Sheryl Sandberg Allegedly Helped Bury BF’s Restraining Order
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Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer at Facebook’s parent company Meta, allegedly tried to squash an unflattering article about her former boyfriend that a tabloid was pursuing.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Sandberg reached out to the digital arm of the Daily Mail in both 2016 and 2019, when the publication was looking into a temporary restraining order that had been filed against her then-boyfriend, Bobby Kotick—who is CEO of the video game maker Activision Blizzard.
She collaborated with Kotick, a team of lawyers and advisers, and employees at both companies in an effort to convince the tabloid not to publish, the article said. Sandberg’s team was worried, in part, “that a story would reflect negatively on her reputation as an advocate for women,” it continued.
The alleged temporary restraining order was filed against Kotick in 2014 by his ex-girlfriend; in an accompanying declaration paraphrased by the Journal she claimed she called the police after Kotick “showed up at her Los Angeles home uninvited and tried to get in.”
The woman later walked back some of the claims, the article said.
Sheryl Sandberg and her then-boyfriend, Bobby Kotick, chief executive officer of Activision Blizzard, in 2018.
One central question is whether Sandberg explicitly threatened the Daily Mail’s ability to attract readers on Facebook, through which it derived significant business. Some sources cited by the Journal said Kotick told people that Sandberg made threats. Others were skeptical about whether she would have been so blunt. Either way, a call from Mark Zuckerberg’s chief lieutenant would undoubtedly ratchet up pressure on any publishing exec.
Kotick denied having said anything about threats, while a Meta spokesperson told the Journal that “Sandberg never threatened the MailOnline’s business relationship with Facebook in order to influence an editorial decision.”
Sandberg is reportedly facing an inquiry about “whether she violated” Meta’s rules. She and Kotick broke up in 2019.
The video game tycoon has been dealing with plenty of his own bad press in recent months. Last summer Activision Blizzard employees walked out over the company’s handling of sexual harassment and discrimination allegations made in a lawsuit by the State of California.
Blowback from those claims has spread all the way to the state’s governor over accusations that his office may have interfered with the investigation due to the company’s “political influence.”
Activision, which is being acquired by Microsoft for roughly $69 billion, separately settled a federal inquiry into its culture for $18 million in March.
As for Sandberg, TheWall Street Journal didn’t have to work hard to prove that she and Kotick seemingly mingled their personal and professional lives. After one of the paper’s reporters sent Kotick a note in 2016, he forwarded the email to one of her deputies. The only problem: he accidentally sent the email to the reporter as well.
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