country agreement)
So everyone of those 40k employees that have been fired in the last 2 years will have been "offered" one of those contracts.
This is much easier said than done. What if her severance was significant? What if she needed it to survive? Meta's line is she was fired for "poor performance and toxic behavior" and a non-disparagement clause often cuts both ways; now instead of saying "she worked her from <start date> to <end date> this was her job title" they can publicly disclose she was let go for serious job failures. It doesn't matter if this is true, good luck getting a new job.
IANAL, but how is this considered legal? I could see Facebook being allowed to claw back up to the amount of the severance, but $50,000 per statement in perpetuity seems wrong.
“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.
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
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.
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.
Not all anti-social behavior is illegal. Most isn't.
Say a company operated a short-form video platform, did active research about its effects, knew a large chunk of its user-base were children younger than 6 and knew that the video selection algorithm caused addiction but kept serving then addictive videos because getting the ad money was profitable.
Was any law broken? Should society know all of this?
Laws are put in place to protect society. When a behavior hurts the society the society puts a law against it. Like for example : Australia requires minimum age 16 for creating an online account. This addresses one of the issues you mentioned in your post: https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislat...
This is how abuse is addressed and society is protected. Not by choosing to get a severance package, reneging on the contract, seeking a book deal and then crying 'woe be me' on The Guardian.
PS. I cannot help but notice two things:
1. The sort of people Meta seems to attract.
2. The fact that both you and I are creating online noise and sentiment which will probably help Sarah sell more books (or get another, better deal from Meta). It's better to get away from the computer now.
$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.
> 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.
True, Zhang was dismissed and ignored inside Facebook. But by going through the internal and external disclosure channels she left a paper trail that regulators, journalists, and researchers could use. It didn’t fix Meta, but it gave her work legitimacy and fed into hearings and reporting. That’s different from skipping straight to a commercial book deal.
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.
Fair point, but the issue isn’t that she got paid. It’s that the reporting frames her as bankrupt martyr while burying the half-million advance. Making money on a book is fine, but when you sell it as whistleblowing rather than commerce, readers deserve to know the financial context up front.
There’s often significant payouts associated with whistleblowing because it’s so financially risky. The SEC has paid people way more than 500k and it’s not uncommon for those people to regret it.
> Fair point, but the issue isn’t that she got paid.
Then we shouldn’t assert that it matters. I’m glad we agreed ultimately it doesn’t, but I just want to be very clear there.
The half-million advance does not mean she can’t be going bankrupt. As I said, it’s not exactly lottery money, especially when 10% of that is at risk for every offense she’s up for, and she is struggling to get the rest of her money the book would net because of their blocking it. You’re ignoring a ton of context and overstating how much 500k should solve her financial woes.
Also, it’s not “buried,” it’s in the article clear as day. You just think it should be the first thing stated.
Frankly I’m not sure what your aim is here. You’re being wildly charitable to Facebook here, whereas I would think we should start on her side until we see reason not to be.
I get what you’re saying, but my point is different. It’s not about rooting for Meta, it’s about how every story gets framed as righteous activism. After a while it feels performative more than principled. I don’t think noticing that makes me “pro-Facebook,” it just means I’m tired of the constant activist spin that leaves out key context.
I don’t get what you’re getting from this article that is leading you to the conclusion that this is performative and I don’t know what key context is being left out here. They tell you clearly that she has been paid for this book and how much it was for. That is literally why we are having this discussion.
The whole thing feels performative because the framing is all martyrdom. “Bankruptcy for exposing Meta” makes for a good headline, but when you bury the $500k advance it turns into a morality play instead of straight reporting. Writing a book and doing media is symbolic, but it’s not the same as taking protected disclosures through proper channels. That’s where the activism starts to look more about appearance than effect.
I don’t understand how this is confusing or otherwise perplexing. People can’t just spend years doing this stuff for free, I’m sure we both know this and it’s strange for you to pretend otherwise.
We don’t have a system that provides for that unless you’re incredibly privileged/financially set already.
She’s a US citizen living in the US writing for a US publication about a US-based company and being challenged in the US legal system. The US is a capitalist nation.
I do not understand where your objection is coming from.
Didn't mean to imply is isn't in the article. I came to commentary after seeing the headline. Usually on HN there is a comment that shows why the headline is misleading in some way.
It's an open secret that many people here don't read past the headline before commenting, but being open about it and proudly stating it is certainly... an interesting choice on your part.
She could have started a blog if she was motivated by truth. But she chose the book deal. Quoting from Casino: “It’s always the dollars. Always the %$!@ dollars.”
> She could have started a blog if she was motivated by truth
now you are liable on your own, without any of the backing of a large publisher with specialist lawyers on staff. Plus it'd go nowhere and be taken down almost instantly by facebook.
So what happens if she racks up a few million in fines and declares herself bankrupt, say in the UK, where you can't then be held responsible for earlier debts?
Well she’s done a massive service exposing these absolutely imbecilic people at Facebook. It’s depressing, but aslo helpful to know definitively that our next step as a culture can safely be to end the cult of the billionaire. They do not deserve our admiration, and there is no place for them in public policy.
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.
Crazy idea, how about making non-disparagement clauses illegal?
They serve no purpose, other than protecting abusive and exploitative companies.
If a disgruntled employee says something that is not true, there are already laws the company can use to defend itself and the company has way more resources than an individual. That's enough to deter even people who want to expose the truth but are not confident they can prove it. These clauses just make the power differential even larger.
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.
> Meta said that to date, Wynn-Williams had not been forced to make any payments under the agreement.
Unless the reporter and MP are willing to show that Meta is lying about that (which presumably can be easily shown by the book's author producing communications), looks like they are trying to imply causation by the framing of the article.
If you have a pending bill that is greater than your liquid assets, then you are on the verge of bankruptcy.
> Meta said that to date, Wynn-Williams had not been forced to make any payments under the agreement.
which is not the same as "Wynn-Williams" is not liable for any damages. Meta is not going to let someone public claim that meta can make them bankrupt, if it wasn't true. Its bad PR.
Its clear that meta has the power to claim breech of contract, but they are choosing _not_ to at this time. I assume in order to force a stop of book being sold.
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.
>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.
As discussed umpteenth times in every free speech debate ever, "free speech" as enshrined in the legal system only offers protection from the government. There's a broader principle of free speech in general, but it's unclear whether that should be applicable in this case, where two private entities entered into an agreement where one side agreed to cease speech in exchange for money.
We have a legal system that allows for private agreements of restricted speech, which can be and is frequently abused by the party in a position of power (in this case, a 2 trillion dollar company). And these agreements are enforced by the government. So it is in a round-about way the government infringing on rights, both by allowing it to happen and also enforcing it.
the interesting part is that in this specific case, Meta allegedly was a tool to suppress free speech by government. Although, government was Chinese.
Is it that meta is anti-democracy or is it just that Mark Zuckerberg is kind of an idiot? The feeling I get from the book is more towards the latter.
