The Most Powerful Silent Keynote in History

Last month at the Hay Festival, author Sarah Wynn-Williams was invited to keynote and then sat in her chair and didn't say a word. It wasn't her choice, but rather in response to her lawyers advising her not to speak "because of ongoing legal action brought by Meta." For avid readers of this newsletter, you may remember a few months ago I had profiled her book Careless People and also selected it as a winner in last year's Non-Obvious Book Awards.

The book is a masterpiece of corporate whistleblowing, told from the perspective of someone who was in the room working alongside Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg for nearly a decade. The stories she shares in the book are eye opening, shocking, believable and infuriating. It's no wonder Meta desperately wants to silence her.

The beautiful thing about this appearance, though, is what happened while Wynn-Williams just sat silently. Next to her, investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr and academic Tim Wu had an entire conversation about her book and her work.

Introducing the panel, Cadwalladr said: “I think this might be a Hay first, in which we have an author in a hostage situation. Blink once if you can hear us, Sarah, twice if [Mark] Zuckerberg is an asshole.”

At the end of the conversation, Wynn-Williams received a standing ovation and the message to all conference-goers and anyone else reading the story of the appearance was clear. There are things Meta doesn't want you to know. They are true. And you can read about them in Careless People. If you didn't have enough reasons to buy and read this book before, this is the moment.