| ▲ | dofm 3 hours ago |
| 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. |
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| ▲ | neilv 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| The article's theory is similar: > 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. |
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| ▲ | fwipsy 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The article mentions: > 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. |
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| ▲ | GauntletWizard 40 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | 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. | |
| ▲ | sowbug an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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". https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | | |
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| ▲ | alex1138 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > someone else British, say? I genuinely don't know what this is in reference to but it's notable Christopher Wylie got suspended on FB Which is obviously more of a priority than any number of horrible things you could report which never get taken down |
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| ▲ | spinningslate 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I’d hazard a guess they might be referring to an ex-British politician who went on to have a high profile role in comms at meta. | | |
| ▲ | alt227 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Why is everyone beating around the bush? Its Nick Clegg | | |
| ▲ | 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | khurs an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I'm confused. What's the allegation? | | |
| ▲ | alwa 23 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | 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… | |
| ▲ | Macha 29 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | dofm 8 minutes ago | parent [-] | | 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 make 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. |
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| ▲ | techterrier 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I agree its Nick |
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| ▲ | dofm 22 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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 obvious target of this 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. And it won't get written. | | |
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| ▲ | alexashka 29 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Employee - Large organization. Mosquito - Human. You don't swat a mosquito out of fear, you swat it out of preventing a minor nuisance. A whistleblower is a mosquito that's bitten a human. The most likely outcome is an imminent, violent swat, resulting in career destruction. |
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