Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

I purchased the hardback of this book when I heard that Meta was trying to block its publication. And I’m so glad I did. The book was a jaw-dropping, gripping read that held me in a trance. It’s my understanding that the legal efforts on Meta’s part to have the book blocked have only made it more popular. After reading the book, I’m not surprised. Meta is run by short-sighted, narcissistic, and self-important people who often act like idiot toddlers. Mine. Mine. Gimme. Gimme. Cake. More. More. Once I received the book, I was reluctant to dive in, thinking it would be a challenging read with technology and boring stuff, but I was wrong with that assessment. The book is superbly written, relatable, and humanistic, and made me proud of Sarah for her bravery in becoming a whistleblower. A New Zealand native, Sarah is a lawyer who worked as a diplomat for the United Nations before doggedly selling herself on the staff at Facebook for a job within the organization that she felt could better the world. After working in the upper stratosphere echelons of Facebook for around six years, she has the receipts to prove that the dream of what it could be, became a nightmare. She lays the groundwork for her assertions against Facebook/Meta building her credibility with the reader as she starts from her youth and before the hire. Eventually becoming an intricate player within the Facebook organization, she is a brilliantly smart person (and writer), and she struggles with the culture and personalities of the privileged and out-of-touch leadership who carelessly treat her not as a person, but as a tool. She is often in physical danger too! I was shocked at how often the top leadership - Mark, other top execs, and Sheryl Sandberg - could have cared less about Sarah’s pain, pressure, obstacles, and danger. Not to mention their ignoring Sarah’s wisdom and advice. I’d heard of Sheryl Sandberg – she of the hot book – Lean In. As Oprah and CEOs and other high flyers applauded Sheryl’s awesomeness and her book, I recall at the time feeling intrigued, but super skeptical. See me giving a side eye to the situation and rejecting being given life coaching by a billionaire. It turns out my instincts were right. It’s easier to lean in when you have a staff of nannies, maids, cooks, toadies, and private jets. But she expects everyone to be just as work-driven and productive as her. If you’ve seen the great show Succession – think of the personal assistants portrayed on that show. Their job is to just do – never question – no matter how stupid the task or how impossible the ask. (Do you remember the scene on funeral day when Kendall Roy asks his fast-walking-in-heels personal assistant why she has a meeting scheduled with him and she says in a nervous sing-song – oh, we can talk about it then. He stops walking and presses her for an answer on the spot and she softballs intimating that she is thinking about making a change – and he’s pissed and says like thanks a lot for bringing this up today, my father just died. But she didn’t – he did…. Whatever. You cannot win). Another example. Think Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada asking for the yet-unpublished Harry Potter books to be delivered to her children that the same day. There is a story in Sarah’s book where while traveling in Mexico with the top execs, she gets a frantic call from her husband – there is a horrible situation going on at home in Manhattan with their nanny and the baby (for spoilers – I won’t tell you what was happening but it’s scary as heck). Sarah, trapped and traveling in a car, relays or shares the story about the in-real-time event, because . . . how could you not! Later, in her review, she is told that it was inappropriate for her to talk about her personal life and to basically keep her mouth shut and focus on the job. Lean in and keep your mothering and baby problems to yourself! And part of the problem with all this is that Sarah is not even an “assistant” – she is part of the team. But she is often treated like a body. Another time in a review they said she was ‘difficult to reach’ during the review period and she had to remind them that she was in an actual coma in the hospital. Still – they thought it pertinent and left the negative content as a strike against her. I found the number of personal cruelties to Sarah abhorrent – but Sarah is not a whiner. No. She stayed because she believed in her work and the possible differences she (and presumably, hopefully? others) could make. But the world-changing greed on Facebook’s part to ignore moral and privacy issues, leverage people’s vulnerabilities, profit on the backs of victims, to control the flow of information, and have a pay-to-play mindset in working with an assortment of hate organizations, movements, and autocrats, and to take it further into doing whatever they want as long as they keep growing and gaining more users for their platforms changed everything. Meta is a world gobbler. A globe-stroking Golem who has Thanos power and it’s scarier than you know what. And Facebook had FACEBOOK employees embedded in the Trump campaign to assist them in maximizing the algorithms and giving them whatever tools and access that others didn’t receive. Millions of dollars were spent targeting and spreading the thousands of Trump messages . . . saying God knows what. (Eating cats and dogs?) Harness the press. Harness the information sent to the masses. Pay to ride. Own the world. I’m not sure how Sarah got away with publishing the book, but I applaud the publisher (and I’m assuming a team of lawyers) for going forward with the publication. Read it. Learn from it. I have. But now what do I do? I use Facebook and Instagram– I need to for my business. Don’t I? Maybe Facebook will decide for me after some creepy search retaliates against me for siding with Sarah and for this review. A second is all it takes for me to go bye bye for some infringement or for breaking some policy I’ll never get an answer for. God help us all.

