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.
> But I think they've decided that this is a price worth paying, because: [...] c) By destroying Sarah Wynn-Williams, they can terrorize all those thousands of bitter ex-employees into silence about the even graver sins the company has committed.
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.
> But I think they've decided that this is a price worth paying, because:
> a) They've done even worse things since Wynn-Williams parted ways with the company; and
> b) They're laying off thousands of workers because their giant bet on AI has been a flop, leaving them with a massive cash crunch; and
> c) By destroying Sarah Wynn-Williams, they can terrorize all those thousands of bitter ex-employees into silence about the even graver sins the company has committed.
They have done worse things, since the beginning, that they know about but people are not primed to understand yet. Each whistleblower brings us closer to full understanding, bit by bit, showing that even the lower ranks see and are party to things that are unthinkable to the older generation and that the younger are only now waking up to being not okay.
Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
It might be correct, but it's harmful to the discussion because it makes people defensive. People sometimes confuse "true" with "productive." Something can be true, but also needless or expressed in a manner that isn't helpful.
This is something I had to learn the hard way: there's a difference between being honest and being abrasive, and the latter is harmful to you and to everybody else, regardless of how correct you are.
Former senior British politician Nick Clegg joined Meta in 2018 as vice president for global affairs and communication. He rose to Meta’s president for global affairs in 2022, and left in 2025 for an AI startup.
This would be shortly after Wynn-Williams’ 2017 departure from the policy role she describes in the book at hand. And it would be around the time that word was getting around about Facebook’s role in what Amnesty and the UN described as a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya minority in Myanmar. Among other things.
That story didn’t go on to a happy ending after 2017, and one imagines that, in the decade since, there have been fewer and fewer situations of strife, geopolitical gamesmanship, and civil conflict where Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp could avoid taking consequential policy decisions.
Meta were enmeshed in ample US domestic drama during that period, too; and Clegg’s replacement in the policy role was someone in the new administration’s orbit. Perhaps that’s fresh on the ancestor commenters’ minds.
Given the culture Ms. Wynn-Williams describes—and the tumult of the decade when he held the policy role—one imagines Mr. Clegg might have some stories to share should he choose to…
Clegg later held the same position but was fired as Facebook decided that it was more politically favorable to stop employing someone in the role that was involved in content moderation (including actions against Donald Trump) and instead hire someone with connections to Donald Trump in January 2025, due to some sort of recent event at at that time.
I guess that the thread is implying his position would have given him access to newer claims, just as Wynn-Williams' had, and the method of his firing might give him motivation to reveal anything he knows.
Personally I feel that might be giving Clegg to much credit.
Clegg was more senior than wynn-williams. Kaplan reported to Clegg
I don't think Clegg will do something like that, because its not really in his way of doing things. He is extraordinarily well connected, and is currently riding the board of directors gravy train.
Always was. Clegg is notorious for getting the Tories into power in 2010 by promising some basic decency, then betraying those promises to prop up the regime responsible for austerity.
He's always been an operator. Moving to Meta after he left politics was an "Oh, of course."
> then betraying those promises to prop up the regime
I mean thats one way to look at it. Another way was, the lib dems traded everything for the chance to change the voting from FPP to proportional representation, and failed.
Yes, he went back on tuition fees, and worse still wasn't able to make it a graduate tax (hence the stupid loan system)
but the gamble was that, and it was clear at the time.
unlucky for the libdems was they didn't get PR and got blamed for the tories being shites, and were wiped out accordingly.
Hrm. Labour was vastly unpopular. The biggest power move the LibDems could do was install preferential voting (which would harm the two party system by allowing eg
1 minor party
2 major party
3 other major party
...preference votes), and the British public (stupidly, but that is their decision) rejected it. He couldn't eg freeze tuition fees because the LibDems were a junior partner in the coalition. The vote on preferential voting was far more significant, if the LibDems could pick one of the other, it was right to pick preferential voting.
The British public blew it, because they bizarrely chose to have less of their own voting intentions recorded.
But that’s not the reason he got elected. He got elected because he promised to end student loans.
If someone says to you, “I’m going to take your money and bet it all on black on the roulette table.” and then comes back and says “sorry I lot it all because I bet it all on 22,” you’d be pissed! Now imagine they come back and say “not only have I lost it all but I borrowed an additional 3x in your name and also lost that”.
AV was an absolute non issue to most voters who elected them. Student debt was no1. Doesn’t matter if you think you know better than the people who elected you, it was a stupid gamble.
I think the story about the Trump decision is likely to have a politically explosive aspect to it.
Because Zuckerberg had dragged his feet about creating the board until they needed the board in order to launder a decision they knew they might need to make.
