Facebook whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams was forced to sit in silence on stage at an event at Hay festival, after lawyers advised her not to speak because of ongoing legal action brought by Meta.

Wynn-Williams, whose bestselling memoir, Careless People, details her years working at Facebook, was due to appear in conversation with the investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr and academic Tim Wu.

Instead, Wynn-Williams sat on stage for the duration of the hour-long discussion between Cadwalladr and Wu, without speaking or responding. She was unable even to nod or shake her head.

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 event, Wynn-Williams received a standing ovation from the audience, during which she was moved to tears.

Describing the situation, Cadwalladr said: “I think we can say that Facebook is triggered.”

Wynn-Williams, a former Facebook executive, has faced mounting legal restrictions since the publication last year of Careless People, which contains allegations about Meta’s internal culture and decision-making, including claims relating to political influence, the company’s approach to China and concerns about the wellbeing of its child users. Meta has disputed the book’s claims.

Hay’s programme director Helen Bagnall told the audience that the moment was “an important act of solidarity for the silenced”.

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, secured an emergency legal order on the eve of publication preventing her from publicly discussing aspects of the book, and she faces fines of $50,000 (£37,000) each time she breaches the order. The financial and legal pressure has reportedly threatened her with bankruptcy.

Cadwalladr described the spectacle as “trolling-like behaviour” by Meta. “This is not how you conduct crisis comms. Crisis comms would just be simply to ignore this and deprive it of oxygen. This is a kind of trolling-like behaviour against their enemies.”

Speaking on stage, Wu condemned the restrictions on Wynn-Williams’ participation.

“This is censorship,” he told the audience. “This is a demonstration that some of the worst abuses in our time are not confined to kings, emperors, governments … but to a class of companies that have assumed the sovereign affect, and seek to assert their power the same way that some of those despotic nation states do.”

During the event, Cadwalladr read a letter from Wynn-Williams’ lawyers outlining the company’s latest legal claims. The letter stated that, in March 2026, Meta filed a sanctions motion alleging that Wynn-Williams violates the emergency arbitration order “any time she appears in public in a place where she should know that her book is available for sale and her presence might draw attention to it”.

According to the letter, Meta’s motion specifically cited her appearance at the Hay festival as “an example of conduct that should be formally sanctioned”.

It also referred to the identities of her fellow panellists. Meta argued that Cadwalladr was a journalist “primarily known for her negative coverage of Meta”, while Wu was described as “another known critic”.

Following the letter, Hay festival withdrew Careless People from sale while she was speaking at the festival, so as not to breach Meta’s legal order.