Zuckerberg knows that threatening Wynn-Williams for standing in wooden silence on a stage makes him look like history's most guillotineable billionaire.
I submit that the human brain isn't equipped to handle control of multi-hundreds of billions of dollars cap and the working lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals. Particularly if you're morally suspect to begin with.
> Kaplan is an oaf whose plan to provide paid internet access to refugee camps falls apart once he learns that refugees in camps don't have any money (he also takes points off of Wynn-Williams' workplace evaluation for being "unresponsive" over a period when she was in a near-death coma).
Seems pretty clear to me that he's a full blown sociopath. I know it's bad form to diagnose people online but the guy basically prides himself on it and makes no attempt to hide it. He just doesn't view others as human being.
“Zuck is also revealed to have given the Chinese state access to all of Facebook and the power to censor content they disliked, as part of a failed bid to get permission to offer a Facebook service in China.”
This did not happen and I’m not aware of any evidence or allegations that it did. Williams claims that Meta indicated they would accept China’s demand to give the Chinese government access to Chinese users’ data, as a condition of being allowed to operate in China. This is not the same as access to “all of Facebook”, and it didn’t happen at all because operating permission was never granted.
So, the author is a liar who distorts facts to make for a more interesting article. Don’t waste your time listening to people with no integrity.
What else that this article claims is distorted bullshit, I wonder?
Next time you read an article from “Pluralistic”, ask yourself, are they telling the truth or are they lying to push an agenda?
I have no particular connection to Zuck or Meta. I just find this behavior incredibly obnoxious and hypocritical.
Thing about Doctorow is, his primary driver is rage-based attention on himself. He seems to have very little regard for evidence or facts if that gets in the way of a rage-inducing story.
If we're going to have an effective movement checking bad behavior of big tech companies, we better start policing people like Doctorow who put themselves at the center of things with made-up shit and risk blowing the credibility of the whole movement.
All that it was ruled against her should be illegal. It should also be illegal for companies to add abusive contract clauses that directly go against basic rights as freedom of speech.
Disgusting set of human beings Zuck and company.
Read the book and then decide if it's worth continuing on FB.
The problem for Wynn-Williams is that she would have signed a non-disparage agreement with facebook to get that healthcare and payment after being sacked. She hints at it in the book.
The reason why I assert this is because everyone who accepts a payoff from facebook also has to sign one. Like Facebook's employment contracts, which are essentially identical apart from the bonus, name, title and location, I strongly suspect the non-disparagement agreement is also largely the same.
They basically say that "Meta agrees to not call you a piece of shit, but you agree to never talk about facebook in public. if you do, we will ask for all that money back, as a debt"
Now, as its contract law, and depending on where the contract says its valid, there might be ways to allow what Wynn-Williams is doing. After all, you cant contract out of legal obligations.
If Cory spent more time actually doing research, rather than reeling off allegories like an LLM, we might have got some actual insight from him. Alas, its down to randoms on HN to do that.
> denied her access to the legal system in all her dealings with Meta
How ... how is that legal? Why would that ever be made legal?
Apparently businesses can use contracts to opt out of regular public courts and agree on using a neutral decision-maker; an arbitrator.
But then the post says:
> Meta got its arbitrator – a lawyer who is paid by Meta to adjudicate contractual disputes instead of an actual judge
Huh? How's that legal?
Turns out, the law requires arbitrators to be neutral, but not the people choosing the arbitrators.
Arbitration services are businesses. So even though Meta doesn't directly pay the arbitrator, they pay the business picking the arbitrator.
Meaning, Meta has a long-term relationship with the arbitration service provider. They can choose to take their business elsewhere, if unhappy.
Imagine being Wynn-Williams, having a company of this size put a target on your head. I wonder how many live in silence because the paycheck is too good or the punishment too bad.
But an even larger point: most of HN is probably employed by a company that aspires to be Meta; HN is run by a VC fund that wants to make many Metas; and worse, unfortunately, I sometimes dream of being a Zuckerberg.
I am thoroughly seduced by a power I've never felt, even if I see it as poison.
Meta said in a statement that its “she accepted a large severance payment years ago...”
This is the only point from Meta that is legitimate. If she accepted payment in exchange for signing an NDA and then violated it, the appropriate remedy in this should be that she returns the money.
Which doesn't change the fact that Zuckerberg should be ashamed of using NDAs as a weapon like this. It's very small minded from a man who clearly wants to see himself as a great man of history.
everyone who accepts a payout from meta agrees to be bound by the non-disclosure agrement from the employment contract.
They also agree to a non-disparagement agreement. this is where Meta agrees not to chat shit about you, in return for you never talking publicly about them. The problem is, thats a fairly effective tool to enforce a lowly employee not chatting shit about a former company.