Careless People: Power, Marketing, and the (Absent) Moral Boundaries at Facebook Sarah Wynne-Williams, former Director of Public Policy at Facebook, spent seven years at the company. In Careless People, she takes the reader behind the scenes of the world’s largest social media platform. A hopeful mission She shows how Facebook’s original idealistic mission, “to make the world more open and connected”, was quickly overshadowed by internal tensions, political interests, and ethical dilemmas. Wynne-Williams began her career in the public sector. Driven by a strong sense of civic duty, she was initially enthusiastic about Facebook’s mission, but soon grew disillusioned with how things worked behind closed doors. In her book, she describes how commercial interests and the drive for rapid growth consistently outweighed (positive) social impact. This fundamental tension runs throughout the book. Diplomacy, data, and dominance The book offers a rare, and at times revealing, glimpse into Facebook’s international strategy. Wynne-Williams describes how the company organized state visits, attempted to build diplomatic relationships, and how many of these efforts ended in awkward failure. Particularly notable is Facebook’s push to enter the Chinese market, including Mark Zuckerberg’s personal effort to learn Mandarin. Facebook’s leadership: no innocent bystanders Wynne-Williams doesn’t spare the company’s executive leadership. She paints a picture of a culture riddled with sexual misconduct, power plays, and rivalries. The workplace environment she describes, full of intrigue, temper outbursts, and a striking lack of psychological safety, stands in stark contrast to Facebook’s carefully cultivated public image. This insight is valuable not only for those following Facebook, but for anyone seeking to understand how power and growth shape company culture in the tech sector. Facebook as a PR machine One of the book’s core revelations is how Facebook began to operate less as a technology company and more as a PR machine. Initiatives like internet.org were presented as altruistic, but in practice were primarily aimed at market expansion. The company’s role in political campaigns, notably Donald Trump’s election, is sharply laid out. The book illustrates how thin the line is between innovation and manipulation when user data is leveraged at scale for political and commercial gain. Insightful, but not always credible Wynne-Williams’ personal tone makes the book engaging and accessible. Her commitment to the mission, and her growing frustration, are palpable. Yet her constant presence as narrator sometimes undermines the story’s credibility. Dramatic anecdotes, coincidental twists, and strong personal judgments occasionally create distance, especially when the subject matter demands nuance. That’s unfortunate, because the topics she raises, ethics, global power dynamics, and the impact on young users, deserve to speak for themselves. Lessons for the future What stays with the reader is how even the most powerful tech companies appear vulnerable when ideals clash with growth ambitions. The book shows how easily ethical boundaries blur when billions are at stake. For companies, policymakers, and marketers, it offers a confronting mirror: rapid growth and profit never come without moral cost. Final verdict Careless People is an accessible and insightful book that offers a unique perspective on the inner workings of Facebook and Big Tech. Despite stylistic shortcomings, a tendency toward dramatization, and a sometimes overly subjective voice, it’s a worthwhile read for anyone looking to understand the intersection of technology, power, and marketing. Personally, I found it especially compelling because I’ve taken the opposite path: from marketing and tech into public service. That gives me a unique appreciation of the tension Wynne-Williams describes, the ongoing conflict between social ideals and commercial imperatives. The book lacks objectivity at times, but it undeniably prompts reflection. And that alone makes it more than worth the read. Rating: 7.5

This is amazing … I live by an odd code … you can’t fix a problem until you get to the root of said problem. It’s a frustrating way to live because you quickly realize, that once you find the root, doesn’t necessarily mean you can fix it. This is felt in the incredible book. I feel for the author. Every woman who has worked in corporate America should read this book. Esp. If they have a family. Women want to know their work means something, changed the world - if it meant leaving their family and sacrificing themselves. And the realization that the most well known, most used company doesn’t share that vision, is heartbreaking. This author is the 1% of this world - we need more like her. Bravo for speaking the truth. Bravo for speaking fairly. Bravo for standing up for those who can’t or won’t. A must read.