But he wasn't just the oversight board; he was president of global affairs for three-odd years.
I don't intend to give Clegg credit, particularly. I'm not a fan. I'm just saying that people like him write books and he will surely have been approached to do so.
I am making no allegation, to be clear. I was just having a bit of fun with the way I said it.
But it's obvious that Facebook want to make writing anything about them in a book and then publicising it an absolutely miserable experience.
I would say the very obvious target of such a message is Nick Clegg, no?
He's already written one memoir of his time in politics (didn't sell that well because he didn't have all that many fans left) but as a former Deputy Prime Minister in a really unusual coalition government, I think he's likely to have enough insights he will want to put in a book again by now (since it's plausible we be heading towards a coalition government involving the Lib Dems again, and he will think there are lessons to learn).
He also co-created the Facebook/Meta Oversight Board, which reported to him, and was the organisation finally constituted, ultimately, in time to de-platform Trump, which it then did.
And then he was president of global affairs.
He then left Meta shortly before it noticeably, shamefully and transactionally pivoted towards being Trump-compatible.
This is a book everyone wants to read, right? About the nexus of politics, extremism and social media.
I think the flip side is that Nick Clegg is probably not a great choice of person to threaten. He's already had the utterly miserable experience of going from unusually popular politician to person personally blamed for reneging on commitments in the coalition government (a route he chose for himself), he's not American and doesn't live there any more or particularly want to go back, and is politically connected enough to not struggle to put together a legal team that's happy to take on Meta, potentially without him even needing to dip into his fairly deep pockets.
And frankly getting into a shit fight with an unpopular American billionaire where he's actually the good guy would be pretty good reputation laundering for Clegg, and make a book Brits would be inclined to dismiss as self-serving nonsense sound like it had actual revelations in it. And he'd probably greatly enjoy doing a round of podcasts and TV interviews where he's not the bad guy saying sorry any more.
Retaliating against whistleblowers is bad publicity and possibly even illegal depending on what's being uncovered, so orgs do have countervailing pressure to not swat too hard, whereas there is no pressure on a human to do the same with an insect.
They have pressure to hire lawyers and consult them regarding swatting techniques. That only costs money and money is like blood to humans - you don't even think about it, whereas it is all mosq
> 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).
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
> It is just plain ago and pettiness […] Why else would Zuck cheat on a board game
Recently I felt somewhat enlightened on this point, specifically in regards to Trump cheating at golf and some of his bald-faced lies, but I’d speculate it applies here too. Others pointed out to me that while it might look petty and ridiculous to normal people, it’s a social power move to get away with things, and serves the purpose of testing what can be gotten away with, and practicing or exercising the push dynamic. It may have little to do with winning a board game, and a lot to do with seeing what people will tolerate and what the thresholds are for being called out; it’s a test of one’s intimidation factor. It may be somewhat important that the cheating is visible. It can also be social signaling to see who comes to their defense when called out, which is an effect that has been playing out on the national stage with obvious lies being repeated, defended, or excused. It’s not about what’s true, but about people showing the rule breaker who’s on their side, and giving them the power to break rules.
This, BTW, to me is a depressing and pessimistic view of power and politics and humanity, and I don’t think these kinds of power moves are something to aspire to, nor do they always work. But as a framework I have to admit it has a lot of explanatory power.
Whilst make outrageous claims to assert power is definitely a thing, I think the null hypothesis is less that they're playing 4D chess and more that people who constantly get away with stuff and constantly get told they're geniuses like spoiled children end up behaving like spoiled children. It's like for every "van Halen wants the brown M&Ms removed to audit the venue staff's attention to detail" anecdote there are 100 stars making extravagant demands who are just divas.
Zuck cheating at board games me of Elon buying a claim to being a great Path of Exile and Diablo player. Nobody believes he is, and nobody is loyalty tested into praising his ability at computer games, not even people who work at his companies. He gets mocked for it on his own website. The few people that would actually be impressed by a claim of being good at Path of Exile and Diablo know exactly how bad he is at it and find it pitiful; ironically it actually dents his reputation with a demographic disproportionately likely to be impressed by other things about him. Other people aren't inclined to think highly of him for playing those games in the first place, never mind paying others to boost his account. The reality is simply that when he's interested in a game he can't abide the idea of not being really good at it, and cheating and getting others to do stuff for you is the easiest way to appear really good at it. Especially when you're used to ignoring people calling you out...
This is called "Fuckery:" I tell you a lie. You know it's a lie. I know you know it's a lie. But you have to pretend that you believe it because of the power I have over you.
> It may have little to do with winning a board game, and a lot to do with seeing what people will tolerate and what the thresholds are for being called out; it’s a test of one’s intimidation factor.
