A new memoir that paints Facebook’s parent company and its executives in a negative light is rising on Amazon’s Best Sellers rankings faster than you can ask a Meta AI assistant to define “Streisand effect.”
Careless People, written by former Meta employee Sarah Wynn-Williams, was the No. 5 best-selling book on Amazon as of early Thursday afternoon, one day after an arbitrator ordered the author to temporarily stop promoting the book. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone applauded the emergency ruling yesterday on Threads, saying it affirmed that the “false and defamatory book should never have been published.”
However, the legal fight appears to have drawn increased attention to Careless People, which was ranked around No. 81 shortly after Stone’s post—meaning it rose more than 75 places since then. Amazon’s sales rankings are based on recent activity around a product and tend to fluctuate frequently, but getting into the top five in the books category on any given day is an enviable position for an author.
Additionally, the book is No. 1 in three subcategories: scientist biographies, politics and social sciences, and industries.
WHAT IS CARELESS PEOPLE ABOUT?
Wynn-Williams worked as the global director of public policy for Meta when it was still called Facebook. She was fired in 2017 for what Meta describes as “poor performance and toxic behavior.”
Careless People details her time at the social media giant and apparently contains unflattering portrayals of CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former COO Sheryl Sandberg. One claim in the book that has been making the rounds in media circles involves Zuckerberg’s attempts to enter China, which included supposed anti-censorship tools to appease the Communist government. Meta has said these details were reported years ago.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
The arbitration order essentially prevents Wynn-Williams from saying anything critical about Meta, presumably until the two sides can privately arbitrate the matter.
Reached for comment by Fast Company, a Meta spokesperson continued to cast aspersions on the author and pointed to the emergency arbitration ruling as a victory. “This 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,” the company said.
However, a spokesperson for Flatiron Books, the Macmillan imprint that published Careless People, didn’t seem ready to back down.
“The arbitration order has no impact on Macmillan,” Flatiron spokesperson Marlena Bittner told Fast Company. “However, we are appalled by Meta’s tactics to silence our author through the use of a non-disparagement clause in a severance agreement . . . The book went through a thorough editing and vetting process, and we remain committed to publishing important books such as this. We will absolutely continue to support and promote it.”
