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

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/31/meta-legal-action-forces-facebook-whistleblower-to-stay-silent-at-hay-festival

by beardyw • 2 months ago

208 52 2 months ago

theguardian.com

uxhacker2• 2 months 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• 2 months ago

Presumably he meant on Facebook, not on Facebook..

soco2• 2 months ago

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

uxhacker2• 2 months ago

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

wolvoleo4• 2 months 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• 2 months 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.

pjc503• 2 months 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."

chinathrow3• 2 months ago

What kind of Judge approves such a gag order?

niemandhier• 2 months ago

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

soco2• 2 months ago

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

helpfulmandrill2• 2 months ago

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

menno-sh• 2 months ago

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

helpfulmandrill2• 2 months ago

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

curt15• 2 months ago

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

UqWBcuFx6NV4r• 2 months 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• 2 months ago

At least he's winning in Catan.

lionkor2• 2 months ago

More like Monopoly, Catan has too many rules limiting expansion

b3lvedere2• 2 months 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-resistor3• 2 months ago

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

skeledrew• 2 months ago

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

throw1234567891• 2 months ago

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

iso16312• 2 months 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?

burnt-resistor3• 2 months ago

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

storgaard• 2 months ago

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

d--b• 2 months 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• 2 months 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.

wolvoleo4• 2 months 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• 2 months ago

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

wolvoleo4• 2 months ago

No but she lives in America (she's from New Zealand but I think her partner and kids are American). She'll go back there and could get arrested or her assets confiscated.

It would be a big problem if you ever need to go there. Which at least for me is of course a lot less likely in this day and age. If my job asks me to go I'll refuse. Even though I don't have any legal issues there, I just don't feel safe anymore especially being an outspoken LGBT advocate. And I understand giving them social media accounts will be mandatory soon which is a dealbreaker for me also, again nothing to hide but I just don't want to.

therealdrag0• 2 months ago

She signed an NDA and was probably well compensated for it. Shouldn’t the legal system uphold contracts?

devin• 2 months ago

Yes, it should. That doesn't mean that it isn't "sad to see" a lack of transparency in our society surrounding the misdeeds of mega corporations with their hands all over the levers of power.

dbdr2• 2 months 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• 2 months 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

dbdr2• 2 months 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.

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

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