It’s one of the most famous scenes in The Wire: when Marlo steals a lollipop.
I don't know how much this applies to cheating at Catan. Regardless of social standing, few people are going to stop you from cheating at Catan because it helps everyone's goal - to be done with the game of Catan. Although perhaps repeatedly making people play Catan is itself that social power move.
I doubt it's as calculated as that. Trump literally has no concept of truth, so he doesn't lie for strategic reasons. He says whatever makes him feel best about himself moment to moment.
This is textbook narcissism - confusing to those who expect some kind of object constancy who can't deliver it, but predictable from the syndrome.
He also intimidates and threatens more directly, but that doesn't get reported on the news.
Zuckerberg seems similarly fragile, but in a less overt way.
When you have insane levels of wealth your world revolves around your self-image and your desires, your peers are all at similar levels of dysfunction, no one else is likely to challenge you for obvious reasons, so you become socially unmoored and drift into Wealth Induced Psychosis.
This is a good observation, because this tactic is a hallmark of Putin and authoritarianism in general. What he does just lie about something where he knows it's a lie and the audience knows it's a lie, and he knows that the audience knows that he's lying, but the audience is powerless to correct him, so it is his way of demonstrating his power over the audience. He is saying to them that he is so powerful and dominating that he is in charge of their reality.
Liars like to lie, and you often see them express what's called "duper's delight" at fooling people. Dark triad types (narcissists, sociopaths, psychopaths) will often lie about petty things just to get off on their ability to mislead people.
It's also a form of gaslighting. It makes people doubt their sanity, because nobody would lie about such a thing. It creates an aura of reality distortion around such people and inside that aura they can define reality as they see fit.
Until we learn to see through this stuff and stop elevating such people to positions of extreme power, we deserve what we get.
Unfortunately there’s a pretty large number of people who actually think we need people like this to “do things.” It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. If you stack the ranks of power with dark triad types, then of course that’s the only kind of person who can work in that world. You create a world where only toxic people can get things done and then are surprised that only toxic people can get things done.
The story about cheating at Scrabble bears a fairly close resemblance to the episode in the Tintin comic Flight 714https://tintin.fandom.com/wiki/Flight_714 in which megarich industrialist Laszlo Carreidas cheats at Battleship while flying on his private jet https://www.reddit.com/r/PeterExplainsTheJoke/comments/1i6cv... . If the Scrabble incident really did happen then it's uncomfortable how close it comes to a fictional detail deliberately written to make Carreidas look unscrupulous and a bit ridiculous.
For a bit more context the Belarusian activist built on the anti communist Polish Activist Waldemar "Major" Fydrych who in the 1980’s was arrested by the communist authorities in Poland for handing out female sanitary products.
As he said “The Western World will find out much more about the situation in Poland from hearing that I was put to jail for giving tampons to a woman, than from reading the books and articles written by other people from the opposition.”
Some times its just underling opportunists (which is basically zucks inner circle at this point) defending the empire. Keeping that stupid child emperor on the throne is in their interest.
This all makes a lot more sense when you consider that Elon Musk is trying to dethrone/succeed Richard Branson, but can only manage a knockoff-grade impersonation at best. Cheating is about the feeling of defeating other people without the moral restrictions against cheating that obviously limit them, but cheaters aren’t attractive to non-cheaters; thus the sockpuppet account, to get that prized feeling of defeat without damaging the main caricature.
That was i think the most revealing thing about his character bar none because of how mundane it all was.
Anyone with a tiny bit of video game background called that out from miles away. It was so pathetic. Richest dude in world with spaceship company. Has nothing to prove. Cheats, lies, and gaslights when caught.
Has to be “number one” at a video game that has virtually zero skill where rank is almost entirely who grinds more. Eg time.
What a weird and sad thing to do. So unimaginably insecure.
Any billionaire you know the name of, is probably not too far off from this. There are alot of rich people who are secure with themselves. Zuck aint one if em.
Maybe it's the same thing with we see with many (but not all) sports stars. Getting fame and fortune at a young age ossifies any kind of personal development that happens in people after that point.
Or perhaps Zuck didn't cheat on the board game, and the claim that he did is one of the purported falsehoods Meta says the book contains. That would also explain it.
I agree, but she also made other accusations that can't be so easily ignored. Meta can't really have no comment on someone who's going around saying that Sheryl Sandberg and Joel Kaplan both sexually harassed her on the job.
>> ... 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?
> Aren't the clauses on non-disclosure, arbitration, etc., common in non-Meta employment contracts as well?
They are.
Personally, I think the law should require that nondisclosure agreements should be strictly time-bound[0], ban all non-disparagement agreements[1], and replace binding arbitration with non-binding arbitration or mediation[2] that can still be escalated to a court if it breaks down.
