CALIFORNIA — Sarah Wynn-Williams filed a 57-page complaint in a U.S. district court in California challenging an interim arbitration ruling from Meta. The complaint argues that the ruling, which blocked her from promoting her memoir, "Careless People," was "improper and unlawful" and a "blatant violation of the first amendment." The complaint accuses Meta of "coercive surveillance" and claims the severance agreement Wynn-Williams signed is unenforceable because it was signed under financial duress.

Wynn-Williams served as director of global public policy at Facebook between 2011 and 2018. Facebook fired Wynn-Williams in August 2017. The complaint states the company knew her termination would remove "critical employment benefits" described as "cornerstones of her financial stability." Wynn-Williams published her memoir in March 2025. The book contains allegations of a toxic internal culture at Meta, including sexual harassment and gender-based discriminatory practices. Meta described the book as a "mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives." Meta sought an emergency order to prevent Wynn-Williams from promoting the book upon its publication based on the assertion that she had signed a severance agreement that included arbitration and non-disparagement clauses.

Wynn-Williams attended the Hay literary festival in Wales in late May, appearing alongside journalist Carole Cadwalladr and academic Tim Wu, but she did not speak there based on legal advice. Despite this, Meta wrote to the merits arbitrator on June 12, 2025, requesting additional sanctions based on her festival appearance. According to Meta's arbitration submissions, its representatives attended Wynn-Williams' public appearances, assembled photographs and written records of her movements, and traveled to locations across the United Kingdom, including rural Wales for the Hay festival, to document that she did not discuss Meta or her book at each event. The complaint states that Meta has asked the merits arbitrator to force Wynn-Williams to disclose a list of her planned public appearances.

The complaint claims Meta is pursuing Wynn-Williams not only because she "refused to bow to the greed and power of Meta, Mr Zuckerberg, and other executives, but also to strike fear into the heart of anyone else who dares to consider speaking the truth about Meta's unlawful and abusive practices in the public interest." Mike Harpley, the nonfiction publisher at Macmillan and Wynn-Williams' UK editor, said the filing "details how Meta has enforced its legal order against Sarah Wynn-Williams with a chilling campaign of surveillance." Meta stated, "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 financial settlement years ago." Ravi Naik, the legal director of AWO Legal and Wynn-Williams' UK lawyer, said Meta used a private arbitrator to "silence" her. Naik said, "No judge, no trial and no finding that she said anything untrue." Sales of "Careless People" increased by 304.5% week-on-week after Wynn-Williams' Hay appearance. More than 150,000 copies of the book have been sold across all formats in the UK since publication.