OPINION:
Sarah Wynn-Williams was just ordered by an arbitrator to stop promoting sales of her book, “Careless People,” a tell-all of her time spent as an executive at Facebook, before it was changed to Meta. Her book supposedly names names, including Mark Zuckerberg’s name, and also tells how the CEO allegedly helped China’s communists develop censorship tools in exchange for opening the market to his social media apps.
“Meta wins emergency ruling in scramble to block sordid tell-all memoir on Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg,” The New York Post wrote.
So … I just bought my copy.
If Zuckerberg’s this worried, then the book’s content must be hitting too close to truth.
After all, he could just sue the author for libel. But his company’s making a preemptive move, hoping to squash its narrative before many read it.
It’s a move of desperation.
“The book claims that [ex-operating chief] Sandberg once spent $13,000 on lingerie for herself and a young female assistant and later invited [author] Wynn-Williams to ‘come to bed’ on a private flight home from Europe,” The New York Post wrote.
In “Careless People,” Wynn-Williams also alleges that Joel Kaplan, another Meta executive, sexually harassed her.
Wynn-Williams, who served for six years as director of public policy at Facebook before leaving in 2017, has filed a whistleblower claim against Meta with the SEC. Meanwhile, her book publisher, Macmillan imprint Flatiron has responded to the arbitrator with the legal equivalent of a shoulder-shrug.
That’s because the publisher isn’t subject to the ruling.
In other words: buyers can still one-click an order of the book at Amazon.
Meta says Winn-Williams was fired because of “poor performance and toxic behavior,” suggesting the book she wrote is filled with innuendo and lies and defamatory claims, and that it never should have been published in the first place.
But it was.
But it has.
And now Meta has given Wynn-Williams the greatest gift a publisher and author could want: free marketing on a global scale — that more than hints at juicy controversy.
Meta could’ve just let the book ride its natural course, kept silent and stayed above the fray. But Zuckerberg’s just come off a slap-down of White House proportions for his acknowledged stifling of free speech on his social media platform.
“Mark Zuckerberg Shocks With Censorship Admission,” CBN News wrote a couple months ago.
“Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says senior [Joe] Biden administration officials pressured Facebook to ‘censor’ some COVID-19 content during the pandemic and vowed that the social media giant would push back if it faced such demands again,” PBS wrote in August.
Sure, sure. Especially when the politics shift.
“Mark Zuckerberg’s stunning censorship admission as he seeks to suck-up to Trump,” The Daily Mail wrote in January.
Now here comes a whistleblower-in-the-works putting pen to page to print — to make a record of — to print for all the world to see — that Zuckerberg is so scornful of free speech that the actually worked with the CCP to help them hone their censorship tools, and bam, there goes his carefully crafted “I Love America,” Liberty Bell-ringing reputation. It’s back to his boot-stomping days.
Meta made a big mistake by waging this public battle with Wynn-Williams.
The phrase ‘never argue with someone who buys ink by the barrel’ seems applicable — and so, too, the tack-on: And never help that person with promoting their message across the world stage. Or, as circus giant P.T. Barnum was said to have put it: All publicity is good publicity.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.
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