It’s unfortunate that when I closed my former PR firm, I took down the company’s website, which included a slew of blog posts I published that would bolster the credibility of my instincts, particularly when it comes to CEOs and other top executives. Among my targets was former Facebook COO and director Sheryl Sandberg, who was once the toast of Silicon Valley and a darling of the corporate media. Sandberg was dubbed the “grownup” overseeing Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, without whom the social media site supposedly would never have prospered.
Zuckerberg played along with the hype, as Sandberg distracted attention from the scumbag he was and always will be.
“Without (Sheryl) we would just be incomplete,” Zuckerberg told Bloomberg Businessweek for a May 2011 cover story that will forever rank among the most gushing and discredited puff pieces of all time.
What tipped me off about Sandberg was her claim that she was a caring and sensitive person who cried at meetings. Sandberg came out of politics and previously was chief of staff to Larry Summers, who was Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton. One doesn’t survive in Washington, particularly working for Summers, bawling at meetings.
I was confident that Sandberg was another validation of the Starkman Approved Theory, which holds there is an inverse relationship among those claiming the loftiest values and attributes, and who they really are.
Sandberg resigned as COO of Facebook in 2022 and as a director in May 2024. Facebook, since rebranded as Meta, has continued to prosper, and I’ve yet to read even one story how the company has suffered because of her absence. Indeed, Zuckerberg has been less than complimentary about some of Sandberg’s contributions, blaming her for the company’s DEI initiatives, which he now gleefully disavows.
After Sandberg was gone, Meta reportedly investigated her for using corporate resources to plan her wedding, a leak that likely was sanctioned by the company. Sandberg also came under fire for pressuring the Daily Mail to kill potentially damaging stories about her then-boyfriend, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick. The Daily Mail was working on a story which would have revealed that one of Kotick’s ex-girlfriends had obtained a temporary restraining order against him in 2014.
Not the sort of accusation one would expect levied against someone the media hailed as a champion of women.
Sandberg is in the news again because of a closely guarded book by a former Facebook employee dishing some damning allegations about Sandberg and the company, including allegations that she spent $13,000 on lingerie for herself and a young female assistant during a trip to Europe — and exhorted her to “come to bed” during a private jet flight on the way home. The book was leaked to the New York Times, which published this review on Monday.
Reading the New York Post’s account of “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism,” by Sarah Wynn-Williams, I initially found the story distasteful, as I’m typically wary of tell all books written by mid- or low-level employees. Wynn-Williams, the former director of global public policy at Facebook, resigned in 2018 after seven years working for the company.
That Wynn-Williams worked at Facebook for seven years doesn’t speak well of her. Nevertheless, her allegations gained credibility after reading the comment from an unnamed Meta spokesperson, no doubt relaying a response I’d bet was crafted by a high-priced “crisis communications firm” and some of the costliest lawyers money can buy.
“Eight years ago, Sarah Wynn-Williams was fired for poor performance and toxic behavior, and an investigation at the time determined she made misleading and unfounded allegations of harassment,” the spokesperson said, adding that “since then, (Wynn-Williams) has been paid by anti-Facebook activists and this is simply a continuation of that work.”
“Whistleblower status protects communications to the government, not disgruntled activists trying to sell books,” the Meta spokesperson said.
Some unsolicited PR advice to the persons responsible for crafting Meta’s response: You doth protest too much. Most U.S. rank-and-file employees know full well that workers who make damning allegations about their companies’ managements are often vilified with poor performance and toxic behavior allegations.
Smearing Wynn-Williams hardly means her allegations are unfounded. In my mind, the sliming gives them credibility.
Then there’s the comment that “whistleblower status protects communications to the government,” which I interpret as a veiled threat of possible litigation. I’m certain that Flatiron Books, Wynn-Williams’ publisher, printed her book knowing the risk of litigation, particularly since Sandberg has an estimated net worth exceeding $2 billion. In fact, I bet Flatiron Books received several letters in advance of publishing the book that could paper its walls along with the legions of other threatening letters it has received over the years.
Since its founding in 2014, Flatiron Books claims to have published 101 New York Times bestsellers, including 21 No. 1 bestsellers. Flatiron has published non-fiction by such luminaries as President Joe Biden, James Comey, Dr. Michael Greger, Melinda Gates, Jamie Oliver, Ashley C. Ford, Tarana Burke, Brad Meltzer, and Oprah Winfrey. Rest assured, lawyers well versed in defamation laws and litigation carefully reviewed Wynn-Williams’ manuscript and made certain there was sufficient documentation to back up the author’s claims.
Wynn-Williams’ book is also being published by Pan Macmillan in the United Kingdom, where it’s much easier to sue for libel and defamation.
The Washington Post reported Sunday that Wynn-Williams, who worked on a team handling China policy, has filed a whistleblower complaint with the SEC alleging that META was prepared to implement extreme measures to gain access to the lucrative Chinese market. The 78-page complaint, leaked exclusively to the Post, alleges that Meta was willing to allow the Chinese Communist Party to oversee all social media content in the country and suppress dissenting opinions.
Facebook developed a censorship system for China in 2015 and planned to install a “chief editor” who would decide what content to remove and could shut down the entire site during times of “social unrest,” according to Wynn-Williams’ whistleblower complaint.
Facebook isn’t the first U.S. technology company alleged to have abetted China with its censorship efforts. LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft, also allegedly co-operated with the communist government’s censorship efforts. The New York Times previously reported that Apple maintained a “China sensitivities list” and proactively removed apps from its China app store the company believed the country’s censors would likely ban.
The Guardian reported last month that Google has cooperated with autocratic regimes around the world, including the Kremlin in Russia and the Chinese Communist party, to facilitate censorship requests. Billionaire tech investor and Trump supporter Peter Thiel in 2019 charged that Google should be investigated for “seemingly treasonous” activity.
Sandberg, a lifelong Democrat who the corporate media once championed as a potential presidential candidate, has other legal troubles the corporate media has understandably ignored as they also involve one of Joe Biden’s and Obama’s closest advisors.
A Delaware judge in January sanctioned Sandberg and former board member Jeffrey Zients for allegedly deleting emails related to the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal. The sanction related to allegations that Sandberg and Zients used personal email accounts to communicate about issues relating to a 2018 shareholder lawsuit that accused Facebook leaders of violating the law — and their fiduciary duties — in failing to protect users’ privacy.
The Delaware judge overseeing the case found the accusations to be convincing.
Zients isn’t a household name, but he should be. He most recently served as Biden’s chief of staff and earlier was his Covid czar. Under his leadership, two of the world’s leading vaccine experts working at the FDA resigned because of White House pressure relating to vaccine approvals.
I posted this critical profile of Zients more than four years ago, another validation of my instincts.