Legal action forces Facebook whistleblower to sit in silence at Hay festival

uxhacker | 8 hours ago

As Mark Zuckerberg has said in 2017 :

"I'm here today because I believe that we must continue to stand for free expression," he said. "You should be able to say things that other people don't like, but you shouldn't be able to say things that put people in danger."

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/nation/facebook-ceo-promote...

Chris2048 | 8 hours ago

Presumably he meant on Facebook, not on Facebook..

soco | 7 hours ago

Also: "Don't do evil" (Google, ca 2004)

uxhacker | 7 hours ago

What I can’t understand is how she was able to publish the book, but is not able speak publicly about what happened.

wolvoleo | 6 hours ago

I think they didn't have enough time to prevent the publishing of the book.

It was a really good book by the way, I recommend it

gpt5 | 8 hours ago

Note that she was following her lawyers advice. Not a gag order from Meta. This advice l is standard practice when you have an active litigation against you (everything you say can and will be used against you).

Edit: I stand corrected. See comment below.

pjc50 | 8 hours ago

There is apparently a court order involved:

"Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, secured an emergency legal order on the eve of publication preventing her from publicly discussing aspects of the book, and she faces fines of $50,000 (£37,000) each time she breaches the order."

chinathrow | 8 hours ago

What kind of Judge approves such a gag order?

codeduck | 8 hours ago

Someone with aspirations for higher office.

jjgreen | 7 hours ago

Apparently Nicholas Gowan of the International Centre for Dispute Resolution (the gag order, not the original ruling) https://securereach.net/digital-world/meta-strives-to-stifle...

lionkor | 7 hours ago

One that realizes that this cannot backfire in any way. If dad asks to throw a rock at the neighbor, whats the worst that could happen?

pjc50 | 7 hours ago

One who understands the power of nondisclosure agreements.

You might find it surprising that an executive signed a long-lasting non-disparagement agreement, but obviously they wouldn't have got the job otherwise. These are a very real problem. Especially the use of NDAs to cover up gross misconduct.

(a particularly egregious example: Neil Gaiman!)

chinathrow | 6 hours ago

I understand that, but the book is out already.

pjc50 | 6 hours ago

We could do with establishing whether that's covered by the injunction; the article also says that _Hay_ stopped selling it for the same reason.

People are probably too young to remember the "Spycatcher" fiasco: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spycatcher

cowboylowrez | 2 hours ago

hopefully folks won't share copies of this book online or anything! that would suck!

chinathrow | an hour ago

I still can order this book where I live though.

niemandhier | 8 hours ago

Could she give a multi day filibuster live on YouTube and only be fined once?

gaiagraphia | 8 hours ago

I'm guessing they'd argue that every "aspect" discussed would be worthy of a 50k 'fine'.

soco | 7 hours ago

Alas, a GoFundMe campaign would never gain enough traction to make fun of this fine.

iso1631 | 7 hours ago

Streisand effect is more useful.

Not that any of this matters, these people are too wealthy (and thus powerful) to bring to justice.

helpfulmandrill | 8 hours ago

Might buy a second copy. Can always give it away.

menno-sh | 7 hours ago

Great book, too. Got me to finally delete my Instagram account :)

helpfulmandrill | 5 hours ago

Me too, actually. Still need to get my family off Whatsapp though...

curt15 | 8 hours ago

See her testimony last year before the senate judiciary committee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3DAnORfgB8

UqWBcuFx6NV4r | 8 hours ago

You can always tell that Zuck continues to maintain and assert his ultimate control over Meta, because only a vindictive child acts like this.