[0] by how much I am uncertain, but outside of national security considerations I can't think of anything that needs to last longer than a patent would have.
[1] Two arguments: (a) basic freedom of speech; (b) I am British by birth. The UK is so famous for being an easy place to sue for libel that the US passed laws making fines from British courts non-enforceable in the US; why then does the US allow private companies to insert the same effect via contract? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism#United_States
[2] Court cases are really expensive for everyone. Arbitration is much cheaper and this itself can absolutely benefit workers and customers.
> 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.
This is just false I think. I'd have to search for it, but in some of the recent stories about how morale at Meta is at an all-time low due to the layoffs and fiefdom-building I recall seeing a number of current and former Meta employees comment.
Plus, my guess is that the vast, vast majority of Facebook employees just aren't privy to outright illegal acts, and most people aren't going to break their nondisparagement clause just to break the latest bitchy thing somebody said regarding Zuck.
if you fancy a potential career as a whitleblower, you should consider writing what you know when you know it and secretly publishing commitment hashes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commitment_scheme). it's much more credible and unassailable when the charge that the claims were made long after the fact for specific purposes is impossible. keep the relevant info in a dedicated password manager vault.
a way to secretly publish commitment hashes is to deposit some small amount of crypto into an address and use that address to embed the hashes into the blockchain (either as metadata or just destroying some crypto a few cents a time). it is important to string all the commitments together in some way (such as coming from the same address) otherwise there could be some doubt about the strategy (for example, spraying claims and disclosing only the ones you want to).
"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.
> one who reveals something covert or who informs against another
especially : an employee who brings wrongdoing by an employer or by other employees to the attention of a government or law enforcement agency
Wikipedia further asserts:
> Whistleblowing is the activity of a person, often an employee, revealing information about activity within a private or public organization that is deemed wrongful – whether it be illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe, unethical, or fraudulent
Arguably, nothing the NSA was doing was illegal. Was Snowden not a whistleblower?
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.
I mean, a lot of people these days, including a lot of anti-Facebook techies, seem to think it is right and proper to equate “freedom of speech” to the First Amendment to the US Constitution, scoped to the government only, whereas private actors can do whatever. (Though now that I think about it I don’t know if Doctorow does—hopefully not but I’ve been disappointed by quite a few childhood idols in this way over the last decade.)
Unproductive schadenfreude aside, how does one get not punishing opinions—even those that would put the listener in danger if implemented—broadly accepted as a value? I hesitate to say “accepted again” because I’m getting the impression this was always a fringe position, it’s just that on occasion said fringe intersected with the similarly small circle of people whose opinions were broadly publicized.
> how does one get not punishing opinions—even those that would put the listener in danger if implemented—broadly accepted as a value?
Taking you literally, I don't think that's possible. Social punishment (in the form of shunning, boycotts, "cancelling", etc) has been around as long as human society has existed and is incredibly popular.
If someone figures out how to reliably solve that, a few nobel prizes are probably awaiting them.
If you want to take a subset of this problem, maybe it's possible: Like if you mean corporations specifically, not all private actors.
> Social punishment (in the form of shunning, boycotts, "cancelling", etc) has been around as long as human society has existed and is incredibly popular.
True. There’s a reasonable argument[1] that such things should continue to exist. The strongest way of phrasing it, I think, is that we do not want to have to pass a law against being an arsehole, nor do we actually want the letter of such a law enforced with the full might of the state, but there still needs to be some way of punishing it. The only counterpoint here is, I think, that the severity of such punishments seems to be vastly underestimated.
(If you’re going to refer to ancient societies, many of them used or accepted such a punishment as a substitute for the death penalty, as for instance with the Roman custom of permitting voluntary exile before conviction. And that still in a world where you could travel a few hundred kilometers in the right direction and reasonably expect nobody to ever learn of your sins.)
Also beside the point, however. The question is not whether we should shun people (we should, with a fair few qualifications), but whether such penalties should be levied for words. I posit that no, for an overwhelming majority of words they shouldn’t, where the possible exceptions are somewhere around ongoing mass murder and the Milles Collines[2]; and that letting your opponents speak and listening to them should by default be virtuous, socially rewarded behaviour.
> The only counterpoint here is, I think, that the severity of such punishments seems to be vastly underestimated.
I suppose I disagree: Modern forms of this ("cancelling") are well-aware of the economic impact it can have on individuals, and indeed often this is the intended outcome. People on all sides of the political spectrum here understand the impact of impoverishment and homelessness (though they obviously disagree on what should be done about it).
