Meta Tries to Kill Damning Tell-All Book, Accidentally Promotes It to Bestseller

Ever heard of the Streisand effect? Back in 2003, a photographer took an aerial shot of actress Barbara Streisand’s beachfront Malibu home to document how badly the coast had eroded in that part of California.

It wasn’t exactly the photograph of a lifetime. Not like the famed “Afghan Girl” photograph of the Soviet-Afghanistan War, or the “Tank Man” photograph of China’s Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests. It was just some (admittedly badly) eroded beachfront that probably wouldn’t have garnered a second glance from much of the public.

Then Streisand’s lawyers attempted to suppress the publication of the photograph, citing an invasion of privacy, and all of a sudden everyone wanted to see the offending photograph that the famed actress was trying to hide. By trying to kill it, she only made it stronger. Kind of like a palmetto bug.

Meta is creating their own Streisand effect right now by trying to suppress the publication of Careless People, a damning book about the inner workings of Meta (owner of Facebook and Instagram, among other things).

Author Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former Facebook executive, has been barred from promoting the book as Meta desperately tries to wipe it from the face of the Earth. Too bad for Meta that it’s become the best publicist that Wynn-Williams could’ve hoped for.

a PR disaster for meta

Careless People was published on March 11, and it ignited a firestorm almost immediately. As of this week, it’s at the top of the bestseller list. What a misstep for Meta.

But what an entertaining episode for the rest of us. Testimonials of the book are rolling in left and right from reviews, and from the sound of it, Careless People appears to be juicier than a 12-pound Gusher.

“Careless People is darkly funny and genuinely shocking… Not only does [Sarah Wynn-Williams] have the storytelling chops to unspool a gripping narrative; she also delivers the goods,” writes Jennifer Szalai in her review for The New York Times.

Wynn-Williams spent 2011 to 2017 at Facebook, and her book doesn’t pull any punches in describing both the behavior of its key figures at the top of the company hierarchy and her own whistleblower complaint that she made alleged sexual harassment and human rights violations.

Meta has attempted to take a gasoline-powered scythe to the book’s reputation by calling it “a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives,” adding that Meta fired Wynn-Williams for poor performance in 2017.

It’s not surprising to read Meta’s statement, as big companies have a lot of heft on their side in the US at stifling criticism.

“When one of the world’s most powerful media companies tries to snuff out a book―amid other alarming attacks on free speech in America like this―it’s time to pull out all the stops,” Ron Charles writes for The Washington Post

So here we are, and more people have heard of Careless People than ever. It was likely always going to become at least a minor media fixture, given the status of both its author and the company. But would it have petered out quickly in a media environment of unending bad news? Maybe.

Would it have gotten the traction it’s gotten had Meta just kept its mouth shut? No way. If Meta’s executives are clenching their teeth at night knowing that copies of Careless People are flying off the shelves, they have themselves to blame.