A former employee of Meta has filed a lawsuit against the company, accusing the tech giant of having a “toxic pattern of silencing women who identify problems”.
Kelly Stonelake, former marketing director of Meta‘s Reality Labs, filed the lawsuit on Monday (3) in the state of Washington.
In the lawsuit, she claims gender discrimination within the company, revealing she faced retaliation for “opposing Meta‘s illegal activities and public policy violations”.
Stonelake joined the company in 2009 when Meta was still called Facebook. The lawsuit revealed that she was fired in January 2024 after a medical leave.
In addition to alleging harassment by a former Facebook manager, Stonelake also pointed to a systemic issue within the company against women.
According to her, within the Horizon Worlds organization, female employees “reported feeling that their voices were considered less valuable and that differential treatment was openly allowed”.
The lawsuit also reveals that female employees raised specific security concerns in 2022, which were dismissed by the “product leadership team of Horizon, which was entirely male” at Meta.
She said she filed the lawsuit to hold Meta accountable. “Discrimination in tech is not just an ethical issue — it is anti-innovation, irresponsible, and causes harm on a scale that only tech companies can achieve,” Stonelake said in an interview with Business Insider.
She is seeking lost wages, as well as damages for emotional suffering and legal fees. “This lawsuit took too long to come. As I distanced myself more and more from Meta, it became increasingly clear that to get accountability, I had to file a lawsuit.”
The lawsuit comes at a tense time for Meta, which recently announced radical changes to its content moderation policies and workplace practices.
During a recent appearance on Joe Rogan‘s podcast, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Meta, openly admitted that the corporate culture needs more “masculine energy”.
“I think having a culture that celebrates a little more aggression has its own merits that are really positive,” Zuckerberg said on the podcast.
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