A former Facebook employee claims she was terminated after reporting that her boss sexually harassed her, according to her forthcoming memoir.
In her upcoming book Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams accused the tech giant of retaliating against her after she filed a complaint against her boss Joel Kaplan, who was then-vice president for global public policy.
She was fired from her post as director of global public policy in 2017, a decision she believes was retaliation for making the complaint.
Meta said in a statement to The Independent that she was fired for “poor performance and toxic behavior.” The company confirmed that Wynn-Williams accused Kaplan of sexual harassment in 2017, but it said an investigation at the time determined that she made “misleading and unfounded allegations of harassment.” Kaplan now serves as chief global affairs officer.
Elliot Schrage, one of Wynn-Williams’ supervisors at the company, also told NBC News in a statement that he fired her “based on her repeated failures” to address performance concerns such as “indecision, shifting focus, and failure to execute on hiring” on the policy leadership team.
In her seven years at the company, she worked closely with CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former COO Sheryl Sandberg, with whom she details a number of uncomfortable encounters.
“This is a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives,” Meta said in a statement. “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.”
Sarah Feinberg, who overlapped with Wynn-Williams at Meta and said they were colleagues, vouched for Kaplan’s character in a post on Threads.
“I worked with Joel Kaplan throughout my years at Facebook — he was one of my closest colleagues — and I have never observed him be anything other than professional, thoughtful, strategic and fair,” she wrote.
Feinberg added: “While everyone is certainly entitled to their own opinion and their own experience, I do not recognize this account of the company, its leaders, or my time there.”
In her memoir, set to come out Tuesday, Wynn-Williams also alleges that the company ignored internal warnings about potential harm to human rights and democracy.
Weeks before Trump took office, Zuckerberg announced Meta was axing its fact-checkers on Facebook and Instagram.
“Fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S.,” he said at the time. He and other billionaires attended President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Wynn-Williams said it was important she speak out now to inform the public what was going on at the company behind closed doors.
“We’re in a moment now where technology CEOs and political leaders around the world are joining forces and compounding their influence, compounding their power, and that’s got consequences for everybody,” she told NBC News. “People need to understand what has actually gone on.”