What I don't know is, what her penalty is. Espcially as both parties have disparaged each other publicly.
> Zuckerberg knows that threatening Wynn-Williams for standing in wooden silence on a stage makes him look like history's most guillotineable billionaire.
That might be a bit generous to assume that he has this theory of mind
My guess would be - there is way more primitive explanation than setting an example etc (which is also a good reason, from their point of view). It is just plain ego and pettiness - we see it everywhere, even from a manager who has 3 people reporting to him. Why else would Zuck cheat on a board game, of all things? That too in private?
It might just be as primitive as "I have more money than God, therefore I am better than everyone else, nobody dare to challenge/disrespect me even in the slightest". Blind rage can make people do things that they themselves can't understand
I agree. Most people go mad when they receive that kind of power. Aristocracy was trained to rule at some point because you really easily become just a tyrand instead of a ruler. Zuckerberg was just a nerd when it started, then within a few years he turned into an icon and basically later turned mad.
The only things this man and his companies produce are subpar software products, which I personally do not understand. How is that even possible for a company with that much money? Their best app is the one he bought, then filled with a TikTok copy.
For me, the surprising part is not just that he is obviously an evil piece of shit. It is that he is an evil, rather incompetent piece of shit. The amount of money he has thrown out the window just to promote cringe, nonsensical ideas like the Metaverse or their botched AI only confirms how surrounded he is by chronic yes men who keep approving his ridiculous ideas.
In some time he began to be caricature of it selves and make it all more even more bizzare.
My favorite (paraphrased) Cory Doctorow quote pays dividends here:
"Facebook started as a way to nonconsensually rate the fuckability of Harvard graduates, and it only got worse from there."
There was a brief period where Facebook was cool enough to give it public credibility, buoyed by the fact that nobody knew who Mark Zuckerberg really was yet. After that point Facebook was big enough to just buy more credibility by buying more successful competition.
Actually this is not specific to rich or US, this is behavior in most of western countries. This started with colonialism, where one consider superior than others in every aspect, so they can do whatever they please. Many are still blinded by this ego, which is the reason for current geopolitical stability. We should understand that sometimes we are the problem. Simon Sinek have great talk with historical example on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWEI9FDf-0g
b) Zuck has neither the taste nor the vision to get Meta to build anything. He will continue to mine his current platforms to finance whatever is hot that day. Yesterday it was glasses, today it is betting and tomorrow it will be something else. Forever chasing what he can never attain.
c) Reality is banal. Zuck's merry band of sycophants lets him cheat at Settlers of Catan.
I don't understand the purpose of an analysis that goes on for pages and pages without even mentioning that Meta says Wynn-Williams isn't telling the truth. I'm not saying you have to agree with them! But if you don't acknowledge their stated position you're not going to be able to make sense of the situation.
It's not increasingly bizarre, really, if you just allow for the possibility of one thing:
There's something else worse that they know could be in such a book, but isn't yet, and it is so bad that it is worth doing this.
Perhaps they know that Wynn-Williams could have put it in the book and didn't. Perhaps they know that someone else — someone else British, say? — could write such things in a book and so far hasn't.
Once you assume their motivation is grounded in real fear, it gets easier to see why this isn't bizarre at all; it's inevitable.
I remember during the Google anti-trust case that there was example after example of "people behaving badly". Most of these were tools in the anti-competitive bucket but it does make you wonder about the things that happen that were never committed to code nor written down.
I am assuming you are referring to Nick Clegg. The British are very easy to cow and bankrupt thanks to egregious libel laws that put the burden of proof on the defendant. They also have super injunctions allowing wrongdoers like Trafigura to silence whistleblowers and journalists.
Quite an amazing feat by the author of the book to absolve herself from any responsibility for what happened, and triumphally sanctify herself as a silenced martyr
> Lukashenka knew that arresting children for eating ice cream would make him a laughingstock abroad. Zuckerberg knows that threatening Wynn-Williams for standing in wooden silence on a stage makes him look like history's most guillotineable billionaire. But both Lukashenka and Zuckerberg are willing to be thought a thin-skinned bully, so long as that means the people they oppress the most are too terrified to ever challenge their authority.
... but eventually, external circumstances change, despite all the vain hope of those in power that they don't.
For Lukashenka, it's Ukraine blasting Russia's oil infrastructure to pieces - his regime has always depended on Mother Russia, but should Mother Russia (hopefully) collapse, he's done for.
And for Zuckerberg? And all the other vile big tech execs that kissed Trump's ring [1]? The population is fed up, radical (at least when measured by usual US standards) politicians have actual chances of getting elected on the Democrat side... they all will face justice.
Malicious. Not bizarre, not "weird", not ADHD, not out-of-touch. Stop giving awful people the benefit of the doubt, and start showing them the consequences of malice.
