A former Facebook employee, who wrote a bestselling memoir about her time at the company, has sued Meta for trying to “silence” her.
Sarah Wynn-Williams, author of the 2025 book Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, claims the tech giant’s gag order, which blocked her from speaking about the company or promoting the book, is invalid.
The lawsuit also alleges that a severance agreement, which instructed her not to criticise Meta after leaving the company, was signed under duress. Earlier this year, Wynn-Williams appeared on stage at the 2026 Hay Festival of Literature and Arts – but was forbidden from saying a word and risked being fined $50,000 (£37,100) any time she engaged in promoting the whistle-blowing memoir.
Now, the author is asking an open court “to intervene and undo what a secret one imposed”, with the lawsuit marking “the first time Sarah has been able to explain to the world what has happened to her”, according to Ravi Naik, legal director of AWO Legal and Sarah’s UK lawyer.
Navik continued: “470 days ago, Meta used a private arbitrator to silence Sarah Wynn-Williams. No judge, no trial, and no finding that she said anything untrue. Just a secret proceeding between an arbitrator and one of the most powerful corporations in the world. Sarah was not present and she was not represented. Meta asked, and Sarah’s silence was granted.”
Mike Harpley, Non-Fiction Publisher at Pan and Sarah’s UK editor, said that the lawsuit “details how Meta has enforced its legal order against Sarah Wynn-Williams with a chilling campaign of surveillance”, adding that Careless People “raises crucial issues for society”.
Wynn-Williams served as director of global public policy at Facebook, now operating under parent company Meta Platforms Inc, from 2011 until her firing in 2017.
Careless People alleges cruel and otherwise disturbing behaviour by CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives. It also describes Zuckerberg’s alleged efforts to win favour with Chinese officials. Meta has countered that Wynn-Williams violated her agreement and wrote a book filled with inaccuracies.
In the memoir, Wynn-Williams accused Facebook of spreading misinformation during Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and also of suggesting advertisers target “13-to-17-year-olds across its platforms, including Instagram, during moments of psychological vulnerability when they feel ‘worthless,’ ‘insecure,’ ‘stressed,’ ‘defeated,’ ‘anxious,’ ‘stupid, ‘useless,’ and ‘like a failure’.”
For example, she claimed that Facebook could track when teenage girls deleted selfies so that they could be “served a beauty ad”.
Meta has dismissed the book as “a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives”, claiming that Wynn-Williams was “fired for poor performance and toxic behaviour”, and that “an investigation at the time determined she made misleading and unfounded allegations of harassment”. Former Meta employees have also disputed her allegations.
Wynn-Williams is asking the court to lift the company’s arbitration order and vacate her severance agreement.
Meta said in a statement that its “former employee is trying to use the legal process to sell books, which an arbitrator already ruled broke the agreement she signed with the company when she accepted a large severance payment years ago. Her book is divorced from reality, disparaging and riddled with false claims.”
According to the lawsuit, Meta had obtained an emergency gag order that bars Wynn-Williams and her lawyers from criticising the company or promoting her book.
For more than a year since the book was published, the lawsuit claims, Meta has surveilled her, with company representatives attending her public appearances and photographing her, “all to document that at each event, Ms Wynn-Williams said nothing about Meta or her book”.
The company even took issue with Wynn-Williams attending Hay earlier this year, where she sat on a panel but remained silent – because other panellists were critics of the company.
During the conversation, which also featured academic Tim Wu and journalist Carole Cadwalladr, Wynn-Williams remained motionless and was not able to nod or shake her head. Cadwalladr joked to the audience: “I think this might be a Hay first, in which we have an author in a hostage situation.”
At the conclusion of the talk, Wynn-Williams received a standing ovation and was visibly moved to tears.
“Meta is pursuing Ms Wynn-Williams at the expense of free speech and legal constraints not only because she refused to bow to the greed and power of Meta, Mr Zuckerberg, and other executives, but also to strike fear into the heart of anyone else who dares to consider speaking the truth about Meta’s unlawful and abusive practices in the public interest,” the lawsuit says.
Additional reporting by Agencies
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