--- title: "Facebook Is Desperately Trying to Keep You From Learning What’s in This Book" description: "Facebook has won arbitration preventing a whistleblower who authored a new memoir from promoting her book." date: "2025-03-13" modified: "2025-03-13" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/facebook-stop-book" categories: - "Future Society" tags: - "facebook" - "mark zuckerberg" - "Meta" --- # Facebook Is Desperately Trying to Keep You From Learning What’s in This Book ![Facebook has won arbitration preventing a whistleblower who authored a new memoir from promoting her book.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* Facebook's parent company Meta is desperately fighting to stop you from reading some bombshell allegations made against it in a new memoir — and right now, it's winning. On Wednesday, the Mark Zuckerberg-owned company prevailed in an arbitration case, the outcome of which temporarily prohibits the memoir's author, former employee Sarah Wynn-Williams, from promoting or distributing her book, the [*New York Times* reports](). The memoir, "[Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism]()," released this week, rips into Meta's toxic work culture and provides a behind-the-scenes look at how the company handled some of its worst scandals. Among her cavalcade of damning allegations, Wynn-Williams also reveals the repeated sexual harassment she faced from senior Meta executives. But the tell-all now faces serious obstacles to finding an audience. During a Wednesday hearing, an arbitrator concluded that Meta had shown enough evidence that Wynn-Williams violated a nondisparagement contract she signed as an employee. Wynn-Williams is prohibited from promoting her work and must retract her comments that were deemed "disparaging," according to the report. The case will now enter private arbitration. In the meantime, Wynn-Williams' publisher, Flatiron Books — an imprint of Macmillan Books — says it will continue to promote the memoir, as the ruling does not prevent it from continuing publication. "We are appalled by Meta's tactics to silence our author through the use of a nondisparagement clause in a severance agreement," a Flatiron spokesperson told the *NYT*. "The book went through a thorough editing and vetting process, and we remain committed to publishing important books such as this." The *NYT* described the recent move as "one of Meta's most forceful public repudiations of a former employee's tell-all memoir." The company has a history of whistleblowers, most notably Frances Haugen, who [released a trove of internal documents]() detailing how Facebook pursued "profits over safety." At the time, Facebook executives seemed to[ threaten Haugen with retaliatory action](), but no lawsuit was ever filed. Wynn-Williams was an employee at Meta for seven years, working her way up to an executive position. She left in 2017 — fired, she alleges — shortly after she reported sexual harassment. In addition to spotlighting some truly despicable behavior, "Careless People" — the name being an allusion to "The Great Gatsby" — also paints a portrait of the enormous-but-fragile egos of the men running it, including Zuckerberg. Employees, walking on eggshells, allegedly [lost games of Settlers of Catan on purpose]() to let their head honcho win. In a statement per the *NYT*, a Meta spokesperson called the book a "mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives," maintaining that Wynn-Williams was fired for poor performance. **More on Meta:** *[Instagram Apologizes for Showing Stream of Horrific Real-Life Murders in Users' Feeds]()* ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()