- A former director at Meta filed a lawsuit in opposition to the corporate on Monday.
- The plaintiff, Kelly Stonelake, alleges intercourse discrimination and harassment.
- Stonelake additionally alleges Meta has a “poisonous sample of silencing ladies who determine issues.”
A former Meta worker filed a lawsuit Monday alleging the tech large has a “poisonous sample of silencing ladies who determine issues.”
Kelly Stonelake, a former director of product advertising for Meta’s Actuality Labs org, filed the lawsuit Monday in Washington state. The go well with alleges intercourse discrimination and says Stonelake confronted retaliation for “opposing Meta’s criminality and violations of public coverage.”
Meta declined to touch upon the go well with.
Stonelake joined the corporate in 2009, again when Meta was nonetheless referred to as Fb. The lawsuit says she was laid off in January 2024 following a medical depart. Within the criticism, Stonelake says she confronted sexual harassment on the firm and alleges she was sexually assaulted by a former boss at Fb.
The lawsuit accuses Meta of wider issues, as effectively. The go well with says that throughout the Horizon World org, feminine staff “reported feeling their voices had been thought-about much less priceless and that differential therapy was overtly permitted.” Stonelake’s criticism says feminine staffers raised particular security issues in 2022 that had been dismissed by Meta’s “all-male Horizon product management crew.”
Particularly, the go well with says {that a} feminine colleague of Stonelake’s had advocated for a “high quality pause” earlier than increasing Horizon World to teenagers. She had expressed issues that the product didn’t have “ample” parental and security controls and didn’t meet product high quality, the go well with says. Horizon World is a virtual-reality online game performed on Meta’s Quest headsets.
Stonelake escalated the issues to Horizon’s management, and was later excluded from weekly management conferences, the go well with says.
“I used to be the one voice in a room that was in any other case all males advocating for a change,” Stonelake advised Enterprise Insider in an interview.
She advised BI she filed the go well with to carry Meta “accountable to accountable, sturdy enterprise.”
“Discrimination in tech is not simply an moral difficulty — it is anti-innovation, it is irresponsible, and it causes hurt on a scale that solely expertise firms can obtain,” Stonelake advised BI.
She is searching for misplaced wages, in addition to damages for emotional misery and legal professional charges.
“This lawsuit has been a very long time coming,” Stonelake advised BI. “As I’ve gotten additional and additional away from Meta, it is grow to be clearer and clearer that with a view to get accountability, I have to file a lawsuit.”
The lawsuit comes at a charged second for Meta, which lately introduced sweeping adjustments to its content material moderation and office insurance policies.
In January, the corporate up to date its hateful conduct tips to allow sure beforehand prohibited content material. Meta additionally rolled again its variety, fairness, and inclusion initiatives and eradicated its community of third-party fact-checkers.
Shortly after rolling out these adjustments, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg went on the Joe Rogan podcast, the place he advocated for extra “masculine vitality” in company tradition.
“I do assume that there is simply one thing … having a tradition that celebrates the aggression a bit extra has its personal deserves which might be actually optimistic,” Zuckerberg mentioned on the podcast.
Zuckerberg acknowledged on the podcast that girls face systemic limitations in tech firms. He additionally mentioned firms had overcorrected in making an attempt to handle these challenges. The tech trade swung too far towards viewing masculinity as “poisonous,” he mentioned.
These coverage shifts come amid broader political pressures and adjustments.
The New York Instances reported that Zuckerberg had met with Trump advisor Stephen Miller at Mar-a-Lago late final 12 months, and that Miller had warned that Trump would goal DEI tradition at firms like Meta. The report mentioned that Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg, Meta’s former chief working officer, for the corporate’s inclusivity initiatives.
Zuckerberg denied the New York Instances report on Threads, praising Sandberg as “a legend within the trade.” Sandberg responded by thanking him for his friendship. A number of distinguished feminine executives at Meta together with Naomi Gleit, its head of product, and Iska Saric, Zuckerberg’s head of communications, additionally defended Zuckerberg on the platform. Gleit referred to as him a “champion of girls.”
“I used to assume the hole between Meta’s public statements and the interior expertise of working there was a bug or a misunderstanding to resolve,” Stonelake advised BI. “Now I imagine it to be a characteristic, a core technique of how Meta is ready to hold actually good individuals centered on actually dangerous work.”