> The question is not whether we should shun people (we should, with a fair few qualifications), but whether such penalties should be levied for words
I don't see how you ever disentangle these two. For a large part of the populace, there are some combinations of words they will find abhorrent and want to punish. The exact nature of that punishment is up for debate, but we've largely settled on the status quo here.
If you can find some way to keep people from wanting to punish some subset of words universally then congratulations, a few nobel prizes are indeed yours.
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.
This is standard in companies. I've seen companies give a pittance in exchange for a binding NDA and the person took it because they needed to pay rent that month. Meta is evil but in this case so is almost every other company and especially tech companies. Also, giving it back doesn't undo the contract, the deal was done.
Some will lie repeatedly to even avoid paying out a settlement.
In America you have no rights, your lucky if you get paid on time. Even then the actual process to get your back owed wages usually isn't worth the effort.
I worked for a clown once who waited 30 days to tell me he only pays every 60 days.
A friend of mine wasted a full week training, and the employer decided they didn't need him and didn't pay for the training.
If you DARE try and go the legal route you'll find you can basically beg for a settlement, but your employer can just say no.
Going to court isn't going to be worth it since the system is heavily stacked against you.
Actually not paying earned wages is one of the few things that has a lot of teeth around it. Federal rules typically award back pay and an equal amount as liquidated damages, plus attorney's fees and court costs, and states may add penalties of their own.
That's the other game a lot of employers play, they'll classify you as a 1099 to avoid those pesky worker rights.
You have no other options because you need the money.
My friend who wasn't paid at all was told by a lawyer it wasn't worth pursuing.
So much of our legal system, and really society is based off gentlemen agreements. You don't still someone out of 600$ in wages because you don't do that.
When that gentlemen agreement is broken, realistically no lawyer is going to open a case over 600$, you have no real recourse.
I hope i dont have to find out, but it seems like anything in the US that requires lawyers would by default be an expensive option to pursue (from my lack of knowledge standing, at least, feels like that)
We don't have all of the facts but the contract could be voided if it was signed under duress, used to hide misconduct and prevent whistleblowing, etc.
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.
FDR is a very interesting case study. He had the country in the palm of his hand and could have cemented his (or his party’s) power permanently, but instead he left the republic intact.
He and the congress (and probably most of the country would have supported it) . There is an argument to be made that the Supreme Court was at least partially usurping the powers of the legislative and executive branches to impose its political policies.
According to that theory, they can censor mail and any other common carrier (objects and information) on moral grounds. They want to apply it to abortion pills first, but the statements made by the court imply they’ll be clamping down on “obscenities”, sex ed, political speech etc.
Note that this court already overturned the right to privacy (and the 4th amendment) when they overturned Roe v Wade.
That, plus mandatory age checks, porn bans, vpn bans, etc are already happening in blue and red states throughout the US.
By the time 2028 rolls around, if we don’t elect a president willing to charge the current clown show with treason, we will not have a democracy in the US. Court packing would be a tragic under-reaction.
Before the court packing threat, they were limiting the federal government's power to regulate commerce within states. Which is a power it doesn't actually have.
They have whatever power the Supreme Court decides they have. The Supreme Court decided that was their job, and thus far everyone has accepted it. The Court interprets the Constitution, which is vague enough to mean whatever a bare majority wishes it to mean.
And then they reversed course with Wickard v. Filburn and said it was perfectly OK for Congress to regulate, not just commerce within a single state, but farmers growing their own food on their own land for their own use. So FDR ended up getting what he wanted anyway.
The New Deal was mostly rolled back a while ago. After all corporatism did generally fall out of fashion for after WW2 (and of course there was quite a bit of opposition of state planning due to geopolitical reasons in the 50s and later)
FDR actually kinda did do that. He broke the Washington precedent and ran for President four times, he scared the Supreme Court shitless to the point where they signed off on blatantly unconstitutional land grabs against Japanese emigrants, and the Democratic Party was able to ride high on the fumes of the Progressive movement for decades afterward.
We don't think of him as a dictator, because a lot of what he did was ultimately reforms necessary to maintain America as a republic. The alternative would have been Nazi America. But he was still exercising dictatorial power, and he was responsible for massively increasing the power of the Presidency as a result. Hell, part of the reason why Trump is so dangerous is specifically because of the damage FDR did to the checks and balances on the Executive Branch.
Well actual dictators generally do those things because they need to subvert the constitutional to stay in power. Roosevelt didn’t need any of that in order to make sure he remained president for the remainder of his lifetime.
After all there was a constitutional amendment pass soon after to stop any president from doing what FDR did.
It might be the other way around. There are powerful people with money that simply behave. A few assholes turn things into shit for everyone, when they also have money it just becomes worse.