I usually hate any books besides romance, but this book had some crazy tea about Facebook, World leaders, and foreign countries I’ve yet to find in Y/A. When I downloaded this book I had no idea what it was about, just wanted to see if I could get past first 5 pages. When I started to understand it was about Facebook, and how much the author liked Facebook in the beginning I was about to put it up. In the past any drama with Facebook felt drab or uninteresting, boring drawn out tv trials, headlines filled with self importance, on and on. However this author has made me understand the full weight it carried and helped make sense of the companies history, ethos, and culture. Her tails of danger, sorrow, and inappropriate advances from higher ups made me see her as a corporate bada** who wanted to take it head on. I read this whole book in 5 days total, finding myself constantly reaching for it and thinking about it. 5 stars

Glad this book was written. Risks are worth it. It just didn’t read smoothly. Needed better editing. However, this is an important book about how wealth and power corrupt ethics and morals.

If this is not enough reason for companies and individuals, with even a sliver of good judgement, to stop using all Meta products ASAP, I am not sure what is. Careless People is consistent with, builds upon and confirms what both the "Real Facebook Whistleblower," Frances Haugen (The Power of One) and Jeff Horwitz (Broken Code) have already brought us. While Wynn-Williams did not have the mountains of solid evidence that I believe made the work of Haugen and Horwitz more important, Careless People does provide an interesting perspective and more detail, not only on Meta's failures caused by the drive for more profit, but also the profound personality flaws of Meta's top people. Assuming Careless People is reasonably accurate, Sarah Wynn-Williams is a very brave, resilient woman who wanted to do the right thing for Meta. She sacrificed way too much to help Meta when they did not deserve it. She offers a descriptive account of the difficulties she encountered in her role, including cases of bizarre sexual harassment and being sent to dangerous places all over the world. Even if these are exaggerated, the creativity she had in handling such situations makes the book so interesting to read. So many things went wrong for Wynn-Williams that would have caused many of us to give up, but she kept fighting (like Haugen). While any book providing the reasons why we all need to stop using Meta products is good progress, I am disappointed that Wynn-Williams never mentions Haugen or Horwitz in the acknowledgments or gives them credit for paving the way. I would have expected this at a minimum, since those books have been out since 2021 and those authors have provided abundant proof of Meta's world-wide and excessive damage - 22,000 pages of such proof (see the "2021 facebook leak" on Wikipedia) . As of March 2025, Wynn-Williams had never reached out to either of those two, nor offered to collaborate with them. Jeff Horwitz has interviewed hundreds of former Meta employees. Wynn-Williams left facebook in 2017. So while she offers more detail about what was wrong at Meta, she seems too late. And without any credit to the others, especially Frances Haugen, who risked just as much, if not more than Wynn-Williams, it seems strange that Wynn-Williams would now finally come forward, suspiciously looking like an attempt to use their success towards her own. That part still needs to be answered. The obvious lesson is that the 3 billion users of Meta products are "Careless," too. Nothing changes a company's behavior faster than when people stop using its products. For more than 6 years, since Roger McNamee published "Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe" in 2019, we have known that Meta products suck the data out of users to sell it to anyone willing to pay for it. If you use any Meta products yourself and/or never bother to check that any website you are using, is sending your data to Meta with everything you click on (many tools are available to help you with this), but yet you claim to be an opponent of Trump, you have no one to blame but yourself. Meta gets away with the disastrous and horrific fallout of their carelessness BECAUSE WE LET THEM! In fact, given what Wynn-Williams has brought us, along with the others before her, can't we simply conclude that it is POOR JUDGEMENT for any person or company to actually use Meta, Inc. products in 2025? Meta is similar to the tobacco companies in the 70s who were not doing anything illegal (arguably still TBD for Meta). We all knew their products were dangerous, but so many continued to use them. Hopefully it will not take decades for people to change in this case. So unless there is some miraculously speedy and unprecedented exodus from Meta's user base, look for someone worse than Trump in the 2028 general election and 535 more of them in Congress now that the word is out that all you need are friends at Meta to get elected. Hang on because it's going to get much worse.

