Why? As The Fine Article points out, the publisher wasn't party to the agreement they're trying to enforce.
This is the purpose of those agreements.
Meta has no such agreement with the publisher.
You can argue about the merits of such agreement separately, but there isn’t any mystery in this situation. Employee entered into an agreement with Meta and then broke the agreement. Meta is pursuing the terms of the agreement.
https://about.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Arbitration-...
Seems like she, personally, has been spared the need to go out and promote the book, the only thing Facebook seems to have gotten out of the arbitration. In return they provided far more promotion than her appearing on podcasts would have done.
IANAL, and would really like to read some legal commentary of what Facebook thought they were going to achieve. As far as I can tell they have a pretty hollow victory. Even if they were somehow able to stop her from receiving royalties, it seems like Macmillan could pay her sideway with a contract and advance on her next book, her story of Facebook trying to silence her. Once again, IANAL, desperately want to read multi page thoughts from one on the Facebook strategy.
Yes, I bought the book and am enjoying it immensely. It has a nice fun irreverent sense of humor.
Unfortunately for free speech, it is no longer the case (if it ever was) that publishers have strong financial resources compared to an increasing number of those who want to hide things.
One thing I don't understand though is I thought arbitration could only award monetary relief? I didn't realize that they could issue injunctions like this which I thought constituted an equitable remedy.
That's a much, much harder case to make. Wynn-Williams can be reasonably held to be bound by the terms of her severance agreement and whatever NDA was part of it. The publisher is allowed to print whatever they want as long as they don't knowingly defame someone.
What might happen in the longer term is Meta suing the author (this case here is just an arbitration ruling) for proceeds from the book sales. NDAs have a hard time constraining speech, but they can absolutely constrain your ability to make money from speech. But again that's going to depend on the specific contract.
What would they hope to gain going after any of it so late anyway? Surely if their goal is to dissuade others from publishing tell-alls, the resulting publicity from their suits against this one would do the opposite? If they really wanted to stop the book, they should've gone after it early before publication, but it seems like they dropped the ball and are doing more damage to themselves trying to catch up.