The Facebook executive whose bombshell tell-all about Meta’s leaders is at the center of a legal battle has been accused of “fabrications” by a witness to its central events, the Daily Beast has learned.
Sarah Wynn-Williams book, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, was published Tuesday—making a series of claims about Mark Zuckerberg, the Meta CEO and founder, his global affairs head Joel Kaplan, and particularly about Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s former COO.
Wynn-Williams alleged that Sandberg asked her to “come to bed” on a private jet and made an assistant spend thousands on lingerie for her. Sandberg and the assistant slept in each other’s laps and stroked each other’s hair on a European trip, wrote the author, who was a senior Facebook executive until she was fired in 2017.
In her book, Wynn-Williams also alleged that Kaplan, Sandberg’s Harvard boyfriend, frequently made sexually charged remarks—calling Wynn-Williams “sultry”—and drunken physical advances, “grinding” up against Wynn-Williams at a celebratory staff event.
Wynn-Williams alleges she told the company’s lawyers about “Joel’s behavior and the fact that he made me work during maternity leave” as part of a confidential internal investigation, but somehow Kaplan found out. In her account, she alleged that “retaliation from Joel begins almost immediately.”
“He informs me that he’s halving my job… There’s no explanation given other than that he has made a decision,” she writes.
The Daily Beast reached out to Kaplan for comment but received no response.
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, used a rare legal move to gag Wynn-Williams from speaking further and from personally distributing the book, but was powerless to stop its publication. It has now hit number three in Amazon’s best-sellers list after the legal action.
But the Daily Beast has spoken to a woman who worked closely with Wynn-Williams, who said the book had “fabrications” and was “very sad.” The witness spoke on condition of anonymity which the Beast granted after verifying that they had knowledge of the events. Wynn-Williams used a pseudonym in her book for a former colleague.
Wynn-Williams, Facebook’s former global public policy director, was fired by the company in 2017. Her role was to advise the company’s top leaders, including Sandberg and Zuckerberg, as they dealt with governments around the world.
Addressing an incident in which the author claims Sandberg asked her to “come to bed” on a private plane ride from Davos, Wynn-Williams’ ex-colleague said she remembers it differently.
But the witness who spoke to the Beast said, “The setup of the plane was that there were two beds in the back and then a series of slightly less comfortable beds further forward in the planes.
“Sheryl had one of the beds in the back.” Wynn-Williams was “very tired, very pregnant,” at the time, the witness added.
“I’m sure we, including Sheryl, were encouraging her to get sleep in the most comfortable bed that was available, which was one of the two beds in the back of the plane,” she said. “I feel like it’s such a Catch-22 because if you’re the senior woman on a plane, there’s a pregnant woman, and you don’t encourage them to get sleep in the most comfortable bed on a flight path, I feel like you’re a monster.”
She added, “Sheryl’s a very warm person, but the least sexualized person.”
Another central claim was that Sandberg sent an employee lingerie shopping and brought back $13,000 in underwear. The former employee said, “I don’t have any anything to add on that allegation.”
After Wynn-Williams was let go, she “kind of just went dark after she was fired,” said the former employee. “It was weird,” adding that she was not notified and “no facts were checked with any of us” before the book’s publication.
The account adds new texture to a legal and public relations battle over the book. Sandberg has declined to comment on it while Meta has attacked Wynn-Williams. The “book is a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives,” it said in a statement.
Meta used an arbitrator to force Wynn-Williams’ silence by activating a non-disparagement clause in a contract she signed when she left the company. In a ruling, an arbitrator added that Meta had provided enough evidence that Wynn-Williams had potentially violated the terms of her exit, according to Meta. However, the ruling does not limit publishers Flatiron Books, and its parent company Macmillan, from continuing to support its publication.
Flatiron’s vice president and executive director of publicity, Marlena Bittner, said the publisher is “appalled by Meta’s tactics to silence our author.”
In a statement to the Daily Beast, Bittner hit back against the former employee’s fact checking claims.
“Macmillan did not seek comment from the individuals Wynn-Williams discusses in Careless People. We had no obligation to do so, and it is not a standard publisher process in publishing a memoir,” said Bittner. “Careless People is not a third-person report pieced together from various sources; it is a firsthand account of events told by the woman who experienced them.”
She added, “This account is supported by a trove of documentation. Of course, like any memoir, Wynn-Williams’ book also contains scenes based primarily or exclusively on her memory as an eyewitness.”
Sandberg left Facebook in 2022 and stepped down from Meta’s board in 2024. In her defense, Meta has put up a fierce campaign against Wynn-Williams.
On X, Meta communications manager Andy Stone shared several tweets from current and former employees contradicting Wynn-Williams’ version of events.
“You know what is an assessment of its factuality? All the people who knew and worked with Sarah Wynn-Williams and have said the book is not factual,” he wrote, sharing a post from another employee who claims Wynn-Williams made false statements in the book.
“In my over 10 years working at Meta, I had direct experience being managed by both Sarah Wynn Williams and Joel Kaplan. And I can say with the utmost sincerity that nothing I am reading in the media resembles my own experiences,” wrote Kevin Chan in a LinkedIn post.
