File: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing “Big Tech and The Online Child’s Sexual Exploitation Crisis” in Washington, DC on January 31, 2024.
As the creator of the world’s outstanding social media company, Mark Zuckerberg faces his share of vitriol from the public, from Congress and even in hit films. But this time, the criticism of the meta CEO comes from someone who has worked with him for years.
Sarah Wynn-Williams joined Facebook in 2011 and was promoted to the role of director of global policy, but was fired in 2017 after her boss, Joel Kaplan, allegedly sexually harassed her. She released a new book on Tuesday that separates the company’s leadership. The title “The Careless People” refers to Zuckerberg and his eu, including former Chief Operations Officer Cheryl Sandberg and Kaplan. The subtitles are “A warning tale of power, greed, and lost idealism.”
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Meta, which runs Facebook, is trying to crush the book’s splash. On Wednesday, citing her non-inheritance agreement, the company won a temporary arbitration request that Wynn-Williams block further sales and promotion of the book. The orders are not expected to be expanded to her publisher, Flatiron Books.
Meta spokesman Erin Logan told SFGate on Tuesday: She allegedly claims about Wynn Williams’ Kaplan were false and in a statement Thursday she called the book “a loss of honor,” claiming that Wynn Williams skipped “the industry standard fact-checking process.” The book’s publisher said it had been thoroughly reviewed in a statement to the New York Times, and on Thursday afternoon, “The Careless People” was third on Amazon’s bestseller list.
Reading the book makes it clear why Meta wants to stop the spread of Wynn Williams account. Its CEO is awfully off. While many of the book’s bigger points have been reported previously, the anecdotes of Wynn-Williams’ globe-spanning interaction with Zuckerberg are a fresh, detailed and rich story that you’ll expect from every memoir. She is enthusiastic about him, unable to explain his mistakes, ignorant of history, and in one cringy board game session, a very painful loser.
“I hope that people who accumulate Facebook types learn to have a sense of responsibility, but they have no indication of that,” Wynn-Williams writes. “In fact, I see the opposite. The more they see the outcome of their actions, the less leadership there will be on AF-K Mark and Facebook.”
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Some of the moments she describes were already public. Wynn-Williams accused Zuckerberg of lying to the 2018 Senate data privacy hearing and disregarding the amount that Facebook is trying to work with the Chinese Communist Party to unblock the country. In a 2015 UN keynote address, the CEO announced that Facebook is planning to bring the internet to the UN refugee camps. Wynn-Williams writes that the Facebook policy team hasn’t heard the idea and is probably “Ad Lib.”
The other sections are completely new. According to Wynn Williams, Zuckerberg was one dinner, and Andrew Jackson, known for his populist appeal and the inhuman relocation of Native Americans — is America’s best president and “it’s not nearby.” According to one chapter, Zuckerberg told her he often didn’t come to San Francisco’s shared district because he couldn’t get permission to build helicopter pads. She accused Zuckerberg of living in the “bubble,” detailing the moment she forgot her passport and took responsibility for others on her 2016 trip to Peru.
On the point, Win Williams is working on her own impotence in front of a super-strong executive. She described the flight from Peru, writing that then-President Barack Obama was lit up by Zuckerberg over fake news and misinformation on Facebook during the 2016 election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Upon returning home, the CEO grew up and appears to have accused Win Williams of cheating when he defeated the Catan settlers with a board game ticket. She later wrote that after he began to reflect on the US tour like a presidential campaign, Facebook suggested that it be remake the company and news ecosystem at that center. As the plane descended, Wynn Williams wrote, Zuckerberg asked what she thought of his idea – she describes as “power grab.”
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“In the last five years I feel like I’ve seen him face so many choices and lose contact with the basic human decency he had when we started,” she writes, explaining the difficulty of answering Zuckerberg’s questions. “Do I say that? How? How can I tell him these things?”
Wynn-Williams’ critique is not limited to Zuckerberg. She describes the labor culture under Sandberg as very intense, which made Winn Williams feel pressured her to stirrups her story while working. “Oppointments to the open are not Sheryl’s options,” Wynn Williams wrote, claiming that people are “actively hiding bad news and circumstances” for fear of being punished.
Kaplan also falls awfully off. According to the book, he blocked the employment of human rights experts at Wynn-Williams, focusing on Myanmar, where Facebook, in its own words, “helps enough to prevent the platform from inciting splitting and inciting offline violence.” Since 2016, Myanmar’s army has massacred thousands of Muslim Rohingya, hundreds of thousands more fled the country, and incited Facebook posts and groups have incited the flames of violence. For each Wynn-Williams account, the company didn’t have enough Burmese-speaking content moderators.
“It wasn’t because of some degree of grand vision or because of malice towards Muslims in the country,” she wrote. “A lack of money too. My conclusion was that Joel, Elliot (Schleage), Cheryl and Mark didn’t give AF.”
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Wynn-Williams also wrote that Kaplan made inappropriate comments on her as her boss. She writes that Kaplan laid the ground on her on the dance floor shortly after he called out her sensuality in front of other colleagues. She wrote that she was retaliated “almost immediately” with a cut in her duties before she was eventually fired. Wynn-Williams describes research as a “father.”
Meta spokesman Logan told SFGate that Wynn-Williams’ allegations were “misleading” and “unfounded” and “was fired for poor performance and toxic behavior.”
“The whistleblower status protects communications to the government, not the disgruntled activists trying to sell the book,” Logan added. The company has also published documents calling some of the author’s claims “old news.”
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Earlier in January, Zuckerberg appointed Kaplan as head of Meta’s global policy. This is an important communication between the company and Trump.
Do you want to work for a meta or another Bay Area tech company and talk to me? Please contact the Tech Reporter Stephen Council safely by signalling Stephen.council@sfgate.com or 628-204-5452.