I wonder if power actually corrupts, or if it’s really that attaining power requires pretending to be a good person, and the mask can fall off after the power is attained.
128. The Merits Arbitrator refused to do so. Instead, during a status conference regarding the sanctions motion on April 22, 2026, the Merits Arbitrator held the motion open and stated that if Ms. Wynn-Williams voluntarily appeared at an event, including the Hay Festival, where she knows or should know that her book will be available for sale, or knows or should know that her presence there will likely encourage book sales, then she has likely violated the Interim Award.
129. As Ms. Wynn-Williams's counsel pointed out during the conference, this was an exceptionally broad conception of the scope of the Interim Award one that extended far beyond the text of the Severance Agreement and dramatically increased the burden on Ms. Wynn-Williams. Counsel attempted to clarify that the Merits Arbitrators comment applied only to situations in which the actual event organizer made the book available for sale in connection with Ms. Wynn Williams's appearance, pointing out that the Hay Festival, for example, did not appear to do so but instead simply had a link on the event website to another site run by a separate organization that offered books written by Hay Festival speakers. But, notwithstanding that the details of the Hay Festival appearance had been fully briefed by the parties in their submissions on the sanctions motion, the Merits Arbitrator refused to clarify, stating that there was too much factual granularity for him to give any further guidance and that Ms. Wynn-Williams needed to conform her conduct to what she thinks is appropriate given his endorsement of the Interim Awards vague proscription on promotion
135. In addition, fearful that anything she said could be the basis of another sanctions motion and wishing to protest that constraint on her speech, Ms. Wynn-Williams appeared for the panel but sat in silence for its entire duration, neither speaking nor responding to any question or remark. Ms. Wynn-Williams did not understand that speaking on a panel with Ms. Cadwalladr and Mr. Wu would violate the Interim Award given her intention not to refer to Meta or Careless People, but assumed that Meta would accuse her of endorsing things the other panelists whom Meta believes are some of its known critics might say. Ms. Wynn-Williams also believed that making the alternative decision to cancel her appearance due to the Interim Award would also have drawn attention to Careless People that Meta would interpret as promotion of the book.
136. Notwithstanding that Ms. Wynn-Williams remained silent and did not say anything about Meta or her book and that the Hay Festival removed her book as requested in order to avoid any suggestion of promotion under the Merits Arbitrators guidance, Meta wrote the Merits Arbitrator on June 12, 2026, to request the Merits Arbitrator rule on the sanctions motion immediately and impose additional sanctions based on the Hay Festival.
137. Meta based its request on the fact the other individuals on the panel are, in Meta's view, critics of Meta, suggesting that Ms. Wynn-Williams's mere appearance with those individuals in a public forum was a violation regardless of what she says or whether she speaks at all, and regardless of the fact that she does not control what those individuals say. Meta noted that Ms. Cadwalladr and Mr. Wu responded to Meta's campaign to silence Ms. Wynn-Williams in a manner that Meta found disparaging, alleging that the ensuing controversy resulted in additional sales of Ms. Wynn-Williams's book, notwithstanding that Meta's own actions created that controversy. Meta further suggested that Ms. Wynn-Williams's reaction to her silencing drew attention to herself in a manner that inevitably promoted sales of her book, notwithstanding that Meta's silencing campaign meant that any action Ms. Wynn-Williams took in response including withdrawing from the Hay Festival would have drawn such attention. Meta's exploitation of the Interim Award is thus calculated to make it impossible for her to avoid punishment.
138. Meta's sanctions campaign has been built on sustained surveillance of Ms. Wynn-Williams. Meta's evidentiary submissions in the arbitration have revealed that its representatives attended her public appearances in person, assembled photographs and written records of her movements, and traveled the length of the United Kingdom to do so including making the long journey to rural Wales for the Hay Festival all to document that at each event, Ms. Wynn-Williams said nothing about Meta or her book. In its most recent filing, Meta sought to escalate its coercive surveillance of Ms. Wynn-Williams, asking the Merits Arbitrator to compel Ms. Wynn-Williams to disclose, in advance, a list of her planned public appearances, so that it can continue to monitor where she goes and what she says
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.
> 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
> 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.
> I am thoroughly seduced by a power I've never felt, even if I see it as poison.
Meditate on the idea of the negative sum game the people who seek power prefer, and then about what you'd rather see them, or yourself do with that power. Because of the things I actually care about, I find that random fantastical/idealistic desire for power to be hollow, something much easier to see in comparison. I don't care about power, for powers sake (the best way, perhaps only way, to obtain power itself). All my power fantasies involve some sort of stopping people from using their power to abuse and take from others.
