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After Meta Blocks Whistleblower's Book Promotion, It Becomes an Amazon Bestseller (thetimes.com) 39

Posted by EditorDavid from the unfriending dept.
After Meta convinced an arbitrator to temporarily prevent a whistleblower from promoting their book about the company (titled: Careless People), the book climbed to the top of Amazon's best-seller list. And the book's publisher Macmillan released a defiant statement that "The arbitration order has no impact on Macmillan... We will absolutely continue to support and promote it." (They added that they were "appalled by Meta's tactics to silence our author through the use of a non-disparagement clause in a severance agreement.")

Saturday the controversy was even covered by Rolling Stone: [Whistleblower Sarah] Wynn-Williams is a diplomat, policy expert, and international lawyer, with previous roles including serving as the Chief Negotiator for the United Nations on biosafety liability, according to her bio on the World Economic Forum...

Since the book's announcement, Meta has forcefully responded to the book's allegations in a statement... "Eight years ago, Sarah Wynn-Williams was fired for poor performance and toxic behavior, and an investigation at the time determined she made misleading and unfounded allegations of harassment. Since then, she has been paid by anti-Facebook activists and this is simply a continuation of that work. Whistleblower status protects communications to the government, not disgruntled activists trying to sell books."
But the negative coverage continues, with the Observer Sunday highlighting it as their Book of the Week. "This account of working life at Mark Zuckerberg's tech giant organisation describes a 'diabolical cult' able to swing elections and profit at the expense of the world's vulnerable..."

Though ironically Wynn-Williams started their career with optimism about Facebook's role in the app internet.org. . "Upon witnessing how the nascent Facebook kept Kiwis connected in the aftermath of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, she believed that Mark Zuckerberg's company could make a difference — but in a good way — to social bonds, and that she could be part of that utopian project...

What internet.org involves for countries that adopt it is a Facebook-controlled monopoly of access to the internet, whereby to get online at all you have to log in to a Facebook account. When the scales fall from Wynn-Williams's eyes she realises there is nothing morally worthwhile in Zuckerberg's initiative, nothing empowering to the most deprived of global citizens, but rather his tool involves "delivering a crap version of the internet to two-thirds of the world". But Facebook's impact in the developing world proves worse than crap. In Myanmar, as Wynn-Williams recounts at the end of the book, Facebook facilitated the military junta to post hate speech, thereby fomenting sexual violence and attempted genocide of the country's Muslim minority. "Myanmar," she writes with a lapsed believer's rue, "would have been a better place if Facebook had not arrived." And what is true of Myanmar, you can't help but reflect, applies globally...
"Myanmar is where Wynn-Williams thinks the 'carelessness' of Facebook is most egregious," writes the Sunday Times: In 2018, UN human rights experts said Facebook had helped spread hate speech against Rohingya Muslims, about 25,000 of whom were slaughtered by the Burmese military and nationalists. Facebook is so ubiquitous in Myanmar, Wynn-Williams points out, that people think it is the entire internet. "It's no surprise that the worst outcome happened in the place that had the most extreme take-up of Facebook." Meta admits it was "too slow to act" on abuse in its Myanmar services....

After Wynn-Williams left Facebook, she worked on an international AI initiative, and says she wants the world to learn from the mistakes we made with social media, so that we fare better in the next technological revolution. "AI is being integrated into weapons," she explains. "We can't just blindly wander into this next era. You think social media has turned out with some issues? This is on another level."

After Meta Blocks Whistleblower's Book Promotion, It Becomes an Amazon Bestseller More | Reply

After Meta Blocks Whistleblower's Book Promotion, It Becomes an Amazon Bestseller

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  • Mark, meet Barbara (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Sunday March 16, 2025 @03:02PM (#65238393)
    The beauty of the internet is the more you try to suppress something, the more it's known. It is also it’s greatest weakness.

  • What's their fear? (Score:5, Funny)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Sunday March 16, 2025 @03:13PM (#65238401)

    That Zuckerberg and Meta will seem too evil or not evil enough -- especially given the current political climate?

