Meta’s campaign to bury a former employee’s dishonest memoir doesn’t seem to have quite worked. In fact, the company’s legal maneuvers to block the book appear to have had the opposite effect.
“The Carefree People” debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. It also spent most of the week at number three on Amazon’s bestseller list. This despite the fact that Sarah Wynn-Williams, Facebook’s former policy director, was barred from promoting or publicly discussing the book following a lawsuit filed by Meta.
The memoir details the inner workings of Facebook during the nearly seven years that Wynn-Williams worked at the company. It reveals new details about the company’s relentless drive to bring the social network to China, as well as numerous shocking stories about how Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and other executives behaved behind closed doors. (In addition to her revelations in “Careless People,” Wynn-Williams also filed a whistleblower complaint with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. That complaint has not been made public, but according to NBC News, she alleges that Facebook “misled” investors.)
Meta has strongly opposed Wynn-Williams and the book, describing it in a statement as “a mixture of outdated and previously published claims about the company and false accusations against our executives.” The company says Wynn-Williams was fired in 2017 “for poor performance and toxic behavior.”
Meta filed an arbitration case against Wynn-Williams last week, resulting in a ruling that bars her from publicly discussing or promoting the book for now. But as best-seller lists show, the move has not dampened interest in the book.
