NDAs are everywhere, from workplaces to weddings

Originally intended to protect corporate secrets, nondisclosure agreements appear to have become commonplace. In a recent story, New York magazine writer Reeves Wiedeman even dubbed them the “defining legal document of our time.”

“The long story short, I think, is that this document has creeped into more and more parts of our lives over the past couple of decades,” Wiedeman said in an interview with “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal.

Wiedeman and Ryssdal discussed how the rise of social media has led to the rise of NDAs. In one case, Wiedeman reports, a couple committed to the terms of an NDA and eventually committed themselves to each other in marriage. Call it an NDA love story.

The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Kai Ryssdal: So let’s answer the question in the headline: How did NDAs become the defining legal document of our time?

Reeves Wiedeman: Slowly and then all at once, like many things. The long story short, I think, is that this document has creeped into more and more parts of our lives over the past couple of decades. You can look at a couple of different moments that have led to booms in NDAs: Social media and the ease with which people can go out and talk about things has led more and more people to want to prevent people from talking about them. And then, in sort of an unfortunately ironic twist, one of the sort of vestiges of #MeToo was, we learned, how powerful these NDAs could be in silencing people. And as I talked to more and more lawyers, a lot of them said that one of the effects of #MeToo and some of the backlash to #MeToo has been people using them more and more and more because they have seen what can happen if their misdeeds become public.

Ryssdal: There’s the corporate history of these things, right, at the executive level, and then, as you know, sharing of technology and this and that. But now, as you alluded to, where it is so easy to get information out about other people on social media and on the internet and where so many people are protective of their influencer status or their brands, right? I mean, that’s part of what’s driving this.

Wiedeman: Yeah. I mean, celebrities are corporations in a certain way themselves, their brand, and who they are, and the public perception of them is kind of a lot of how they make a living. And so, you know, yes, the NDA for decades was pretty exclusively something that existed in corporate life. One of the places that it sort of started to leap over into personal lives was through celebrities. And that happened in celebrity divorces, when you break up with someone and don’t want them to talk badly about you because you’re worried about what that’s going to do to your public perception. And so celebrities have used these, you know, for at least the past decade, giving them out to kind of anyone who they come into regular or even just momentary contact with. And it’s only more recently that from celebrities, it goes to wealthy people and then eventually down to kind of normal folks.

Ryssdal: Well, I mean, there’s an example in this piece of a couple that’s dating and asks mutually to sign an NDA or something. I mean, it’s crazy.

Wiedeman: Yeah, I mean that couple in particular, they’re sort of young actors. They’re not superfamous, but they’re kind of early in their careers. They’re having some success, and they meet someone that they think might be the love of their lives, but they’re also worried [the other] might be someone they don’t know all that well, who might break up with them one day and then go say lots of nasty things about them and kind of scuttle their career. So it’s kind of crazy to try to explain that, but it’s at least becoming something that a certain kind of person is now thinking about.

Ryssdal: We should say here they did wind up married, that couple.

Wiedeman: They did. It’s like an NDA love story.

Ryssdal: An “NDA love story” and other phrases you never thought you would hear. To change the mood just a little bit, it does all smack a little bit of, you know — setting aside for a second the really, really toxic ones, right? Harvey Weinstein, of course, comes to mind — their proliferation into other aspects of life does smack a little bit of cynicism, no?

Wiedeman: I think there is this level at which we, you know, we don’t trust each other. And I think there’s a certain sadness to it when you look at it from this angle of like, do we trust anymore? Can you trust your friends? You’d like to think, yes, otherwise they probably shouldn’t be your friends or a person that you’re in a relationship with. But you want these things to not have to exist, and yet they are more and more common.