  • Who didn't see this coming?

  • All the hallmarks of a thin-skinned executive (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Old Man Kensey ( 5209 ) on Sunday March 16, 2025 @06:09PM (#65238745) Homepage
    The public statements are exactly the kind of thing some insecure executive who takes personal offense (for whatever reason, not necessarily because they're personally called out) demands be said - I've seen it from the inside of a few employers over the years. I guarantee you the people inside Facebook whose actual job is crisis communications in situations like this are pulling their hair out because they know this is the worst possible response (and are being overridden), unless they're just incompetent at their jobs.

  • I'm about 30% in to this book... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Squiff ( 1658137 ) on Sunday March 16, 2025 @08:36PM (#65238943)
    ... And it's pretty obvious why Facebook /meta leadership are trying to suppress it and yet are strangely silent about their exact grievances. However morally bankrupt you thought they were, the truth is worse, much worse. It's also clear that it's going to be almost impossible for them to meaningfully refute it. The author is a trained lawyer and international diplomat, she knows what she can defend. In many cases the corroboration is already out there or available from sources beyond reproach.

  • Back in the 1900s, I would read about some hot new book and tell myself I might want to r get hold of a copy myself. But by the time I happened to be in the vicinity of a bookstore (remember those?) I had usually forgotten about the reference. Meanwhile, over the years as my vision has declined (I have AMD) I moved over to ebooks, because I can still read those easily. I'm reading more now than ever before, because getting books is so frictionless. Yesterday was an example.

    I was reading o my online Wired a

  • I saw a few posts about this story maybe on Reddit and then on Slashdot yesterday. Took a look at it on the Kindle store and bought it before it could actually get shadow banned, one tech bro to another. Haven't read it yet but when I bought it yesterday there were I think 51 reviews and it was the highest scored book I've ever seen at 4.8. Just checked now and it's up to 98 reviews and still 4.8. Global search for the word careless shows all similar searches are for that book. That said, it is pricey for a

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mattr ( 78516 )

      p.s. by "one tech bro to another" I meant what if Bezos pulled it from the store in some weird techbro solidarity pact with Zuck. They are pulling so much shady stuff now I'd be surprised if they prey on each other and instead try to avoid bad press for any of their ilk.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mattr ( 78516 )

      p.p.s. oh yeah at least once or twice on TikTok. There's a woman who reads an excerpt from it each post.. I think this is more accelerated than the normal Streisand effect because of vindictive joy against Zuck and whatever part he has to play in current news. I don't know if I will actually get around to reading it thanks to others reading it for me but supporting the author is okay too.

  • ROFL (Score:3)

    by Barsteward ( 969998 ) on Monday March 17, 2025 @05:39AM (#65239375)
    Love it when no holds barred free speech advocates get burnt by free speech and they try and stop free speech.

  • The book has been in the news for an entire week before the Meta attempt to block it's promotion (the amount of promotion it was getting is what spurred the case in the first place).

    This was on track to become a best seller regardless.

  • The ol' smear campaign (Score:3)

    by coopertempleclause ( 7262286 ) on Monday March 17, 2025 @06:55AM (#65239453)

    Eight years ago, Sarah Wynn-Williams was fired for poor performance and toxic behavior, and an investigation at the time determined she made misleading and unfounded allegations of harassment

    Of course she was. I remember when the government agencies always used to trot out the tired smear campaign as soon as they threatened to go public with something.

  • ‘Zuckerberg, in short, turns out to be a giant man-baby [theguardian.com] suffering from a severe case of the Dunning-Kruger effect, whereby people overestimate their own cognitive abilities. His colleagues obsequiously let him win at board games. He calls politicians unfriendly to Facebook “adversaries” and instructs his team to apply pressure to “pull them over to our side”. He blames his assistants when he forgets his own passport.’

  • I spotted a spelling mistake in the article:

    "This account of working life at Mark Zuckerberg's tech giant organisation describes a 'diabolical cult'"

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