Speaking personally, the moment I knew that Zuckerberg knew nothing about politics was circa 2010, when he announced his plan to join forces with Chris Christie to "fix Newark schools". I don't care if you support team red or team blue, but it was obvious to anyone who knew politics at that time that Christie was a con artist. Why waste any amount of time and money on this project destined to fail? If Zuck had any insight and had a goal to do an actual thing and see it work, he would not have. He spent $100 million on that.
Not trying to defend him but this isn’t a fair characterization of his intellect since he was 15 years younger and tech industry was very interested in doing good back then.
I am of similar age to him and was in the tech industry at the time. It struck me at the time as a collosally dumb move and proof that he wasn't a smart guy. That is literally the point of my comment.
There are a number of possible interpretations. One is that he was incapable of researching how stupid he was being in that moment. Another is that he didn't care about that and he did it only to improve his image. Few of the interpretations I can think of have him looking great.
> Is it that meta is anti-democracy or is it just that Mark Zuckerberg is kind of an idiot?
Porque no los dos?
I would say using the court system rather than abusing, simple because IMHO the courts primarily exist to defend corporate rights contrary to the marketing.
What about requiring new employees to sign non-disparagement agreements? Maybe companies are getting “smarter” and requiring employees to agree to not say anything negative about their employer from day 1 … not sure about the legality here.
Never sign anything going out the door that isn’t tied to a financial gain.
"If you don't sign you won't get severance" is exactly that.
Severance is a financial gain. You don't have to accept it.
Their point was kordlessagain's advice would not have changed this situation I think.
But it was tied to that!
Replace "have" with "had"
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).
There is a great documentary called “The Century of the Self”, which is about the rise of consumerism in lockstep with politics in the United States.
The initial primary focus is Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, who is known as the father of public relations. He was incredibly influential during his time, having been a key advisor on most federal administrations from the 20s to the 70s. On the corporate side, early big wins were getting women to smoke at the dawn of the Great Depression, and changing the 'American breakfast' to bacon and eggs.
A core thesis of his is freedom in a large democratic state is a bit of an illusion… it needs to be controlled by consumerist impulses, or in other words, indirectly by corporations. Otherwise the all-encompassing hand of totalitarianism is needed. Without one of these mediating factors, the masses become unruly and descend into anarchy and chaos.
His late 20s book "Propaganda" is an interesting insight into his early, free from public scorn, view on the matter. It seems overwhelmingly cynical and puppet-masterish, if you will, and he somewhat stepped back from it after finding out how much it had influenced Goebbels. Still, I think it holds strongly as a guidebook for how the US evolved to present day.
I find this comment a bit strange considering
> she is being pushed to financial ruin through the arbitration system in the UK,
Not the US.
Meta are a US company. They took legal action against the author in the US also. And hliyan may have trusted readers to consider if UK politics had the same property.
> reminiscent of the end of the Roman Empire
Are you sure he didn’t mean the end of the Roman Republic, which was the beginning of the Principate? The Western Empire would last about another 400 years.
We definitely are tracking the end of the Roman Republic. At that point, all constitutional norms had been violated so many times that they were mere suggestions, and political infighting by oligarchs was tearing the republic apart, to the point that people were relieved when Augustus took power. They still had a senate. They still had all the old offices and structures. But everyone knew who was in power.
Much like today in the US. We don’t have one Princeps, but we all know that the oligarchs and corporations own the entire political and economic process. They write the rules to suit themselves.
And they have common people fighting each other over cultural issues instead of fighting them for the stuff that matters — economic and political power. It’s a fantastic divide and conquer strategy. Unless common people start waking up to who their real enemies are, the American Republic is effectively over.
I've been hearing this for thirty years and I think that people just like to predict the end times and the Roman empire is what's taught most closely in school
Eh, since the founders were explicitly inspired by the Roman Republic, it’s always been fun to wonder “where are we on the Roman timeline”. But it was about 150 years from when the Gracchi brothers were murdered until Augustus seized power. These things happen over time, not all at once.
I don’t see any way to view today’s politics as normal. There is nothing but naked greed and hunger for power at play now. It wasn’t like this even 15 years ago. We’ve been a frog in a pot of water and it’s just starting to boil.
This case is from the UK. Is there some quote you can pull about someone critiquing the governmental system over there and how that’s reflected in this case?
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.
>and that it is reminiscent of the end of the Roman Empire
What a totally ridiculous comparison. The roman empire always was an explicit a dictatorial state. Its end took hundreds of years of internal and external forces tearing it apart as coherent entity. Characterizing it as two factions fighting for power is just bizarre.
Maybe he meant the of the Roman Republic, like with the optimates and so on.
That’s far from accurate. Augustus positioned himself as the restorer of the Republic after a horrific period of civil war, and cobbled together his authority from existing Republican magistracies, especially the Tribune of the Plebs. The Julio-Claudians at least attempted to maintain the fiction that the Republic was still functioning. Explicitly dictatorial it wasn’t, although actually dictatorial it certainly was.
The end of the Roman Empire was due to a civil war, where the Church was one of the parties embraced by Constantin.
It's dangerous to make sloppy comparisons like that.
Augustus seized all the levers of power to create the Roman Empire and even developed a cult-like following.
Similarly, claiming there aren't two political camps is sloppy in the current environment.
Corporates and oligarchs are a completely different animal, and they deserve treatment as such.
They are not some homogenous, totalitarian entity: they're more akin to what Rome was before the Empire--a melange of senators fighting about everything while trying to stay rich.
> Augustus seized all the levers of power
Octavian was given the levers of power by Julius Caesar. Pompey and Crassus teamed up with Caesar to breakdown the republic. They made huge amounts of cash doing it.
Even Augustus took a few years to complete his project. In the US this is going quite fast.
I think we see it happening fast because right now it's just revealing of the power structures that were built over decades.
Dangerous? What??? How on earth is that dangerous? Of all the insane rhetoric being spouted nowadays, making a historical comparison is dangerous?
Can we all please stop calling ideas “harmful” or “dangerous” and just have plain, open debate? That’s what a republic depends on.
I think constantly repeating negativity that undermines faith in institutions and our ability to effect change is harmful because it’s self fulfilling.
There. That’s an idea you can debate.
And why would "corporate" and "oligarchs" fight? Can the same person not be a "corporate" and an oligarch at the same time?
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.
The billionaires are far less numerous, have far better ability to coordinate and summon resources, and have interests that diverge farther from the thousandaires who actually do most of the voting, compared to the millionaires.
The term "holding up" is doing a lot of work here. The Republican party has an extremely enthusiastic voter base. Billionaire money might encourage the enthusiasm but in the end the voters turn out and pull levers. They are sincere in their voting.
The Democrats are a bit less enthusiastic, at least at the moment, but in the end it's not the millionaires who pull the levers. It's the rank and file.
It's hard to tell how different it would be if we could somehow get the money out of it. But I am wary of assuming that the voters would dramatically change their attitudes. The millionaires and billionaires tune the party's message to what the voters want. They get the spoils but they're also making their voters happy, assuming they win. If they didn't do that, they'd lose.