Well written . Sara is doing a good job at being both witty and serious . Fantastic story telling. Details are too shocking. Thanks for your bravery. The world needs more people and more women like you . I always suspect at best Sheryl is a diversity hire , at worst she is a phony, but it seems like it is even worse. Zuckerberg should be renamed Suckerberg. What a shame . Dude . You should have worked somewhere before u started anything to learn some basic human decency and business ethics . You don’t deserved to be called an entrepreneur

A WORD ABOUT THIS PLATFORM THAT CONNECTS US Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams This riveting memoir about the maturation of Facebook is fascinating in large part because of the direct access the author had for over six years to the highest levels of leadership at the company. Its title comes from The Great Gatsby, where narrator Nick Carraway says, “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money.” A former New Zealand diplomat, Wynn-Williams had to pitch her own job to Facebook in 2011, as Zuckerberg and other senior leaders had no clue then about the role Facebook was destined to play in global politics. Rising to the position of Director of Global Public Policy, Wynn-Williams had a front-row seat to decisions that would irrevocably alter the political landscape in the US and around the world. Fast forward to the 2016 presidential election and the author’s account of how Facebook’s microtargeting of users, its allowance of misinformation on the site, and its assignment of staff to work hand in glove with the Trump campaign as they utilized these ethically compromised tactics turned the tide in that election, and set the stage for the wrecking ball now swinging in our halls of government. You could say Careless People is the story of how Facebook lost its conscience, and how the curious and impressionable young man at its helm grew to love the taste of power. The author weaves the story of Facebook’s role in the 2016 election with a number of other narratives, all revealing the same pattern showing how principled concerns were steamrolled by the relentless pursuit of growth, revenue, and influence. See also Cory Doctorow’s engaging review of this book, with its helpful explanation of why continued growth is so important to a company like Facebook. Her account reads like a slow-building tragedy, where you see exactly where the off-ramps were and watch, helplessly, as they pass by one by one: The Rohingya Genocide This is perhaps the most devastating section of the book. Wynn-Williams argues that Facebook failed to moderate hate speech against the Rohingya in Myanmar, and that the company only had two Burmese language moderators for the entire country. Facebook had also failed to invest in Burmese language support for its automated systems, meaning none of its moderation tools could even parse posts written in Burmese script. Because of these decisions, hate speech and misinformation designed to stoke ethnic and religious division spread like wildfire across the platform, and the genocide that followed is presented as a direct consequence of this reckless neglect. Censorship for China A chilling revelation for anyone who believes in free speech is Facebook’s willingness to compromise its own foundational values in pursuit of access to the Chinese market, which Zuckerberg seems to have perceived as a kind of final frontier and holy grail. Rather than standing firm on the principles of open communication it so publicly champions, Facebook secretly developed what was essentially a bespoke censorship tool designed to win over a Chinese government playing hard to get. If China had decided to allow Facebook through the Great Firewall, this system would have allowed Beijing to suppress content it found politically inconvenient, and would have extended into Hong Kong. One subnarrative in this thread is the lengths to which Zuckerberg went to court President Xi Jinping. He asks him (in Mandarin) to name his firstborn child (Xi declines), and the author includes an entertaining depiction of one-upmanship of Xi over Zuckerberg when the latter seeks unsuccessfully to arrange an impromptu meeting with Xi (since Xi had repeatedly rejected overt requests to meet). Sexual Harassment Culture For a company that spent years wrapping itself in the language of feminine empowerment and progressive values — most visibly through COO Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” movement — the picture Wynn-Williams paints inside Facebook’s walls is a study in hypocrisy. The book alleges that sexual harassment by senior executives was not only tolerated but effectively shielded from consequences. Monetizing Teenage Insecurity Wynn-Williams reveals that Facebook identified teenage girls who had deleted selfies on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and then forwarded their data to companies who used it to target them with beauty products. Let that sink in for a moment. These were young girls navigating the minefield of adolescent insecurity, who made a conscious decision to take their photos down. And rather than respecting that decision, Facebook treated it as a data point to be monetized. Content Moderation as a Political Tool At the heart of this memoir is the question of how Facebook decides what speech is acceptable and what isn’t, both in the US and across the world. Facebook has spent years presenting its content moderation decisions as principled, values-driven calls — the careful work of a responsible company trying to balance free expression with public safety. However, the author shows, an internal policy established in February 2015 made the actual workings explicit: when governments requested that content be removed, Facebook would only comply if there was a credible threat to block the platform entirely in that particular country or a risk to its own employees. Numerous examples paint a picture of a company that was essentially making it up as it went along — complying with take-down requests when powerful enough governments (such as China) pushed hard enough, and ignoring everyone else.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Most of us have encountered, in one way or another, Facebook’s self-described “Community Standards,” which, the company states, “are written to ensure that everyone’s voice is valued.” “Facebook,” the language continues, “takes great care to craft policies that are inclusive of different views and beliefs- in particular those of people and communities that might otherwise be overlooked or marginalized.” However, the picture the author reveals in Careless People suggests that such language is mostly posturing. Zuckerberg’s Ego and Detachment One of the most fascinating and unsettling threads running through the book is the portrait Wynn-Williams paints of Mark Zuckerberg — a man who began as a socially awkward but genuinely curious young idealist and somewhere along the way became something different. One anecdote about Indonesia is comic in its brazenness: Zuckerberg allegedly demanded that Wynn-Williams organize an entirely staged, artificial mob of fans to “gently” swarm him in public, creating the illusion of organic, spontaneous popularity. His staff routinely let him win at board games on his private jet, and he remains oblivious to that fact until the author finally spells it out one day. After the 2016 election, when Obama dresses him down at the APEC summit in Peru about Facebook’s role in swinging the results, he becomes indignant, and instead of recognizing an opportunity for a course correction, he contemplates a run for president himself, instructing his staff to take him on a grassroots tour of the country that includes all the requisite stops for a presidential candidate. Throughout the book, we see a leader increasingly insulated from the consequences of his own decisions, surrounded by people too afraid or too incentivized to speak the truth to his face. What makes the author’s account of this man and his company compelling is that initially she believed in the mission. She was there because she thought Facebook could be a genuine force for good in the world–a way to connect people, a uniquely powerful democratizing force. In that sense she probably stands in for most of us who are here right now because we recognized these same qualities ten or fifteen years ago. But now we feel tremors beneath us and the ground shifting in unsettling ways as we post and scroll and message here. What is this platform becoming? What are our responsibilities to bear witness to that and to respond? I believe this book can help us answer those difficult questions. As a footnote, consider that when the book was published, Meta immediately filed an emergency legal action to prevent Wynn-Williams from publicly promoting it, citing a non-disparagement agreement she signed on leaving the company. The attempt backfired in the way these things tend to: the book reached number one on the New York Times best-seller list, and Wynn-Williams was invited to testify before the U.S. Senate. Meta’s attempts to disparage the author read as transparent and cynical in the face of the credibility she establishes throughout this book. And its efforts to limit her voice have only become additional evidence supporting the story she has told. If you’re looking for a book that explains how we got to the crazy, upside-down world we are living in now — politically, socially, technologically — Careless People is a great place to start.

