‘Hostage Situation’: Meta Whistleblower Falls Silent Amid Company’s Threats in Stunning Moment

(Photo by Mattie Neretin/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)

Facebook whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams was forced to sit silently during a panel appearance on Sunday after Meta obtained a legal order blocking her from discussing her tell-all book.

Wynn-Williams’s bestselling book, Carless People, made a variety of bombshell accusations against the company, including allegations that a senior executive engaged in sexual harassment. Meta, owned by billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, pursued arbitration against their former executive, blocking her from discussing the book publicly and imposing a $50,000 fine for each breach of that order.

Despite the legal barriers, Wynn-Williams appeared on a Sunday panel at the literature and arts Hay Festival with investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr and legal scholar Tim Wu. Wynn-Williams was prevented from speaking or even nodding or shaking her head, given guidance by her attorney on strict legal barriers that Meta was able to enforce.

“Meta obtained a temporary order preventing Ms.Wynn-Williams from promoting her book or speaking about certain topics regardless of whether what she says is true,” noted her lawyer’s explanatory letter, read aloud by Cadwalldr at the panel.

Meta’s motion, filed in March, specifically noted Wynn-Williams’s planned appearance at the festival as “an example of conduct that should be formally sanctioned,” according to the letter, which also highlighted that both panelists appearing alongside Wynn-Williams were called out by name in Meta’s sanctions as critics of the company. The Hay Festival paused its sale of Carless People in order to comply with Meta’s motion.

Both Wu and Cadwalldr slammed Meta during the event, while Wynn-Williams sat mute.

“I think this might be a Hay first, in which we have an author in a hostage situation,” said Cadwalldr at the top of the discussion. “Blink once if you can hear us, Sarah, twice if Zuckerberg is an asshole.”

Wu, for his part, referred to Meta’s legal actions as using power like “despotic nations do,” claiming the company was “maximizing the punishment” to scare future potential whistleblowers into silence.

“Any authoritarian regime naturally gravitates towards silencing its critics, and what we have here is the silencing of a critic. This is the age of private censorship. This is the assertion of power,” he said. “This is a demonstration that some of the worst abuses of our time are not confined to kings, emperors, and governments, but to a class of companies that have assumed a sovereign effect and exert their power in the same way that some despotic nations do.”

Meta claimed that it was not restricting their former employee’s freedom of speech or attempting to silence her.

“There is a binding interim arbitration award against Ms Wynn-Williams which she agreed to during her time at Meta and which explicitly prohibits her from promoting her book,” it said. “This is an arbitrator’s order, not Meta deciding to silence anyone. We are entitled to ask that the terms of that order be observed.”

Wynn-Williams received a standing ovation at the panel’s conclusion, tearing up as the audience rose.

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