It's possible that the Democrats are more conspicuously failing to give their voters what they want when they win. But it's not obvious to me how they could do that. Most of the suggestions I hear are naive and impractical, and come down to "do the thing I want and many millions of others will see how great that is."
For election to work you would have to read [all of] the [not legally binding] election programs, ponder the offerings and make up your own mind.
You won't find a single person who does this.
Apparently everyone votes by a different mechanism. One that involves a lot of money.
Even if everyone was well informed and able to objectively make their own choices that are truly their own. You don't actually have to do anything you wrote in your election program.
We don't become legal experts to run a business, we hire lawyers. We don’t become doctors to aid in our own health either. So too should people find ways to delegate and evaluate economic and policy analysis.
> it's not the millionaires who pull the levers. It's the rank and file.
“People can vote whichever side they prefer, as long as their opinions are based on fake news.” It's difficult to talk about rank and file pulling the levers, when millionaires manufacture the news.
You say that because you know that the news is fake, and you know that because it's not really that difficult to figure out at least an approximation of the truth. You know who are the abject liars (because they routinely tell outright falsehoods), and you know who at least tries to get it right even if they sometimes fail at it.
It's not that hard. People seek out the fake news; the millionaires and billionaires are just providing slightly better versions of it. They could be doing really sophisticated propaganda but they just don't have to. People are pleased to believe the most outlandish lies if it affirms their egos.
Corporates understand that a strong economy is important for the system to be viable long term and that some kind of middle class is a necessary part of it, which they can skim off the top of. Oligarchs don't care about that nearly as much, and are more acutely focused on accumulation of power and wealth and are happy to disassemble productive capacity and force the middle class down to an a working poor class in the process.
It's basically the difference between "every one of my workers needs to be able to buy one of my cars" industrial Fordism and what Varoufakis coined techno-feudalism, which does not utilize markets or independent workers but tries to extract value from what are effectively serfs directly. Zuckerberg et al. are obviously emblematic of the latter.
Are they actually fighting?
I wouldn't say corporations and oligarchs are going to fight. I'd say elites infight all the time, but they all agree that the other humans are simply "human resources" and they have the common interests to extract as much value from those fellow humans as possible.
Exactly the same model for pretty much all large countries, each with a bit of different "flavour" that the elites learned throughout the centuries, and conveniently serves as one of the topics to divide the human resources.
I prefer “workforce” over “human resources,” and I believe lots of people voluntarily choose to remain a member of the workforce, as they would rather have a family and live a “simple” life than spend effort to become some kind of entrepreneur or politician.
Our preference is irrelevant. We are resources to them. I’d rather honestly acknowledge that.
What I said doesn’t conflict with this, just highlighting that’s what people themselves want.
Why wouldn't they fight? Some level of conflict always occurs within all groups or affiliations. It would be completely unnatural for there to be no conflict.
I would say that the distinction between the two groups is, roughly:
"Corporates" are the leaders of the many large corporations in this country. They want broad protections for corporate power against labour, corporate profits, lowered regulations, etc.
"Oligarchs" are the leaders of the few titanic corporations, like Bezos, Musk, and Zuckerberg. They want to become the zaibatsu of modern America, essentially being given total control over the economy divided up between them.
There are many things they want that are in common (for instance, the removal of regulations), but that prime desire of the oligarchs is directly at odds with the continued existence and livelihoods of the corporates.
yes. and: kleptocrats. "thieves govern" captures the into-my-pocket better than oligarchs "few govern".
Free speech has always been about the government. Do you not think it is acceptable for companies to fire people for their speech? Should employers just have to keep silent and do nothing when their employees e.g. glorify violence, promote fascism or attack human rights?
>Requiring non-disclosure in order to get a severance (or to get a settlement for abuse) is not an excuse for doing this.
This seems very reasonable? If you want to attack your employer you are free to do so, why should they pay you for that?
>More and more corporations are resorting to the predatory practice of abusing the court system to protect their hide their actions.
What are you on about? Companies have always tried to get what they can, it is not some recent trend that companies go after their own (former) employees in court.
> This seems very reasonable? If you want to attack your employer you are free to do so, why should they pay you for that?
The two issues I see here are: NDAs without a public-good exception and forced confidential arbitration.
I think there should always be an exception to NDAs when the information is in the public good. I think it’s reasonable to disagree on where that line should be; that’s what legislation and court cases are for.
Also, forcing the resolution of this to go through confidential arbitration hides the issues from the public, and doesn’t let us make good decisions on where that line should be.
>I think there should always be an exception to NDAs when the information is in the public good.
AFAIK that already sort of exists because NDAs doesn't cover you if you're subpoenaed, like if there was a congressional hearing.
A congressional hearing had the author's testimony because of this book.
> This seems very reasonable? If you want to attack your employer you are free to do so, why should they pay you for that?
She wrote the book after she left. So, is it OK for someone to expose a company for illicit and illegal activities in this regard? And if not then why is it OK for these companies to use illicit or illegal tactics to silence former, or even, current employees?
According to the article the gag order was part of her severance. So it's not as if she signed something before being employed, discovered something shady, and couldn't speak out. In this case, she saw something shady, signed an agreement not to say anything, but reneged on that agreement. I'm much less sympathetic to the latter than the former.
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.
"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.
It's doing even more work when you're aware that, at one point, the NLRB had banned non-disparagement clauses in severances and employment agreements outright, stating that even offering these terms amounted to coercive behavior that prevented people from discussing their working conditions. [1]
[1] https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-labor-board-limits-gag-clau...
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.
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.
She reported not being particularly high paid compared to her peers. When she was hired Facebook didn't care at all about her area (government relations).
As that became more important her role grew but she was never really promoted.
She also was not well informed about how tech compensation works and negotiated poorly (no stock) she came from an NGO background in New Zealand.
Her salary was probably quite a bit more than the average American but she was living in expensive areas (DC and SV) and interacting with extremely wealthy people. At one point Sheryl Sandburg got annoyed that she was leaving work for childcare and told her to hire a live-in nanny. She was living paycheck-to-paycheck on a high income with no wealth accumulation (many such cases).
OK, then honestly it's hard for me to have any sympathy for the idea that she was "coerced". She was being paid lots... but wasn't getting paid even more?
If you're an executive at Facebook, you should know how to research negotiation and compensation, and figure out a living situation where you're saving money. You're in the big leagues. If Sheryl expected her to be able to hire a full time nanny, then that's an excellent time to renegotiate a salary than can afford that.
If you're an entry-level worker who can't make ends meet in San Fran then of course I sympathize greatly! But if you're an executive at Facebook making enough money that you can even consider a full time nanny... you're not facing any level of "hardship" by which an offer of even more money in exchange for non-disparagement could be considered "coercion". Nobody is in poverty here. Nobody is going to wind up hungry or on the street.