There's nothing wrong being seduced by power, if you're worried about how it might corrupt your ethical principals, just don't be foolish enough to copy the small minded power seekers (humans do love to emulate the people the see around them). You can seek and hold power, and then use it to do good things. Is that harder? Probably, but I can't articulate a single reason it would be harder than doing good things without power, which most people already don't do. So don't be tricked into power being the thing that corrupts. Most people are just shitty, and very few have meaningful power; sample bias can be a bitch.
Zuckerberg knows that threatening Wynn-Williams for standing in wooden silence on a stage makes him look like history's most guillotineable billionaire.
I think some people imagine the rule of law to be a replacement for the law of nature. I think it sits in front, protecting all parties from a much more violent form of justice.
If billionaires fail to support the rule of law, especially if they wield their immense power to press on the scales, they should not be surprised when people lose faith in the more civil option.
It took the literal burning down of aristocratic homes during the english reforms of 1832 for the House of Lords to finally sit down with Earl Grey and hash out a bill that would finally grant large populated cities like Manchester actual voting rights.
The French Revolution was still fresh in minds of these elites - the July Monarchy having just taken place - and yet still they let it escalate to the point of near civil war.
The point is a guillotine somewhere else is good. Guillotines at home don’t particularly hurt the rich as a class. (It’s debated whether France’s elite actually consolidated wealth and power through its revolutions.)
> socialist revolutions in China and Russian Empire had definitely hurt the rich
Communist revolutions hurt the rich. As you say, they sowed the seeds of a new oppression. (It’s difficult to see how one could avoid that. If you put a group of people in charge of choosing who to execute and what property to take and give to whom, you’re going to have a tough time clawing that power back.)
Broadly speaking, people angling for violent revolution in America are idiots. The rich ones who count on winding up on top take for granted the quality of their lives in a democracy. The ones who aren’t billionaires, broadly, are historically illiterate about the direction wealth concentration flows amidst violence.
The phrase about omelette and eggs (or rather its direct counterpart, about timber and chips) ended up as the unofficial primary justification for Stalin’s Great Purge, so the point about strange bedfellows stands. Twentieth-century Russia is in general a good example of what happens when you systematically eradicate the country’s elites, regardless of how unfairly they have gotten into the position or how miserable everybody else is.
The broader point, dating back to at least the French Revolution, is that once you establish the precedent that killing opponents is a way to win, it only takes a decade or two before the most ruthless killers become the winners. All proxy metrics are bad, including electability, but this one is especially awful. I’m more puzzled by why some violent movements do seem to have had some success than by why most didn’t.
You generally don't get to choose how few eggs you'd like to break. As Olympe de Gouges found during the French Revolution, revolutions tend to be run by people who enjoy the process of breaking eggs, and if you call for it to stop they may decide that you are an egg who needs breaking.
Reminds me of Thucydides describing some of the civil wars that erupted in various cities in the wake of the Pelopponesian war.
He says that when order breaks down, thoughtful moderates are treated as weak cowards, and that simple-minded but aggressive people make the first move and kill off thoughtful people who think they will be able to make compelling arguments.
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.
Their lackadaisical attitude towards scams and misleading information on their platforms is just utterly mind blowing. The other day I was suggested a post from an account of a beautiful girl with 150k followers which, upon investigation, is not a real person but a character generated with AI; whose profile links out to a bunch of sites trying to get people to pay for nude images or download nefarious apps like gambling, crypto, etc. Though not technically illegal, it’s a total moral hazard and is yet another nail in the coffin in our goal to maintain an equitable society.
The people that work at the company are smart, and I’m sure many of them are compassionate. I just don’t know what kind of people can sign off on product decisions like this that truly erode trust, community fabric, and make our world ultimately so much worse. It’s heartbreaking that someone like zuck is the one leading this initiative, you could pick any random person off the street and they would lead the company in a direction that was better for mankind.
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.
Oh no, but he was "making a point". Or he was young. He was "right" that it's bad to give up your info (so Zuck hammered home the point by scraping email contacts and using it to populate People You May Know. for your own good)
You didn't hear that out of Myspace or Friendster or anyone else that's trusted with information
Minimum threshold should be "People should be less forgiving of just giving away credentials but now that I have them I'll protect them with my life". Oh well. Apparently I'm just an idiot
He was just joking just like he was joking when he said he'd "fuck the Winklevosses in the ear"
how the hell is arbitration enforcable ? they will need to go to court to enforce it, right ? you surely can't redeem your free speech human right by signing a document, right ? I'm not sure about US, but I'm sure that in most countries human rights can not be surrendered by contract. These kind of clauses are void
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.
