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Sarah Wynn-Williams joined Facebook in 2011, during the company’s “move fast and break things” era. As a former United Nations diplomat, she aimed to help Facebook improve its global standing.
Over nearly seven years at the company, Wynn-Williams witnessed some of Facebook’s most significant and controversial moments. Recently, she published Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, a memoir about her time at the company and her growing disillusionment with Facebook’s role in the world.
Since the book’s announcement, Meta has launched a PR campaign against it. The company initiated arbitration proceedings, resulting in a ruling that now prevents Wynn-Williams from promoting her book. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone stated that the arbitrator’s decision “affirms that Sarah Wynn Williams’ false and defamatory book should never have been published.” He claimed that “urgent legal action was made necessary by Williams, who more than eight years after being terminated by the company, deliberately concealed the existence of her book project and avoided the industry’s standard fact-checking process in order to rush it to shelves after waiting for eight years.”
Her publisher, Flatiron Books, expressed dismay at Meta’s actions, noting that “the arbitrator’s order makes no reference to the claims” in the book, which “went through a thorough editing and vetting process.”
After reading the book, it’s clear why Meta’s PR team has made such a fuss. Wynn-Williams worked closely with top executives, traveling with Mark Zuckerberg and former COO Sheryl Sandberg as they met with foreign leaders and shaped policies that defined Facebook. She also shares firsthand accounts of what Zuckerberg, Sandberg, and current Chief of Global Affairs Joel Kaplan did and said behind closed doors. Much of it isn’t pretty.
Here are some of her most shocking claims:
Zuckerberg requested to be “gently mobbed” during a visit to Asia
Wynn-Williams often organized meetings between Facebook executives and heads of state. One bizarre detail is Zuckerberg’s request ahead of a three-week trip to Asia. According to Wynn-Williams, Zuckerberg asked her to arrange either a “peace rally” or a “riot” during his visit. Facebook’s CEO never explained the request, but Wynn-Williams speculates he wanted “to test out how effective his product is in turning Facebook’s online tools into offline power.”
At first, I think he’s joking. Peace rallies are not my area of expertise, and-to be frank-I’ve never been asked to organize a riot before. Especially one for a tech CEO. I assume something has been lost in his communication-that it’s some sort of mix-up. “Riot” and “peace rally” are such completely different things. Then Debbie emails to say that she ran into Mark and he told her that he wants a peace rally or a riot and we need to come up with some ideas that will enable him to be surrounded by people or be “gently mobbed.”
Zuckerberg refused to take meetings before noon, even with heads of state
Zuckerberg had a “strict” policy about not taking meetings before noon, which applied to both internal meetings and those with heads of state. Wynn-Williams recounts how Zuckerberg’s “refusal” to take morning meetings almost derailed a planned meeting with the president of Colombia. That same year, she said she was forced to reschedule Zuckerberg’s address at the UN to a later time slot because, according to Wynn-Williams, “the United Nations isn’t important enough for Mark to do an event before noon.”
Facebook took “extreme measures” to protect Zuckerberg from Zika during a visit to Peru for the APEC conference. To protect the CEO, who was hoping to soon conceive his second child, the company built a “controlled structure” on the conference site where ventilation, exposure to others, and bug mitigation could be overseen by Facebook. Wynn-Williams dubbed it “operation perfect sperm.”
Zuckerberg’s “desperate” attempts to talk to Xi Jinping
Wynn-Williams delves into Facebook’s plans to bring the social network to China. She also details Zuckerberg’s attempts to get face time with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
In 2015, Zuckerberg flew to Seattle for a “longer than normal” handshake with Xi (who was in the city for a tech summit Zuckerberg was not invited to). He later caused a “diplomatic crisis” when he posted
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