The company, previously known as Facebook, filed a lawsuit against Sarah Wynn-Williams, the plaintiff of a book that exposes internal stories about high-ranking executives and accuses the company with corporate misconduct. On Wednesday, a referee from Chicago decided in favor of the goal, preventing Wynnn-Williams from promoting the work while the lawsuit advances. The company claims that it has violated a non -defamation clause present in its termination contract.
Wynnn-Williams, who worked on the goal from 2011 to 2017 and has reached the position of global director of public policy, is now prohibited from talking about her bombastic book, entitled Careless People: A Cautary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism. She was also ordered to interrupt the publication of the work in any format, as she is under her control, as stated in the legal document released by the company.
Read more:
Inspired by ‘The Great Gatsby’
So far, Careless People can still be found in some online stores, and several reports have explored their content. The book was released on March 11 and received a praise critique of the New York Times, which described it as “dark and genuinely shocking: a detailed and ugly portrait of one of the world’s most powerful companies,” also highlighting the author’s talent to tell stories.
The title of the book refers to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. The epigraph of the work cites the famous passage:
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – destroyed things and creatures, and then retreated into their money or vast negligence, or what kept them together, and let other people clean the mess they did.”
In the book, Wynn-Williams reports several ethical failures that he would have witnessed during his six years in the goal. She states, for example, that CEO Mark Zuckerberg sought ways to allow the company to operate in China, even if it meant accepting Beijing’s censorship. It also claims that managers have ignored their complaints of sexual harassment against Joel Kaplan, a high -ranking executive and current director of global affairs. In addition, the work details supposedly abusive and bizarre behavior of former COO Sheryl Sandberg.
Continues after advertising
Read more:
Several media released the book’s most controversial reports before its official release on Tuesday, March 11. However, the next day, the goal was able to convince emergency referee Nicolas Gowen that he had a valid case against Wynn-Williams.
After the favorable decision, Goal spokesman Andy Stone published the court order on Threads, accompanied by an official statement of the company:
Continues after advertising
“This decision confirms that Sarah Wynn-Williams’ fake and defamatory book should never have been published. This urgent legal action was necessary because Williams, more than eight years after his resignation, deliberately hid the project’s existence and avoided industry’s standard checking process to hurry the book’s launch. ”
Questioned about the case, the goal sent the same statement to the Fortune.
Macmillan publisher, responsible for publication of the book, countered the accusations and maintained its support for the work. In a statement to Fortunehe stated that the book has gone through a rigorous process of editing and verification of facts and stressed that it will continue to promote the publication.
Continues after advertising
Read more:
Macmillan and its subsidiary Flaton Books, responsible for the Careless People edition, were cited in the arbitration request of the goal. However, the publisher argues that it should not be involved in the dispute, as it is not part of the Wynn-Williams employment contract.
“The arbitral order has no impact on Macmillan,” the company said, emphasizing the sentence in the official statement. “However, we are shocked by the goal tactics to silence our author through a non -defamation clause in a termination agreement.”
Continues after advertising
The publisher also pointed out that “the referee’s decision makes no reference to the allegations within Careless People.” Until now, Fortune failed to contact Wynn-Williams for comments.
c.2025 Fortune Media IP Limited
Distributed by The New York Times Licensing Group