Seems that the fine was calculated and hung like Democles' sword over the whistleblower's head to keep her silent instead of actually attempting to collect it. Basically an arm-twisting tactic. What better can you expect from a shit company like that.
>> ... conditions of employment required her to sign a contract that bound her to silence (nondisclosure), forbade her from speaking ill of the company (nondisparagement), and denied her access to the legal system in all her dealings with Meta (binding arbitration).
Aren't the clauses on non-disclosure, arbitration, etc., common in non-Meta employment contracts as well?
That's because you pretty quickly catch downvotes from people with sour grapes whenever you talk good about working at big tech. Quadruply so for companies much more hated than average like Palantir/Meta/Oracle. It's just what echo chamber downvoting culture gives you it doesn't really have to do with what's happening internally. They're very very happy to spill beans and talk about the current environment on Blind which is a lot less hostile.
If you are a former employee you don’t have much to gain by commenting here. If you say anything that isn’t unequivocally negative you will get downvoted into oblivion.
It’s hard to have sympathy for Zuck when Facebook / instagram don’t police misinformation about other people. Sort of ensnared in a trap of his own making.
"Whistleblowing" requires something illegal to have occurred. It doesn't appear any of the disclosures being made about Facebook allege anything illegal. They are just disparaging insider information. Anyone who has worked in tech for any amount of time has signed an NDA. They are not nefarious.
"Whistleblowing" does refer to disclosing morally bankrupt behavior that isn't technically illegal, and NDAs are nefarious if they cover anything other than trade secrets.
> Anyone who has worked in tech for any amount of time has signed an NDA. They are not nefarious.
Non-Disclosure agreements to protect a company's legitimate business and trade secrets aren't nefarious.
But I'd argue that Non-Disparagement agreements or non-disparagement clauses that block disclosure of inappropriate personal behavior is, in fact, nefarious.
63 comments
[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 79.9 ms ] threadThere's quite a bit of competition out there ,,,
This is just one of countless obvious examples.
The same Joel Kaplan who was involved in a coup?
which coup, you're gonna have to be more specific
This did not happen and I’m not aware of any evidence or allegations that it did. Williams claims that Meta indicated they would accept China’s demand to give the Chinese government access to Chinese users’ data, as a condition of being allowed to operate in China. This is not the same as access to “all of Facebook”, and it didn’t happen at all because operating permission was never granted.
So, the author is a liar who distorts facts to make for a more interesting article. Don’t waste your time listening to people with no integrity.
What else that this article claims is distorted bullshit, I wonder?
Next time you read an article from “Pluralistic”, ask yourself, are they telling the truth or are they lying to push an agenda?
I have no particular connection to Zuck or Meta. I just find this behavior incredibly obnoxious and hypocritical.
His appearance on Ezra Klein's podcast a couple months ago surfaced a fabricated story about nurses being offered lower pay based on their credit report: https://www.reddit.com/r/ezraklein/comments/1qzp3sz/doctorow...
If we're going to have an effective movement checking bad behavior of big tech companies, we better start policing people like Doctorow who put themselves at the center of things with made-up shit and risk blowing the credibility of the whole movement.
Disgusting set of human beings Zuck and company.
Read the book and then decide if it's worth continuing on FB.
The reason why I assert this is because everyone who accepts a payoff from facebook also has to sign one. Like Facebook's employment contracts, which are essentially identical apart from the bonus, name, title and location, I strongly suspect the non-disparagement agreement is also largely the same.
They basically say that "Meta agrees to not call you a piece of shit, but you agree to never talk about facebook in public. if you do, we will ask for all that money back, as a debt"
Now, as its contract law, and depending on where the contract says its valid, there might be ways to allow what Wynn-Williams is doing. After all, you cant contract out of legal obligations.
If Cory spent more time actually doing research, rather than reeling off allegories like an LLM, we might have got some actual insight from him. Alas, its down to randoms on HN to do that.
How ... how is that legal? Why would that ever be made legal?
Apparently businesses can use contracts to opt out of regular public courts and agree on using a neutral decision-maker; an arbitrator.
But then the post says:
> Meta got its arbitrator – a lawyer who is paid by Meta to adjudicate contractual disputes instead of an actual judge
Huh? How's that legal?
Turns out, the law requires arbitrators to be neutral, but not the people choosing the arbitrators.
Arbitration services are businesses. So even though Meta doesn't directly pay the arbitrator, they pay the business picking the arbitrator.
Meaning, Meta has a long-term relationship with the arbitration service provider. They can choose to take their business elsewhere, if unhappy.
Imagine being Wynn-Williams, having a company of this size put a target on your head. I wonder how many live in silence because the paycheck is too good or the punishment too bad.
But an even larger point: most of HN is probably employed by a company that aspires to be Meta; HN is run by a VC fund that wants to make many Metas; and worse, unfortunately, I sometimes dream of being a Zuckerberg.
