Journalist Emily Maitlis had to take extreme action when welcoming Facebook whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams to The News Agents studio. The former was a joint winner of this year’s Freedom to Publish prize at the British Book Awards, alongside Amy Wallace, but Emily shared that she could not discuss her book with her.
In an awkward moment, the host said: “I can’t believe I’m saying this but in order for us to have this conversation now, I’m going to ask you to leave. I am going to ask you to leave the studio.” It comes after a lawyer had contacted the podcast to ask them to “refrain from any conversation about Meta or Sarah’s book”. Emily added: “You can not be present for the conversation that we now need to have,” as Sarah looked around awkwardly before vacating her chair. Emily then turned to Amy ask she asked: “What the f*** is going on?”
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Amy explained that Sarah is a former Facebook executive and wrote an “amazing” book about some of the social media platform’s policies. Facebook are now claiming that she defamed them, despite never filing a defamation claim.
She added that the restrictions of the legal action granted to META mean that Sarah is not allowed to talk about the book, do interviews about it, hold it, or even be near anywhere selling it.
“This is an attempt to punish someone who spoke the truth, in my view,” Amy said.
A spokesperson for Meta issued a statement to the podcast, which said: “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.”
It added: “Her book is divorced from reality, disparaging and riddled with false claims.”
Sarah’s claims include allegations that Facebook “embedded” members of its staff in the 2016 Donald Trump campaign for President, that Mark Zuckerberg once planned to run for office himself, that it collaborated with the Chinese Communist Party, and was working on predatory techniques targeting teenage girls across its social media platforms.
Facebook denies all allegations made against it.