Garlef | 8 hours ago

At least he's winning in Catan.

lionkor | 7 hours ago

More like Monopoly, Catan has too many rules limiting expansion

msh | 7 hours ago

You need to read the book for the reference. Apparently mark likes to play catan and everyone else looses on purpose…

b3lvedere | 7 hours ago

What kind of a very sad human being must one be when you have almost all the money in the world and continue to do very stupid things with it. In my experience the people who scream and threaten the loudest kinda acknowledge the problems.

burnt-resistor | 7 hours ago

Like spend $100B on Metaverse and AI without a plan?

pesus | 7 hours ago

I still can't comprehend how they managed to blow that much money on what appears to be just a worse version of VR Chat.

burnt-resistor | 7 hours ago

When I worked there a few years back, my eyes rolled hard without VR at $22B of CapEx being spent without clearly-established market demand. They should've spent $1B at least on marketing Workplace and that home assistant box, whatever it was called.

wolvoleo | 5 hours ago

Yeah and VRChat must have cost like what? A few million?

One thing that VRChat did lack and horizons had is an in-app builder though. On VRChat you have to use unity which is a big barrier.

But other similar apps do have built in builders too like viverse and spatial have that too and they haven't cost billions either.

I don't know what they've done with all that cash but it feels like they have very little to show for it. Some decent hardware sure but still.

b3lvedere | 6 hours ago

I can understand the passion and research for innovation and improvement. I can understand trying to earn even more money with your research and investment.

I cannot understand that when there is SO much suffering in the world that can relatively easy be solved by throwing a few billion dollars in it that one can justify spending billions in things people do not want.

The man can be the best inhabitant earth has ever known by massively funding research for good clean water, correct waste disposal, clean energy and good food for all of us. Maybe even make a profit of it! But he decides to put his massive resources in virtual reality...

At least spend a fraction of your money to give every poor woman a Divya Washing Machine[1] so that they have more time to do other things, perhaps even improving your stupid Metaverse for you.

[1]: https://www.thewashingmachineproject.org/

skeledrew | 8 hours ago

I find it wild that a "justice" system allows something like this to happen. It's absolute joke.

throw1234567891 | 7 hours ago

An American system, nevertheless. The same system which attempts to institute similar rules on other nations by various sources of influence.

iso1631 | 7 hours ago

Can't be american, that's all about the freedom of speech.

Or is that only to protect nazis and the klu klux klan?

Beretta_Vexee | 7 hours ago

It’s those left-wingers and their ‘cancel culture’ that are stopping these oppressed billionaires from speaking freely!

Suzuran | 4 hours ago

Freedom of speech exists to protect politically useful tools. That means the nazis and the Klan so long as they remain such. When they are no longer useful, the protection will pass to another useful tool.

burnt-resistor | 7 hours ago

Shadow docket concierge justice for privileged people, normative justice for average people, and prerogative justice for enemies of the privileged.

storgaard | 8 hours ago

This is another great reason to read her (Sarah Wynn-Williams) book Careless People.

d--b | 7 hours ago

Sitting on stage in silence is going to cause a lot more people to talk about it. Congrats to whoever came up with the idea.

kreyenborgi | 7 hours ago

Go go Streisand effect. This gag order will be great for her book.

She should do a tour of the US with someone asking her questions and she just not responding.

wolvoleo | 6 hours ago

This is so sad to see. It makes me lose respect for the legal system when the people with the most expensive lawyers automatically win. Luckily I'm not in the US but even here meta gets away with a lot (especially because they have the Irish privacy regulator in their pocket)

cjrp | 4 hours ago

I mean, the Hay Festival is in Wales. You don't have to be in America to be affected.

dbdr | 6 hours ago

[meta] I was surprised this fell off the front page. The post has "131 points, 3 hours ago, 39 comments" and sits at rank 55. Number 2 on front page has "41 points, 4 hours ago, 0 comments". I don't want to assume something nefarious without reason, but that seems counterintuitive. Are there other parameters that can explain this ranking?

freedomben | 5 hours ago

This has happened to a lot of stuff in the last couple months I've noticed. For me it's been mostly on bad news for Apple. I suspect it's something changed in the algorithm or people flagging rather than nefarious, but that's just my guess

dbdr | 4 hours ago

If it's the algorithm, I'd be curious what other parameter it could be.

If it's people flagging, is there a good reason to do that? Otherwise, I would still call it nefarious behavior by people abusing the flagging mechanism in order to bury this story.