COBRA means you pay the full cost of the insurance. So suddenly instead of paying $150 you are now seeing a $500 or more bill, especially if your employer is a major company that pays for all sorts of benefits. COBRA is a joke when you consider you just lost all source of income.
The point is, you're not suddenly facing ruinous bankrupting medical expenses.
You're continuing your health insurance. You're paying for your insurance, not your medical care.
She was an executive at Facebook. If she hasn't saved enough for COBRA then I don't even know what to say.
> The point is, you're not suddenly facing ruinous bankrupting medical expenses.
This is a powerful assumption given how expensive medicine is in the US - even with insurance - and how often people in their adulthood need medical treatment.
IIRC, part of the reason that so many countries have specific "here's money specifically for retirement" things (pensions, 401k here in the US) is that many people just don't plan far ahead very well.
If entry-level and lower-paid workers aren't saving money then that's understandable. That's why these government programs exist.
If you're an executive at Facebook, I think you have the ability to plan things well. If you still can't save any money, at that point it's hard to see how it's not just your fault.
She wasn't an executive in the sense you're thinking and certainly wasn't hired as one. She was hired to work in an area Zuckerberg never cared about and never gave anywhere near sufficient resources to.
She's described as an executive and as a director in articles.
I don't know what other sense there is? And what possible relevance is there of the relationship between her role and what Zuck thought? I'm sure Zuck doesn't care much about accounting or HR either. Lots of well paid executives work in areas of corporations that aren't the founder's main focus. That's the kind of problem most people would love to have.
Directing an area is very different from the title (or compensation) of Director, and it's certainly not equivalent to Director in a tech organization. SWW was hired as "Manager of Global Public Policy" but the book never indicates that she ever has reports or is a manager in that sense, which is generally a requirement to be understood or perceived as a "Director".
If you're surprised media articles don't ask questions and get basic facts wrong, go read any article about a topic you have direct experience with.
The articles don't seem to have gotten any basic facts wrong.
She had director in her title and reported directly to a vice president, Joel Kaplan, who is now a C-level officer. She managed staff.
That's seriously high up in the corporate hierarchy at Facebook. Feel free to read more:
"She managed a growing staff and oversaw government relations for entire continents, including Asia and South America. She reported to corporate vice presidents and had direct contact with Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, then the chief operating officer."
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/facebook-alleges-h...
So again, I don't what you mean by "wasn't an executive in the sense you're thinking". She's seems to be exactly an executive in the sense that everyone thinks.
> She's described as an executive and as a director in articles.
I once met with a person who used to be a vice president in a major US bank. I was impressed, until much later when I discovered that there were three thousand “vice presidents” in that bank.
In investment banking, VP is not a senior title (speaking from personal experience :)).
The exact level hierarchy varies from bank to bank, but typically runs something like
Analyst - Associate - (Associate VP) - VP - Director/Executive Director/Senior VP - Managing Director
I worked at Google as an L4 for a little over one year and had no trouble paying the COBRA afterwards.
If you have a family COBRA will be $2k-3k a month.
And you pay 102% of what the plan costs, and Meta has a truly deluxe plan, the COBRA fee is enormous
Again, something that could be a hardship for a junior employee, but she was a director.
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?
Any documentation on this would be great!
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.
Further up in this thread someone remarked that she did not receive any equity as part of her original compensation.
From the article it sounds like it was a condition of a severance package.
Or severance in the form of X months or weeks of salary and benefits.
> was an exchange for accelerated stock vesting or similar.
Meta doesn't do that. Especially if you are yeeted. You'll get 6 months wage at best.
How it's not voluntary? She didn't face prison if she didn't sign, she faced having less money. She chose more money. What other threat coukd facebook apply beyond not paying severance?
All true but she still signed the document, and later acted against the agreement with the very same trillion dollar company.
Agreements like that should be considered unenforceable
But then Facebook would have had no incentive to offer the agreement to her. And she must have been very happy with what she got in the deal, given she gave up the option of talking about all the apparently horrible misdeeds she witnessed while they were still fresh, rather than a decade later.
Then she would get no money either.
I don't think that's true in most situations. I think most companies would still pay a severance out of a general effort to smooth things over, and some sense of social loyalties.
And some aspects of the agreement would be fine. No spilling actual business relevant secrets, nothing that would count as libel or slander, etc.
You think a business pays money out of a sense of "social loyalty"?
Companies don't need to offer severance to prevent ex employees from spilling business secrets, doing so is a criminal offense.
Petulant arguments are why RFK needs to find the cure.
> 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.
Remember this next time you have cancer and get fired, and then have the option to “voluntarily” sign something to keep receiving money until hopefully you’re well enough to look for a new job.
She had world-class health insurance. You build up savings. You collect unemployment. Your spouse continues working. These are all things to help you.
She wasn't homeless, on the street, alone, without skills or education, where she had no choice. Let's keep things in perspective here.
So yes, it is absolutely voluntarily to sign something like that. Otherwise, what does taking responsibility for your actions even mean?
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.
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.
They are using the same kind of exit NDA used to coerce OpenAI employees who left that organization. We should all be afraid for ourselves as these organizations turn into black boxes where the only people who could speak out feel they cannot. This thing where you stop working for a company but they can still penalize you financially if they don’t like your annual “post-employee performance” evaluations is Kafka-esque.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-whistleblowers-ask...
Just to clarify, OpenAI did change their agreement (to some degree) after the SEC put pressure on them. In Facebook’s case the SEC has been notably silent despite the calls from US senators (AFAICT).
Facebook execs need safety nets now?
I am all for safety nets, and I actually live in a country with stronger safety nets than the USA, but I still don’t feel sorry for the author who basically has had every card to be extremely wealthy and squandered it.
Also realize that it isn’t private companies job to fix the broken social system in the USA, usually separation agreements for high paid employees offer severance well above and beyond the legal requirements (I have seen 3 months to a year including accelerated vesting in some cases), and a condition of accepting those benefits above and beyond the laws is you don’t disparage your employer. If you don’t accept the agreement you get the bare minimum according to the laws but you are then not bound to the disparage clauses.
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.
You can’t be forced to sign away your rights, but you can make an agreement to enter into an arrangement with confidential information with another party and agree to penalties if the contract is broken.
Making anyone free to reveal anything without consequences even after entering into an agreement about it isn’t going to work. You’re probably thinking only about the narrow case where a company is wrong and the employee is whistleblowing, but that is protected when done through the right channels.
However this wasn’t really whistleblowing. This was someone trying to make profit on her own book and sell more copies by sharing info she agreed not to.
In this article, I believe the UK is asking this same question. It will be interesting to see where they land; I suspect this is why the author hasn’t had to pay any fines yet.
She wasn’t required. She had the agency to choose not to sign it.
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!"
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/unconscionability
Sure. Was that what happened here, or was it an everyday contract to enforce confidentiality in return for some benefit?
If people are being forced to sign anti-disparagement agreements “everyday”, I think that is pretty concerning.
She was forced to sign it?
Hard to know. If she did not sign it was she waiving her severance package? Perhaps she signed it believing it was unenforceable.