The “lizard people”/“reptilian overlords” conspiracy theory is rooted in antisemitism. It was invented by David Icke, a holocaust denier and endorser of the antisemitic hoax “The Protocols of the Elder Zion”, and plays off the medieval blood libel myths of a shadowy, non-human elite secretly subverting society to manipulate humanity, which “Protocols” built on and is what the conspiracy theory is based on.
Zuck is a humongous piece of shit destroying the world and Israel is committing genocide but we can say so without resorting to bigotry.
I think the lizard thing was mostly about mocking his lack of human emotions and apparent awkwardness (due to choice or personality). Calling someone a “humongous piece of shit” is a rather plain and boring insult unlike challenging his humanity and lizard like behaviour.
at some point we have to accept that money turns normal people into paychopaths along multiple trajectories. and tax the shit out of them to prevent the healthcare costs.
This is quite normal. Most billionaires spend their life surrounded by people who flatter them and indulge their every whim and agree with their every prejudice.
It's the Silicon Valley circular-reasoning meritocracy in action: those with the billions deserve to have the billions because they have managed to get the billions. Every extra dollar only goes to prove how little they need to listen to those with less.
Not just Silicon Valley, although SV is definitely the poster child for this mentality. It’s a problem all over the world. Obtaining X fully justifies having X. Nobody cares about the “how.”
An aspect of the "just-world fallacy", where ultimately good things happen to good people, so if a good thing happened to you, you must have been good, etc.
> 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.
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.
Of course they are going to deny. Whether or not they actually did the things claimed, there is no universe where denying isn’t the best tactic. So their denials in and of themselves don’t mean anything. Every single company accused of wrongdoing publicly denies, all the way up to and including when they settle or are found to have actually done the wrongdoing.
Again, I don't think the fact that they're denying it requires you to agree. But if you want to develop an accurate understanding of the world, you have to acknowledge that they are denying it, and evaluate how well this denial explains their actions before launching into complex alternative theories.
Given Meta’s (and their leadership’s) outward, visible, documented and repeated bad behavior, “wrongdoing” is not a complex alternative theory. It’s the simplest explanation.
So sure, acknowledge that they are denying. The only thing it explains is that horrible entities tend to deny horrible behavior.
I agree. She sued them a few days ago over it, and reiterates a couple of the worst claims in her complaint, so presumably over the course of that case the two sides will try to prove or disprove them. (It shouldn't be too surprising that Meta didn't start a court battle earlier - is there a single person on the planet who would read "Meta Platforms files $10 million defamation suit against whistleblower" and become less angry at Meta?)
There's a clear remedy if she lied about them in print – sue her for libel. And I can't imagine one of the richest corporations in the world would have trouble winning that lawsuit, if it actually were the case.
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
They teach this sort of literary analysis in high school. You should not take the words as a complete and unbiased retelling of history - just one point of view. Knowing who the author is, their role and possible biases helps place what they say (and choose not say) in context.
Yeah, I don't understand the downvotes either. Complaining is one thing (and it's certainly valid to complain about Meta), but nothing's going to change if a lot of people still use their service. Sure, one person getting off of the Meta platform isn't going to do anything, but millions could have an effect - if only to give less power to the company.
I deleted my Meta account last year and haven't missed it.
I do -- meta's products are inherently addictive and the network effect is powerful, so people would rather cope and complain than take meaningful but inconvenient action. This is how zuck wins, every time.
> I deleted my Meta account last year and haven't missed it.
“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.
That's a quote from Corey Doctorow, not Sarah Wynn-Williams. I read her book. She was pretty careful to use your language (i.e., that it was offered, but not implemented, and was China-only data from what she related. Not that that is great either, of course...)
Her main allegations (that Facebook/Meta optimizes for profit at the expense of everything else) seem pretty unsurprising. I mean, given what has been observed, is this in any way controversial?
it was called project aldrain. multiple internal employees made company wide memos on internal platforms and resigned. they factually did the stuff your talking about.
Agreed. I don't like that you're downvoted for pointing this out as the language is very weasel-wordy (revealed to have? by who? what is all of Facebook?):
> Zuck is also revealed to have given the Chinese state access to all of Facebook
Tbf, the book actually makes the right claim that it's Chinese user data, not all of Facebook so the article is to blame.
> So, the author [Doctorow] 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?
E.g., "including its knowing encouragement of a genocide in Myanmar." You can certainly accuse Facebook of being incompetent at monitoring and moderating speech in Myanmar but calling it "knowing" or "encouraging" is just a lie. There's plenty to criticize without lying, but the lying ruins your case.
The Chinese rejected the offer, so I’m not sure what your point is.
Here’s an article from the Atlantic that was sponsored by the Koch Brothers (so, good luck arguing one sided political bias!) on Zuck’s strategy for whitewashing censorship of political speech:
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.
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