May 31st Sarah Wynn-Williams entered the stage as a panelist at the prestigious Hay Festival, alongside law professor Tim Wu and journalist Carole Cadwalladr. Before she said a word, she was greeted by cheers. She never said a word, sitting in silence while the other two panelists discussed the evils of gigantic tech. Nevertheless, her still presence galvanized the audience, Wu later told me. “It’s the only time I’ve ever gotten a standing ovation on a book panel.”
Wynn-Williams didn’t speak up – she couldn’t speak – because of an arbitrator’s interim ruling that prevented her from promoting or even mentioning her best-selling book about her time at Meta, where she worked as director of global public policy. In 2017, the company fired her, and she and her lawyers negotiated a deal in which the company would pay her $780,000. The agreement said she would refrain from making any “demeaning, critical or otherwise harmful comments” about Meta. In March 2025, Meta learned that Wynn-Williams intended to publish a memoir Haphazard people, which was basically a 400 page disparaging commentary. Meta immediately called for emergency arbitration, and an interim ruling stipulated that Wynn-Williams could not promote her book in any way. That ruling is still in effect, and a more extensive arbitration hearing has been scheduled for October.
Now Wynn-Williams has spoken at length under the protection of a lawsuit filed on June 25. She files a lawsuit to set aside the arbitration award and transfer the dispute to public courts, justifying that this process violated her right to freedom of speech. Her career prospects, she claims in her affidavit, have been damaged because Meta argues – with the backing of an arbitrator – that almost anything she says about technology policy could be construed as book promotion. Every time he does so, he risks a $50,000 fine. Her lawyers say the ruling “restricted Ms. Wynn-Williams’ appearances for more than a year and prevented her from fully participating in increasingly urgent public conversations.” As she put it in her statement: “I feel that Meta has unlimited control over my speech, livelihood, movements and ability to socialize with others.”
Meta’s response filed this week calls her lawsuit “a last-ditch attempt to circumvent the negotiated arbitration process and avoid a final determination on the merits.” He repeatedly cites the fact that Wynn-Williams agreed to both the non-disparagement clause and the arbitration process itself.
The importance of this legal proceeding does not depend on which side prevails. At a moment when Large Tech is being challenged for its power and impunity, the optics of the case speak louder than the subtleties of any contract dispute. This optic furthers the narrative that Meta is a heartless and negative force determined to suppress the truth of his evil deeds.
In her statement, Wynn-Williams claims that she chose to agree to the terms of the contract under duress. (Meta claims it negotiated for her with experienced employment lawyers and knew full well she was giving up her free speech in exchange for a $780,000 buyout). Her legal filing claims that when Mark Zuckerberg spoke at Georgetown University in 2019 praising free speech, and when Meta said it would no longer force harassment complainants to resolve disputes through private arbitration, she felt the terms of her contract no longer applied. She didn’t bother to check with Meta to see if this questionable assumption was correct and kept the book a secret.
On the other hand, she is right that the scope of restrictions imposed on her confined her professional opportunities. It seems reasonable that she should be free to raise general technology policy issues without worrying about bankrupting her, especially since Meta representatives travel to monitor her public appearances. Still, there’s a certain timidity about her in how she defines what is and isn’t book promotion: sitting in silence during the Hay Festival seems more flammable than repeating the damaging anecdotes in her book. “Isn’t that bear abuse?” I asked one of her lawyers, Corey Stoughton. “This bear will catch anything,” she told me, referring to Meta’s relentless pursuit of this case.