I suppose when one side has lawyers, we all need them now?
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?
We aren't allowed to sell ourselves into slavery.
A significant difference is that it is not legal to own slaves or trade in slaves. That makes contracts for the sale of slaves inherently unenforceable.
It is not illegal to refrain from speaking. If you want to enter into a contract that requires you not to speak under certain circumstances there is probably nothing inherently unenforceable about it.
I'm pretty sure for example it would be legal for the Diogenes Club [1] to expel you if you violated their no talking rule, if someone would actually make a real Diogenes Club.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_Club
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.
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?
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
I don’t take a position on this because I don’t know it but I think you’re (willfully?) misunderstanding the point. I don’t think all ethical problems can be legally defined. Something may be legal and wrong or illegal and not wrong. If she was indeed forced out for reporting sexual harassment, then what ethical responsibility does she still bear towards that company, regardless of what they ask her to sign as she leaves? The point isn’t that she’s right or wrong for sure, it’s that the problem is complex and legalities cannot account for all situations.
I did not misunderstood the point. The GP equated reporting a crime (robbery) with airing some dirty laundry.
I read the book and can recommend it. It was both interesting and, in places, had a good sense of humor. It was interesting to see the intersection of news coverage I had read with the author’s inside perspective.
IMHO, the book has little or nothing about the kind of things we usually see called out in NDA breaches: ideas or code names from products, details on contract negotiations with competitors, internal processes, etc. The author was involved with managing relationships between Facebook and foreign governments and this makes up the meat of the book.
I’ll second this sentiment on all counts. Definitely give the book a read before making any judgments about the author and her situation.
Is it even legal? Like, can I sign away my 1st Amendment rights? I mean, I'm sure a corporate lawyer thinks so.
The freedom of contract is pretty fundamental. The entire point of a contract is to force you to do something it's your right not to do or to not do something you have the right to do.
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.
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?
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.
Congrats empowering billionaires, great stance to take in our oligarchy
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.
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.
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"
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.
Clearly the solution is not to try and get it both ways—money for disparaging and money for not disparaging. Most people choose one, not both.
Maybe, but if you couldn't rationalize whatever makes you the most money being ethical then you probably wouldn't take a job at a place like Facebook in the first place.
Conveniently, that makes it easy to write your praise. It doesn't take much to go from "demographics like 'teenage girls with body insecurities' want relevant ads like beauty products! We're helping consumers to satisfy their needs!" to "showing teen girls aspirational images that drive them to buy beauty products (and happen to drive insecurities) is just helping them reach their potential! We're helping consumers to uncover needs they didn't know they had!" Wherever your comfort line was to decide to work there, you can probably drive it a little further with similar reasoning.
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.
> God commands us to expose, correct, and punish evil
Which god(s)?
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.
Is this still true, post Defamation Act 2013?
No, truth is a defence now.
This is actually the norm throughout the world.
The law doesn't give a shit about truth but it only cares about keeping thing running smoothly as they currently are.
Same in many EU countries. Poland and Germany are two examples. For example if someone robs you (or do worse things to you) and you call them out publicly you can be liable if you can't prove it happened.
In practice the law defends the offenders. You can't speak up if you don't have a hard proof. I think it's ridiculous but so is a lot of civil law. Americans often don't appreciate how well they have it in comparison.
> you can be liable if you can't prove it happened.
Even if you can prove in many places.
Also if someone robs your house and gets hurt due to some noncompliance on your part they can sue you and win.
I think that true statements could be considered disparaging. Consider something like:
"Zelphirkalt claims they do not abuse their child. Despite this their kid has been seen at the ER for broken bones multiple times in the last 10 years, and spent a few months in therapy."
Even if I know that your kid's ER visits were for:
1) a broken leg from a fall out of a tree
2) a broken finger from their martial arts lessons
3) a broken nose from defending themselves in a fight
and that the therapy was mandated by the school system as a result of the fight and a "zero tolerance" policy, the text of the statements in question are still absolute truth. I've just phrased it in such a way (and declined to report on other truths) that a reader is encouraged to draw the conclusion that you abuse your kid physically and emotionally. I think if I published something like that in a book, you'd certainly consider it disparaging, and I think a court might agree if you were enforcing a non-disparagement contract I had signed with you.
That said (at least in the US) I doubt a court would find it to be "libel" or "slander", since those are MUCH higher bars to clear by default and assuming you were a famous individual (or company like facebook) the bar is even higher. Something like this would likely hinge on my own reputation and how likely a reader is to assume I'm speaking from "hidden knowledge" as opposed to coming to a given conclusion from public knowledge.
> 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.
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.
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 :)
Surely it matters as to whether or not the headline is accurate or misleading.
Non-disparagement agreements should be made illegal. It significantly reduces the chance that people can bring criminal actions to justice due to fear of lawsuits. But also, it just doesn't align with American society, where free speech is the most important and foundational value.
Such gagging orders should be illegal, they only serve to hide corporate malfeasance.
Reporting crimes is protected by law: see the whistleblower act. What is being hidden here is some dirty laundry.
Which is why I used the term malfeasance, which covers acts that aren't illegal but still immoral or otherwise against the public interest.
...which should also be totally ok? It's a company, not a person, it shouldn't have any kind of protections except for libel/slander.
If the laundry is dirty, it should be aired. No one is better off for hiding it, many people are worse for hiding it.
And a real person, saying real(true) things about an unreal(corporation) person, should always be ok.
Not all immoral, abusive and exploitative acts are illegal. In fact, most are not, because companies have whole legal departments dedicated to figuring out just how they can exploit the system and other people without getting punished legally.
And on other hand any bribes that is payments attached to such contracts should as well.
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.
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.
There should be no such thing as a non-disparagement clause.
It's a gag, pure and simple. You should always be able to tell your own story -- what you lived through, what you lost, who failed you. But these clauses are everywhere now, slipped into contracts and settlements, letting corporations bury their mistakes and keep the next person in line from knowing what's coming.
I learned this the hard way.
I grew up believing USAA was the gold standard of insurance. My grandfather used to say, "I won't always be around, but USAA will always have your back." So when my house flooded, I trusted them. They assigned me a contractor and promised -- in writing, on their website (it's still there: https://www.usaa.com/perks/home-solutions/contractor/) -- that I'd get a five-year workmanship warranty on the repairs.
What I got was a disaster.
Their contractor turned my house into a construction horror show. They cracked my foundation slab by drilling into it to move a drain -- cutting tension cables in the process. They killed two huge front-yard trees by dumping chemicals on them. They didn't scrape off the old glue before laying new flooring, so the planks bent and shifted underfoot. They painted latex over oil, so the paint peeled off in sheets. They tiled the bathroom directly onto the subfloor with no moisture barrier, ignored termite damage behind the walls, dropped and damaged new appliances -- cook top and oven were both damaged. Since they used multiple sub-contractors, their crews even the new cabinets they installed were cracked and chipped in over a dozen places. They stole everything from my garage -- even stole the ice cube maker from my fridge!
