One in every of Meta’s earliest staff is suing the corporate for sexual harassment, intercourse discrimination, and retaliation, in response to a lawsuit filed this week within the state of Washington.
Kelly Stonelake, who spent 15 years on the firm and rose to the rank of director, alleges within the lawsuit she confronted a cycle of gender-based discrimination and harassment that continued from shortly after her hiring in 2009 to when she was laid off in January 2024.
She alleges within the swimsuit that Meta didn’t take motion after she reported sexual harassment and assault; retaliated in opposition to her after she flagged a online game product as racist and doubtlessly dangerous to minors; and was routinely handed over for promotions in favor of males on her crew.
By the point she was laid off, Stonelake states within the swimsuit she was on prolonged medical depart for post-traumatic stress dysfunction. Her psychological state was so severely broken from working beneath alleged discriminatory circumstances at Meta that she continues to be receiving medical remedy, in response to the lawsuit filed within the King County Superior Court docket in Washington.
Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton declined to remark citing pending litigation.
The lawsuit comes as Meta and founder Mark Zuckerberg endure an evolution that seems to be shifting to the political proper. Zuckerberg sat behind President Trump at his inauguration, put UFC boss Dana White — a good friend, donor, and supporter of Trump — on Meta’s board, and has began hiring public coverage workers from politically right-leaning information retailers.
Meta additionally eradicated third-party fact-checking and halted its greatest range, fairness, and inclusion packages — actions which might be consistent with Trump’s insurance policies. In the meantime, Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan’s podcast to lament that corporations wanted “masculine power” as a result of an excessive amount of “female power” had “neutered” the office. As of 2023, round 90% of Fortune 500 CEOs had been males.
Talking alongside her lawyer, Stonelake informed TechCrunch that the occasions described in her lawsuit illustrate a bigger sample of abuse at Meta.
“I made a decision to file the lawsuit when it grew to become clear that was the very best, if not the one, approach to drive accountability at Meta,” she informed TechCrunch. “Meta has the chance to do hurt on a scale that solely tech corporations can.”
“It was alleged to be the place the place we let off steam”
Stonelake began working at Fb in 2009, at a time when the “like” button and “tagging” pals in standing updates had been nonetheless brand-new improvements. The corporate wasn’t public but, nor had it been dramatized on the massive display screen in “The Social Community.”
She labored on the Palo Alto workplace, alongside males who had been a long time her senior, on constructing alternatives for companies to make use of Fb, she informed TechCrunch, and in response to her authorized criticism.
In her lawsuit, she alleges that the sexual harassment began virtually instantly.
Throughout her first few weeks of employment, Stonelake alleges within the swimsuit {that a} colleague grabbed her crotch whereas at an organization social gathering known as “League.”
League was a well-liked occasion for workers to commune with others amid their lengthy, demanding working hours. High-ranking staff like Zuckerberg and former COO Sheryl Sandberg attended, Stonelake mentioned.
“I performed beer pong with Sheryl [Sandberg] often,” Stonelake informed TechCrunch. “It was alleged to be the house the place we let off steam as a result of everybody was working so laborious.”
By way of a consultant, Sandberg declined to remark.
Stonelake recalled leaping again in shock when her colleague grabbed her with out her consent, however she was apprehensive about reporting the incident to Fb’s human assets division.
“I believe that’s a reasonably widespread expertise for girls and particularly younger ladies,” Stonelake mentioned. “That’s based mostly largely on experiences of reporting these incidents and never going anyplace.”
Stonelake stayed on the firm. She informed TechCrunch she was enamored with Zuckerberg’s imaginative and prescient for a extra linked world. However Stonelake alleges she quickly skilled sexual harassment from her supervisor.
Throughout a enterprise journey in 2011, Stonelake alleges within the lawsuit, her supervisor took her out to dinner, then escorted her to her lodge room, the place he tried to drive himself on her, placing his palms down her pants. Within the lawsuit, Stonelake says this similar supervisor later informed her she wouldn’t obtain a promotion except she slept with him. When she declined, she was not promoted.
Harassment from her supervisor continued, she alleges, and Stonelake transferred to Seattle from the Palo Alto workplace in 2012. Earlier than she transferred, she reported her supervisor for harassment, but no actions had been taken and he stayed on the firm for years with out consequence, the lawsuit alleges.
As soon as Stonelake relocated to Seattle, she steadily rose by administration till she reached the director stage in 2017. On this new position, Stonelake alleges her supervisor harassed and discriminated in opposition to her, perpetuating the cycle she thought she escaped years earlier.
Stonelake particulars within the swimsuit that throughout the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in 2020, she confronted her supervisor as a result of he modified his Fb profile image to a Blue Lives Matter image, which is often seen as a rebuttal to BLM. In line with the swimsuit, she informed him about how the image might be obtained by their numerous crew, as Meta considers staff’ private Fb pages to be reflective of the corporate.
“We’re explicitly informed that our private Fb pages are essential to contemplate as senior leaders of the corporate,” Stonelake informed TechCrunch.
Stonelake’s supervisor responded to her by saying, “Black boys begin out harmless, and between then and after they received [sic] shot by police, they’re stepping into gangs and stepping into crime, and the actual points are with social providers and training,” the swimsuit alleges.
Stonelake went to Meta’s human assets, however alleges she obtained no help. The swimsuit claims Stonelake was twice handed over for promotions, whereas her male colleagues had been promoted.
“We didn’t have a plan for the way we’d hold individuals protected”
Stonelake transferred to Meta’s Actuality Labs in 2022 to steer product advertising for the digital actuality social community, Horizon Worlds. She informed TechCrunch that she was excited to work on such a central product in Zuckerberg’s imagined metaverse.
Stonelake says she led “go-to-market” methods to deliver Horizon Worlds to broader audiences, opening entry to youngsters, worldwide markets, and cellular machine customers.
However as a frontrunner on this product rollout, Stonelake raised considerations that Horizon Worlds didn’t have sufficient security methods to maintain underage customers off the platform; she additionally alleges within the swimsuit that she flagged patterns of racist conduct on the app, which proliferated resulting from an absence of sturdy content material moderation instruments.
“The management crew was conscious that in a single take a look at, it took a mean of 34 seconds of getting into the platform earlier than customers with Black avatars had been known as racial slurs, together with the ‘N-word’ and ‘monkey,’” the swimsuit alleges.
“We had been quickly increasing, and we didn’t have a plan for the way we’d hold individuals protected,” Stonelake informed TechCrunch.
Stonelake says she was excluded from weekly management conferences after she raised these considerations. Then, in response to the swimsuit, Stonelake was denied one other promotion in January 2023.
Afterward, she went on emergency medical depart to obtain remedies for suicidal ideas and post-traumatic stress dysfunction, in response to the swimsuit. Stonelake was knowledgeable that she could be let go in January 2024 as a part of mass layoffs at Meta.
Trying again at her time at Meta, Stonelake nonetheless remembers the enjoyment of watching Zuckerberg march alongside LGBTQ+ staff and allies throughout San Francisco’s Delight festivities in 2013. She mentioned she felt invigorated by Zuckerberg’s graduation tackle at Harvard in 2017 when he declared: “Each era expands the circle of individuals we think about ‘considered one of us.’ For us, it now encompasses the whole world.”
Now, Stonelake says, she realizes these actions might have been performative.
“I assumed that as I received increasingly more senior … I’d solely have the ability to defend extra individuals to alter the tradition,” mentioned Stonelake. “My expertise was that the extra senior I received, so did my friends, and I observed that the extra senior males had been, the much less tolerance they needed to be challenged.”