Once I started reading "Careless People" it was virtually impossible to put down. In all honesty I should have been writing a one-pager for an (awesome) investor who wants to be part of my next company. Reading this book made me realise why my previous company had not been super successful: we cared about data integrity and data privacy, we cared about security , we tried to do things the honest and responsible way, knowing that all of this was not really known in terms of right/wrong at the time we were doing it. At least we tried to do the right thing. Unlike the owners and executives at Facebook (now Meta) who just bumbled along trying to ignore their responsibilities to their global community of members/users. Just playing the game of make more profits, no matter the cost to society/the world/people. "Careless People" is unputtdownable and is a warning of what we will face if we don't think way more carefully about how AI is deployed in business and government processes and in personal use. The inaction from governments and regulators worldwide has enabled the toxic mess that is Facebook and X. The effects of fake Facebook, once known as Internet.org (a free version of FB that brought internet to countries that couldn't afford it and which preferenced Facebook apps rather than the full internet where a diversity of views and apps can be found) on the nascent democracy of Myanmar and on the Rohingya people make me cry. I didn't understand how that situation occurred and now I know - Facebook allowed disinformation and hate to enter the veins of a society that didn't have tools to counter the effects. Shame Facebook, shame. And yes, I'll be deleting my Facebook account.

This is the sort of book that opens your eyes to what’s behind your day to day and apparently inoffensive use of social media tools like FB. The extent to which the leadership of FB, starting with Mark Zuckerberg, but also Sheryl Sandberg and beyond, has ignored the political implications of developing and sharing FB’s algorithms and user data is shocking… A tale of greed and lack of moral compass. In their quest to make FB global and line pockets at the same time, FB has been used to sway elections in the US, facilitate censorship in China and promote hate crimes against Muslims in Myanmar. I’d heard about this in the press, but hadn’t really understood it till now. Sarah Wynn-Williams role in all of this is questionable, but her bravery in denouncing what takes place in FB is commendable. This book is sometimes hard to read but compelling at the same time, I highly recommend it.

Sehr gutes Buch, vielleicht etwas zu lang

Excelente tiempo de entrega y el contenido de este libro está inigualable

Highly recommend this book! I couldn’t put it down, every spare moment I had was spent reading this. Thank you Sarah Wynn-Williams for sharing your experiences. Just another story that confirms that profit will always come before people with these huge organisations.