It got worse.
They cracked the gas line and left it leaking (I had to call the fire department). They installed two sinks with the hot and cold lines reversed. Messed up all of my GCFI outlets, and they left the entire upstairs without electricity and without working outlets at all. They even covered electrical outlets with drywall instead of cutting openings where the plugs had been. Every corner I turned revealed something new, often dangerous -- and I documented it all with photos, videos, emails, and texts. I thought having a paper trail meant I was safe.
When I complained, we went into mediation. The contractor -- a steam-cleaning company that had only recently started doing restoration work -- admitted they'd screwed up. One of their managers even wrote, "Look, the situation at your house is unfortunate. We hired subcontractors we thought we could trust, but clearly we didn't supervise them correctly. This isn't how we normally operate, but we'll make this right."
We built a punch list of fixes. They agreed to pay my living expenses while I was displaced.
Then they vanished.
No crews. No repairs. No communication. No reimbursement. I kept sending receipts -- just like we agreed -- and got nothing. USAA went quiet too. Three months later, someone at USAA finally said, "Look, I can't help you, but why haven't you hired a lawyer yet?"
I said, "Because I trusted you."
After a year of silence, USAA's mediation team -- who had never set foot in my house and were based in another state -- emailed me: "Your house had issues no contractor could have foreseen," they said. The work, while clearly bad, was apparently "about what you could expect from the average contractor in Austin right now." They knocked $2,000 off the bill. I had to spend $80,000 fixing the foundation slab alone. (All told, I've spent over $300k repairing my house to date, and there's still more to do... just for context, I only paid $275k for my house in 2010...)
And here's what I didn't know: the "mediation" wasn't neutral. It was run through Contractor Connection -- a company that exists to serve insurance carriers. I was never really their customer. USAA was. Any pressure to do the right thing had to come from USAA -- and USAA simply didn't care.
So I finally hired a lawyer. Expensive. Slow. A year later, we finally had our "day in court." Except it wasn't court -- there's no public record, no evidence allowed (meaning my entire photo slide deck showing all the issues wasn't even looked at!), no jury of sane peers who could see this from a human angle. Just arbitration with a "neutral" retired judge who had spent the past two years doing nothing but USAA cases. (Think she'd have had that job for two years if she ever ruled against the insurance company?) At one point she said, "We have to give the benefit of the doubt to these hard-working contractors who came to aid you in your hour of need. If we don't protect them, they won't be there when others need them."
You can imagine how her ruling went.
(Another thing everyone should know about Texas before moving here: there are no "Licensed Contractors." So even though I had a professional inspection outlining all the issues, when it came time to present it, I said, "It's clear a professional didn't do this work." And the contractor's lawyer was able to shamelessly say, "Nowhere in the contract does it say a professional would do the work." So shady.)
The contractor wanted me to pay their legal fees. Pay for the full amount of the repairs -- wouldn't even tell me what the insurance company had agreed to pay, but claimed the value of their work was three times higher than any number I had seen until that point. It still bothers me that they were allowed to just make up a number -- and all the written emails and texts saying they'd make things right, pay my living expenses, were just ignored.
But what killed my will to fight... mid-way through, my lawyer told me that if I wanted to proceed to trial, I'd need a $250,000 retainer up front -- and it would drag on for two or three more years. And I wouldn't be allowed to fix or move back into my house until it was done because they would need the house as evidence. By then I was exhausted, broke, and just wanted it over. Ten hours into a marathon arbitration session -- literally as the building's janitorial staff was locking doors -- I agreed to a deal to just make all this stop. We'd all just walk away. I'd keep the house in the state it was, we'd never have to go through mediation again or do another blue-tape walk-through, but they weren't paying for anything -- not even the expenses they'd already agreed to pay, certainly not the damages to my house.
At the end my lawyer pointed me to a DocuSign field and said, "Sign here." After I said, "Well, at least I can warn other people with a brutal Yelp review," my lawyer said: "No, you can't. You signed a non-disparagement clause." At no point was this talked about before I signed it. When I asked, "Why didn't you tell me?" my lawyer just said, "Oh, these are really standard..."
And apparently, she didn't think it was worth bringing up because another one had already been in the original contract I signed while standing in two inches of water in my living room. Looking back, it feels like they knew from the start they weren't going to deliver quality work -- and they wanted to make sure anyone who went through mediation could never speak publicly about it again. (Technically it doesn't cover USAA, but calling them "independent" is like calling a husband and wife independent -- legally separate maybe, but joined at the hip in every way that matters.)
That's the real power of these clauses: they don't just close your case, they erase it. They wipe away the evidence, silence the people who lived it, and make sure the next homeowner walks into the same trap with no warning. And there's a power dynamic. They've done this a hundred times. They show up with the contract they want. You're acting in the moment, often stressed or panicked. You think you're just signing to pay them -- but really, you're signing to let them off the hook for any damages, and do things in the shadiest way they can do them. And no matter what they say or do after that, the only thing that matters is the original contract.
So I can't name the contractor in Austin. But I can tell you it was USAA's contractor. And everything I went through was part of a process that USAA designed. =P
Insurance companies aren't there to help you. They're there to protect their balance sheet. If you get crushed in the process, that's acceptable collateral damage. They don't care about making you whole -- only about checking boxes in a process designed to minimize payouts and keep the stock price climbing.
And non-disparagement clauses? They're how corporations make sure no one ever finds out -- so they can keep getting away with it.
That's an epic and terrible story. I'm sorry and horrified you had to experience that :$
read the book. her allegations are important and she's a brave woman. Low point: zuckerberg pressuring the author, while she is suffering from late pregnancy complications, to travel to Myanmar with a callow sales pitch for their dictators. Following which they failed to appoint a native-language speaker to monitor usage in the country, while facebook became a very clear vector for racially motivated violence.
Another low point: MZ working with communist party chiefs to engineer a "chinese" version of facebook where the government could see all citizens' private information at will.
She REALLY stuck her neck out for millions/billions of people's basic rights. The fact that she is facing bankruptcy for it just makes her that much more of a badass.
She is almost as bad as the people she writes about unfortunately. She enabled the Facebook machine and even when she saw highly unethical things she wouldn't leave because she didn't want to miss out on her unvested stock. She wasn't some lowly employee getting coerced into taking actions she didn't agree with - she was a highly ranked exec flying on private jets with Zuck because she wanted the money. She could have taken another high ranked tech job at any time. Instead she put her life and unborn child's life at risk multiple times. For the money.
I think this is the wrong take. I don’t agree that people are good or bad, I think actions are, and there are lots of reasons and motivations a person can end up enabling a bad situation, some of those motivations can even at the time be justified.
I do believe Meta is very bad for the world and has way too much power. Anything that can get people to open their eyes to this is important. Dividing those that are trying isn’t helping.
Thanks for the trouble to read the article and to give a summary. I avoid reading The Guardian on principle.
Frankly, who gives a damn about the motivations? This is clearly in the public's best interest to know, and nobody deserves to be bankrupted over that.
