Meta said that it would take immediate legal action against the publisher of the memoir, ‘Careless People’, a memoir by ex-Facebook employee Sarah Wynn-Williams, over allegations including against Meta’s Global Chief Joel Kaplan for sexual harassment.
Wynn-Williams reported allegations of sexual harassment against her former boss, Joel Kaplan, who was Meta’s vice president for global policy at the time. Now, Kaplan is the chief global affairs officer for Meta – a role he took shortly after President Trump took office.
Meta responded to the sexual harassment allegations that it was a “mix of out-of-date”, “previously reported claims”, and “false accusations” about Meta’s executives.
The company also said that Wynn-Williams was fired from Meta eight years ago for poor performance and toxic behaviour. According to the company’s spokesperson, an investigation by Meta also took place when Wynn-Willams reported the harassment, but it concluded that the allegations were unfounded and misleading.
Joel Kaplan became Meta’s new chief global affairs officer at the beginning of this year and has led Meta to a new strategy for content moderation by backtracking on fact-checking commitments in the US. Kaplan is also believed to have strong ties to the US administration as a former Republican lobbyist.
Several of Meta’s executives have since come forward in support of Kaplan, such as Tessa Lyons, currently vice president of Instagram, who said that parts of the book were “disconnected from reality” and that her former colleague painted an “absurd picture” of the workplace.
Meta has also accused the author of having been paid by anti-Facebook activists to continue her work. “Whistleblower status protects communications to the government, not disgruntled activists trying to sell books”, Meta’s spokesperson told Euractiv.
The memoir covers more than six years when Wynn-Williams worked for Meta and includes other allegations that Facebook ignored, including alarms about violations of human rights and democracy – especially in China. In an interview, she said that the company is making similar mistakes again.
Meta criticised the allegations in the rest of the memoir as well; it called it a “careless reprint” and that the memoir was a new book about “old news”.
The book ‘Careless People’ goes on sale this week.
