Jeff Zuckerberg, Meet Barbara Streisand ⃰

The criminal enterprise formerly known as Facebook™ is aggressively trying to suppress a tell-all memoir by its former global public policy director, and rather ironically, this is getting a lot of ink lately.

They have tried for an injunction, and the most that they have gotten is temporary injunctions preventing Sarah Wynn-Williams from publicizing her book, but the publisher is not subject to her arbitration agreement, so the book will be printed and distributed. 

What Facebook's hardball has done is generated a fair amount of press coverage that would have otherwise not occurred.

I understand why they are doing this, the details are horrifying, though not a surprise:

During the 14 years Sheryl Sandberg worked at Facebook, chief operating officer to Mark Zuckerberg’s chief executive, it was often assumed she was the grown-up keeping the unruly tech kids in line.

Not so, says Sarah Wynn-Williams, who worked at Facebook between 2011 and 2017, rising to become its global public policy director. “There were no adults in the room,” she says. “These are people who have assumed a lot of power, thinking none of the rules apply to them.”

Wynn-Williams’s crusading new memoir, Careless People, has been the talk of Silicon Valley this past week. It is a shocking, darkly funny and highly critical exposé of the six years she spent at the tech giant.

Zuckerberg does not want you to read Careless People. He doesn’t even want you to read this interview. On Wednesday, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, obtained a temporary injunction from a US arbitrator preventing Wynn-Williams from doing any further promotion of the book, although Macmillan went ahead with its UK publication. By Friday night the book had reached No 4 on the print bestsellers list on Amazon.

Meta, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, says the book includes “defamatory and untrue allegations” about its executives, that it is a mix of “out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company” and described Wynn-Williams as a disgruntled former employee “fired for poor performance and toxic behaviour” (recollections differ). Although it axed independent fact-checkers from its own platforms in January, Meta demanded the right to fact-check the book in a legal letter before publication.

 The revelations are not a surprise:

• Zuckerberg is an immature jerk.
• Lots of nepotism and Harvard bros. 
• Cheryl Sandburg seems to have been creepy at best, and a harasser at worst.
• Facebook does not give a f%$# about its employees.
• Zuckerberg did not believe that its action had the effect on the 2016 elections.  When his staff finally explained it to him, his response was considering running for President himself. 
• Facebook promised the Chinese that it would, "Pomote social order."
• That Facebook's right wing advocate, Brooks Brothers Riot participant Joel Kaplan, had sexually harassed her. 

This book sounds like a fascinating read, and but for the lawfare against Ms.. Wynn-Williams, I would never have known of it.

^*For those of you who have been living in a cave since 2003, the Streisand Effect refers to when attempts to suppress information leads to wider notoriety for the aforementioned information.