You still don’t have to like it or go on message boards advocating on behalf of the company.
There’s no principle saying that you have to be on the side of an organization being exposed for behavior that is horrible for society, just because they may have a legally sound argument in court.
Laws and rules and courts are fully arbitrary and exist in search of justice.
If the rules brought us to this place, of what use were the rules?
Yeah, sounds like "non-disparagement agreements" are kind of bullshit.
Hey Mark, maybe spend less time on hn and more time fixing the wifi at your tech demos
> 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
It’s not really wrong, though. The book wasn’t an “explosive” reveal like all of these news articles say. It was mostly a bland rehashing of old news combined with some weird office hearsay that felt like forced gossip about the company, not an actual first-hand whistleblower reveal.
It also took a lot of little things and tried to make them sound like a really big deal, like how Meta spent money on measures to reduce Zuckerberg’s exposure to COVID. I guess these things sound bad to people who dislike CEOs, but it’s in any big company’s interest to take extra precautions to prevent their CEO from getting sick.
I think the “whistleblower” designation falls flat because there wasn’t really any whistleblowing in the book as far as I can tell. It was a disgruntled fired employee trying to mix up old news stories with some gossip and sell it for personal gain.
In general, the “whistleblowers” who write books and sell them to the public are very different than real whistleblowers who take evidence to the government or journalists. This person was firmly in the former group.
I don’t agree with the excessive restrictions the government there is putting on her. Sadly seems like par for the course for speech over there right now.
> measures to reduce Zuckerberg’s exposure to COVID.
Zika virus. This was before Covid.
> It was mostly a bland rehashing of old news combined with some weird office hearsay
Which is very much 1st amendment (yes I know private company etc. etc.).
But it wasn't bland, it was actually quite engaging. I get that you don't like her, but I don't think that its a good thing that a large company who values "freedom of expression" and trumpeted its unvarnished support for freedom of speech is trying to bankrupt an _author_.
Its not like there are industrial secrets there either.
> Zika virus. This was before Covid.
Thanks! My mistake.
> Which is very much 1st amendment (yes I know private company etc. etc.).
1st amendment to say it, yes, but 1st amendment does not guarantee freedom from repercussions as agreed upon by private contracts.
This detail from the article is also important:
> 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.
Given that Meta hasn't actually forced her to pay anything for the agreement, this whole "faces bankruptcy" article is starting to feel like another round of the PR tour for her book sales.
> I get that you don't like her
I'm just tired of people abusing the "whistleblower" label for personal profit with little substance. It undermines the importance of real whistleblowers who do actual whistleblowing activities.
> I'm just tired of people abusing the "whistleblower" label for personal profit with little substance. It undermines the importance of real whistleblowers who do actual whistleblowing activities.
That I get. At least shes not grifting like francis haugen. But clearly she wants to affect change, and saw that the only real way to do this is publicly shame the leadership.
> Given that Meta hasn't actually forced her to pay anything for the agreement, this whole "faces bankruptcy" article is starting to feel like another round of the PR tour for her book sales.
I mean yes, but also the implicit threat here is that meta can call in that debt at any time. Which for a company that prides it's self on freedom of expression, its an odd stance. Especially as the book doesn't really contain any secrets.
The voluntary agreement is rarely voluntary, sadly. given the situation of her departure, I can see why she took it. If I were here and not looking like I'd be able to work again, I'd be taking the cash too.
-Mom, yesterday my brother hit me!
-Out of date and previously reported, bro.
Non-competes are being challenged and will be history soon and hopefully so will non-disperagement clauses. Those are just coercive anti-freedom practices.
I read the book and I think it struck me as an accurate portrayal. With this bullying, Zuckerberg is showing how important it is to him that people not know about its contents.
Never been better streisand effect making me want to read a book
Highly recommended. What you will find is that the title does the book justice. The top executives at Facebook aren't so much cartoonishly evil but rather hopelessly inept for the job at hand. They have no idea what they are doing, and little concern by way of the consequences of their actions, or their outsized impacts on individuals and the world in general.
Careless people, indeed.
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.
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.
I read it and also highly recommend it. Knowing the book ends in 2017, the whole thing has something of a "Monster at the End of This Book" effect with both Trump and Myanmar.
I stopped listening half way. The writing was tedious and Meta too revolting.
Would recommend anyway.
Definitely a Must-Read. One of the best books I read this year, and basically spent my whole holiday digging it.
I think it is a real eye-opener.
It was an interesting book. I found it a tough read though. Every single chapter left me angry. A book about some of the worst people you could ever have the misfortune to meet - and unfortunately for her the author comes out looking just as bad. All just truly awful people.
Just purchased it. I never would have read it otherwise.
Seems like the marketing strategy for the book worked.
Don't cut yourself on that edge.
It's not terribly insightful to recognize that the publishers are trying to make the best of a bad situation.
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.
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.
You don't face the consequences of violating a non-disparagement agreement if you don't violate said agreement (for example, by writing a disparaging book). It is pretty easy to avoid for most former employees. Of course, you can do the analysis for yourself on whether the offered severance money is worth it.
> pretty easy to avoid for most former employees.
Actually its not. its just facebook doesn't enforce it. There is a difference between leaving voluntarily, and being given n months wage.
The agreement _must_ be kept secret from everyone apart from your designated spouse and legal representative.
The only thing you are allowed to talk about in relation to meta is that you worked for them, and the dates.
You cannot, using any written or recorded medium give an opinion about meta, its products, employees past and present, positive or otherwise, without prior written agreement.
In return facebook promises not to disparage you, and pays a peppercorn to guarantee that.
the only difference between the pleb agreements and hers is that pleb agreements are only liable for the money that they paid you, (ie 3-9 months wage, but that could also be country agreement)
So everyone of those 40k employees that have been fired in the last 2 years will have been "offered" one of those contracts.
This is much easier said than done. What if her severance was significant? What if she needed it to survive? Meta's line is she was fired for "poor performance and toxic behavior" and a non-disparagement clause often cuts both ways; now instead of saying "she worked her from <start date> to <end date> this was her job title" they can publicly disclose she was let go for serious job failures. It doesn't matter if this is true, good luck getting a new job.
If the severance is significant, it's because they are making a deal with you, not because they are being nice.
Option 1: take the severance package/non-disparagement agreement and decline the $500k book deal focused on disparaging facebook
Option 2: decline the severance and take the $500k book deal.
Too big to care, just like Sarah stated in the book.
Meta and the likes don't need to care anymore.
IANAL, but how is this considered legal? I could see Facebook being allowed to claw back up to the amount of the severance, but $50,000 per statement in perpetuity seems wrong.
“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.
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
I assume a hefty chunk of that has gone towards court costs for the fight to publish the book.
With $500k advance, she has 10 free times to do it.
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.
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.
Reporting crimes is protected by law. See the whistleblower act.
Not all anti-social behavior is illegal. Most isn't.
