The problem for Wynn-Williams is that she would have signed a non-disparage agreement with facebook to get that healthcare and payment after being sacked. She hints at it in the book.

The reason why I assert this is because everyone who accepts a payoff from facebook also has to sign one. Like Facebook's employment contracts, which are essentially identical apart from the bonus, name, title and location, I strongly suspect the non-disparagement agreement is also largely the same.

They basically say that "Meta agrees to not call you a piece of shit, but you agree to never talk about facebook in public. if you do, we will ask for all that money back, as a debt"

Now, as its contract law, and depending on where the contract says its valid, there might be ways to allow what Wynn-Williams is doing. After all, you cant contract out of legal obligations.

If Cory spent more time actually doing research, rather than reeling off allegories like an LLM, we might have got some actual insight from him. Alas, its down to randoms on HN to do that.

I mean, a lot of people these days, including a lot of anti-Facebook techies, seem to think it is right and proper to equate “freedom of speech” to the First Amendment to the US Constitution, scoped to the government only, whereas private actors can do whatever. (Though now that I think about it I don’t know if Doctorow does—hopefully not but I’ve been disappointed by quite a few childhood idols in this way over the last decade.)

Unproductive schadenfreude aside, how does one get not punishing opinions—even those that would put the listener in danger if implemented—broadly accepted as a value? I hesitate to say “accepted again” because I’m getting the impression this was always a fringe position, it’s just that on occasion said fringe intersected with the similarly small circle of people whose opinions were broadly publicized.