I am thoroughly seduced by a power I've never felt, even if I see it as poison.
This is the only point from Meta that is legitimate. If she accepted payment in exchange for signing an NDA and then violated it, the appropriate remedy in this should be that she returns the money.
Which doesn't change the fact that Zuckerberg should be ashamed of using NDAs as a weapon like this. It's very small minded from a man who clearly wants to see himself as a great man of history.
They also agree to a non-disparagement agreement. this is where Meta agrees not to chat shit about you, in return for you never talking publicly about them. The problem is, thats a fairly effective tool to enforce a lowly employee not chatting shit about a former company.
What I don't know is, what her penalty is. Espcially as both parties have disparaged each other publicly.
That might be a bit generous to assume that he has this theory of mind
It might just be as primitive as "I have more money than God, therefore I am better than everyone else, nobody dare to challenge/disrespect me even in the slightest". Blind rage can make people do things that they themselves can't understand
The only things this man and his companies produce are subpar software products, which I personally do not understand. How is that even possible for a company with that much money? Their best app is the one he bought, then filled with a TikTok copy.
For me, the surprising part is not just that he is obviously an evil piece of shit. It is that he is an evil, rather incompetent piece of shit. The amount of money he has thrown out the window just to promote cringe, nonsensical ideas like the Metaverse or their botched AI only confirms how surrounded he is by chronic yes men who keep approving his ridiculous ideas.
In some time he began to be caricature of it selves and make it all more even more bizzare.
'When it started' was 2003. The same year as his 'dumb fucks' quote or hacking reporters who were investigating him
That's not 'being a nerd [nice person] when it started'
"Facebook started as a way to nonconsensually rate the fuckability of Harvard graduates, and it only got worse from there."
There was a brief period where Facebook was cool enough to give it public credibility, buoyed by the fact that nobody knew who Mark Zuckerberg really was yet. After that point Facebook was big enough to just buy more credibility by buying more successful competition.
" Zuckerberg: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuckerberg: Just ask
Zuckerberg: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuckerberg: People just submitted it.
Zuckerberg: I don't know why.
Zuckerberg: They "trust me"
Zuckerberg: Dumb fucks "
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg
Was it discussed here on Hacker News?
a) Meta is a nasty company
b) Zuck has neither the taste nor the vision to get Meta to build anything. He will continue to mine his current platforms to finance whatever is hot that day. Yesterday it was glasses, today it is betting and tomorrow it will be something else. Forever chasing what he can never attain.
c) Reality is banal. Zuck's merry band of sycophants lets him cheat at Settlers of Catan.
There's something else worse that they know could be in such a book, but isn't yet, and it is so bad that it is worth doing this.
Perhaps they know that Wynn-Williams could have put it in the book and didn't. Perhaps they know that someone else — someone else British, say? — could write such things in a book and so far hasn't.
Once you assume their motivation is grounded in real fear, it gets easier to see why this isn't bizarre at all; it's inevitable.
... but eventually, external circumstances change, despite all the vain hope of those in power that they don't.
For Lukashenka, it's Ukraine blasting Russia's oil infrastructure to pieces - his regime has always depended on Mother Russia, but should Mother Russia (hopefully) collapse, he's done for.
And for Zuckerberg? And all the other vile big tech execs that kissed Trump's ring [1]? The population is fed up, radical (at least when measured by usual US standards) politicians have actual chances of getting elected on the Democrat side... they all will face justice.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/09/google-mi...
There is only one way to make him hurt: boycott all meta products. Uninstall facebook, instagram, whatsapp.
Edit -- I am getting downvoted for this comment. I can't say I am surprised, most of you are too programmed to think for yourselves.
Unlike what Cory Doctorow implies, Facebook is not a Soviet Dictatorship. There is no Berlin wall. If you don't like it, you can just leave.
Aren't the clauses on non-disclosure, arbitration, etc., common in non-Meta employment contracts as well?
And it works.
We're not saying many ex or current Meta employees talking about their experiences here, even if I am sure that HN is pretty popular among this crowd.
And of course this is not unique to Zuck/Meta. We don't hear much from people working for Musk either.
Because they're being forced to works nights and weekends and don't have time
Non-Disclosure agreements to protect a company's legitimate business and trade secrets aren't nefarious.
But I'd argue that Non-Disparagement agreements or non-disparagement clauses that block disclosure of inappropriate personal behavior is, in fact, nefarious.
> Anyone who has worked in tech for any amount of time has signed an NDA.
Just because something is ubiquitous doesn't mean it's ok.
Not that NDAs are always bad, but they should have limited scope, and maybe expirations.
And blanket non-disparagement agreements that prevent employees from ever saying anything bad about their employer are clearly bad.