Former Facebook Executive Sues Meta Over Arbitration Gag Order

Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former Facebook policy executive, has filed a lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg's Meta over an arbitration order that has legally silenced her for more than a year. Wynn-Williams, who is the author of “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism” and made controversial claims targeting top leadership, filed the lawsuit in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging that Meta is using an invalid arbitration agreement to enforce a gag order. According to a report by The New York Post, the company is reportedly pursuing catastrophic financial penalties of $50,000 for each alleged violation, including every single copy of her book sold.

‘Come to bed’: What Sarah Wynn-Williams claimed in memoir

Published in March 2025, the memoir details Wynn-Williams’ six-year tenure at the tech giant before she was fired in 2017. The book contains highly controversial claims targeting top leadership, depicting what she describes as a “rotten” corporate culture. Among the most sensational claims in the book are allegations leveled against former COO Sheryl Sandberg. Wynn-Williams writes that during a corporate trip to Europe, Sandberg spent $13,000 on lingerie for herself and a young female assistant. She further alleges that during a flight home on a private jet, Sandberg asked the assistant to join her in “the only bed on the plane.” Furthemore, the book also targets Meta’s current policy chief and president of global affairs, Joel Kaplan, who previously supervised Wynn-Williams. She accuses Kaplan of sexual harassment, alleging he pressed against her on the dance floor during a corporate event and called her “sultry.” When it comes to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, she claimed that he worked “hand in glove” with Beijing and considered sharing Facebook user data with the China in exchange for access to the restricted Chinese market.

Meta responds, says: Former employee wants to sell her book

Meta has rejected all of Wynn-Williams’ claims, labeling the book as false and defamatory. The company states that Wynn-Williams was terminated nearly a decade ago for “poor performance and toxic behaviour,” and that an internal investigation at the time cleared Kaplan of any wrongdoing after finding she had made false claims against colleagues. “This former employee is trying to use the legal process to sell books, which an arbitrator already ruled broke the agreement she signed with the company when she accepted a large severance payment years ago,” a Meta spokesperson told the publication. The tech giant recently scored a major legal victory when an independent arbitrator ruled in Meta's favor, extending the restrictions to Macmillan Publishers and Flatiron Books. “This ruling affirms that Sarah Wynn-Williams’ false and defamatory book should never have been published. This urgent legal action was made necessary by Williams, who... deliberately concealed the existence of her book project and avoided the industry’s standard fact-checking process in order to rush it to shelves,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone had said on X at that time. In her latest lawsuit to lift the gag order and void her severance agreement, Wynn-Williams claims she was financially and emotionally coerced into signing the original non-disparagement and mandatory arbitration clauses when she was terminated.