A former Facebook employee who wrote a bestselling memoir about the company appeared on stage at the 2026 Hay Festival of Literature and Arts – but was forbidden from saying a word.
Sarah Wynn-Williams, author of Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, had been advised against participating in the public talk “The Power of Tech”, following a legal injunction imposed by Meta, Facebook’s parent company. The author risks a fine of $50,000 (£37,100) any time she engages in promoting the book.
In Careless People, she detailed her years working at the social media giant; it contained a number of headline-making allegations about the workplace culture, its political influence, decision-making, and Wynn-Williams’s own termination from the company.
Copies of Careless People had been removed from sale in the Hay Festival shops ahead of the event, in order to avoid breaching the legal injunction.
During the conversation – which also featured academic Tim Wu and journalist Carole Cadwalladr – Wynn-Williams remained motionless, and was not able to nod or shake her head. Cadwalladr joked to the audience: “I think this might be a Hay first, in which we have an author in a hostage situation.”
At the conclusion of the talk, Wynn-Williams received a standing ovation, and was visibly moved to tears.
Meta filed a lawsuit against Wynn-Williams last year, claiming that the publication of her book was in violation of a non-disparagement agreement she had signed upon leaving the company.
Wynn-Williams joined Facebook in 2011 and worked there for seven years. In Careless People, she claimed that she was dismissed from her position as director of global public policy after filing a sexual harassment complaint against her boss, Joel Kaplan, then vice president for global public policy.
Meta said in a statement to The Independent that she had been fired for “poor performance and toxic behavior”. The company described her allegations of harassment against Kaplan as “misleading and unfounded”. It has said that he was cleared of wrongdoing after an investigation in 2017.
Thanks to Meta’s legal filing last year, Wynn-Williams faces a fine of $50,000 (£37,100) whenever she engages in “amplifying any further disparaging, crucial or otherwise detrimental comments” about the company.
Onstage at the Hay Festival event, Cadwalladr read aloud a letter sent by Wynn-Williams’ lawyers, detailing claims from a sanctions motion filed by Meta in 2026, ahead of her attendance at the festival.
In the letter, it is claimed that Wynn-Williams would be in violation of the arbitration order “any time she appears in public in a place where she should know that her book is available for sale and her presence might draw attention to it”. Referring to the Hay Festival booking specifically, Meta describes Cadwalladr as a journalist “primarily known for her negative coverage of Meta”, and Wu as “another known critic” of the company.
Macmillan, who published the memoir in the UK, has stated that it is “committed to upholding freedom of speech”.