Say a company operated a short-form video platform, did active research about its effects, knew a large chunk of its user-base were children younger than 6 and knew that the video selection algorithm caused addiction but kept serving then addictive videos because getting the ad money was profitable.
Was any law broken? Should society know all of this?
Laws are put in place to protect society. When a behavior hurts the society the society puts a law against it. Like for example : Australia requires minimum age 16 for creating an online account. This addresses one of the issues you mentioned in your post: https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislat...
This is how abuse is addressed and society is protected. Not by choosing to get a severance package, reneging on the contract, seeking a book deal and then crying 'woe be me' on The Guardian.
PS. I cannot help but notice two things: 1. The sort of people Meta seems to attract. 2. The fact that both you and I are creating online noise and sentiment which will probably help Sarah sell more books (or get another, better deal from Meta). It's better to get away from the computer now.
You do realize that laws like that get passed in part because of leaks... right?
$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.
> 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.
what actual change did sophie zhang manage to effect by doing it "properly"?
She was still dismissed and ignored.
True, Zhang was dismissed and ignored inside Facebook. But by going through the internal and external disclosure channels she left a paper trail that regulators, journalists, and researchers could use. It didn’t fix Meta, but it gave her work legitimacy and fed into hearings and reporting. That’s different from skipping straight to a commercial book deal.
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.
Fair point, but the issue isn’t that she got paid. It’s that the reporting frames her as bankrupt martyr while burying the half-million advance. Making money on a book is fine, but when you sell it as whistleblowing rather than commerce, readers deserve to know the financial context up front.
There’s often significant payouts associated with whistleblowing because it’s so financially risky. The SEC has paid people way more than 500k and it’s not uncommon for those people to regret it.
https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/whistleblower-pro...
> Fair point, but the issue isn’t that she got paid.
Then we shouldn’t assert that it matters. I’m glad we agreed ultimately it doesn’t, but I just want to be very clear there.
The half-million advance does not mean she can’t be going bankrupt. As I said, it’s not exactly lottery money, especially when 10% of that is at risk for every offense she’s up for, and she is struggling to get the rest of her money the book would net because of their blocking it. You’re ignoring a ton of context and overstating how much 500k should solve her financial woes.
Also, it’s not “buried,” it’s in the article clear as day. You just think it should be the first thing stated.
Frankly I’m not sure what your aim is here. You’re being wildly charitable to Facebook here, whereas I would think we should start on her side until we see reason not to be.
> Frankly I’m not sure what your aim is here
I get what you’re saying, but my point is different. It’s not about rooting for Meta, it’s about how every story gets framed as righteous activism. After a while it feels performative more than principled. I don’t think noticing that makes me “pro-Facebook,” it just means I’m tired of the constant activist spin that leaves out key context.
I don’t get what you’re getting from this article that is leading you to the conclusion that this is performative and I don’t know what key context is being left out here. They tell you clearly that she has been paid for this book and how much it was for. That is literally why we are having this discussion.
The whole thing feels performative because the framing is all martyrdom. “Bankruptcy for exposing Meta” makes for a good headline, but when you bury the $500k advance it turns into a morality play instead of straight reporting. Writing a book and doing media is symbolic, but it’s not the same as taking protected disclosures through proper channels. That’s where the activism starts to look more about appearance than effect.
If this is what is happening (which seems to be the case) then it’s not performative whether it feels that way to you or not.
You have no reason to not accept this article at face value yet you seem to be trying awfully hard to find reasons to be cynical and spread doubt.
Skepticism isn’t cynicism. It is just not taking the packaged narrative at face value.
So cry me a river then when Meta asks for the money owed (so far Meta did not).
I would expect someone motivated by the truth to put this out on a blog or podcast for free.
> People have to make a living, that’s capitalism for you.
What does making a living have to do with capitalism? What a strange thing to say.
I don’t understand how this is confusing or otherwise perplexing. People can’t just spend years doing this stuff for free, I’m sure we both know this and it’s strange for you to pretend otherwise.
We don’t have a system that provides for that unless you’re incredibly privileged/financially set already.
I should have been more clear. The entire world doesn’t practice capitalism. You’re projecting that idea like it’s true, it isn’t.
She’s a US citizen living in the US writing for a US publication about a US-based company and being challenged in the US legal system. The US is a capitalist nation.
I do not understand where your objection is coming from.
I came to the comments to find the caveat. Thank you!
I avoid reading the Guardian on principle. The HN discussion is more intelligent than whatever was on the article.
It's literally a quote from the article, though?
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.
It's an open secret that many people here don't read past the headline before commenting, but being open about it and proudly stating it is certainly... an interesting choice on your part.
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.
You can just admit you didn’t read the article.
I proudly admit I do not read the Guardian on principle.
Would you care to share those principles?
Wrapping a tiny bit of truth in innuendoes and click-bait titles with anti-corporate bent. Like for example this article. Free press and all, I guess.
Those are your principles?
I wasn’t the GP
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.”
> She could have started a blog if she was motivated by truth
now you are liable on your own, without any of the backing of a large publisher with specialist lawyers on staff. Plus it'd go nowhere and be taken down almost instantly by facebook.
If the goal was a moral one then you better be willing to die on your own sword.
Do you think we'd be reading the story if it were on some random blog?
Actually, WE might. But my mom wouldn't.
If it’s about principle, you take the hard road. If you take the book deal, that’s profit with activism as garnish.
So what happens if she racks up a few million in fines and declares herself bankrupt, say in the UK, where you can't then be held responsible for earlier debts?
Just ordered the book. Streisand effect in full force
Well she’s done a massive service exposing these absolutely imbecilic people at Facebook. It’s depressing, but aslo helpful to know definitively that our next step as a culture can safely be to end the cult of the billionaire. They do not deserve our admiration, and there is no place for them in public policy.
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.
Crazy idea, how about making non-disparagement clauses illegal?
They serve no purpose, other than protecting abusive and exploitative companies.
If a disgruntled employee says something that is not true, there are already laws the company can use to defend itself and the company has way more resources than an individual. That's enough to deter even people who want to expose the truth but are not confident they can prove it. These clauses just make the power differential even larger.
She'd probably have to appeal arbitration but I think this all could be overturned based on California labor laws.
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".
Because whatever Sarah reports in that book is probably not an actual crime. Look up Whistleblowers act for reference.
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.
> on the verge of bankruptcy
> Meta said that to date, Wynn-Williams had not been forced to make any payments under the agreement.
Unless the reporter and MP are willing to show that Meta is lying about that (which presumably can be easily shown by the book's author producing communications), looks like they are trying to imply causation by the framing of the article.
If you have a pending bill that is greater than your liquid assets, then you are on the verge of bankruptcy.
> Meta said that to date, Wynn-Williams had not been forced to make any payments under the agreement.
which is not the same as "Wynn-Williams" is not liable for any damages. Meta is not going to let someone public claim that meta can make them bankrupt, if it wasn't true. Its bad PR.
Its clear that meta has the power to claim breech of contract, but they are choosing _not_ to at this time. I assume in order to force a stop of book being sold.