Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams

 

Watching the start of a News Agent’s podcast with Emily Matlis on screen, I was shocked to hear her say:

 “I'm going to ask you to leave. I'm going to ask you to leave the studio because you cannot be present for the conversation that we now need to have.

The guest who she asked to leave was Sarah Wynn-Williams the author of  “Careless People”, a book that tells the story of her time as a Facebook employee and why she left the company, and a book that is subject to a lawsuit brought by Meta and which she is not allowed to promote in any way.

Back in 2009, Sarah Wynn-Williams was a young New Zealand diplomat working in its embassy in Washington. This was still the early days of Facebook after it had changed access to its App from university and school students to anyone with an email address. Wynn- Williams in her idealism, could see there was enormous potential for Facebook to change the world. She says in her book it was obvious politics would happen on Facebook and in turn politicians and governments of every opinion would not only use the platform to communicate but also to manipulate opinion. She saw the need for  Facebook to forge relationships with governments round the world.

She joined the company and soon became involved in Facebook’s international outreach eventually becoming Director of Global Public Policy.

Careless People tracks the change from her naïve expectation that by connecting people Facebook would be a force for good in the world, to the growing realisation that the driving force behind Mark Zuckerberg and his inner circle, was how Facebook could generate vast amounts of money by expanding into more and more countries, provided of course they didn’t have pay out vast amounts of tax.

There was a slow accumulation of wake-up moments for Wynn-Williams which eventually led to her resignation from the company. One such was Facebook’s use by the military in Myanmar to monitor and coerce its own citizens, and even more significant was the relationship with China where it was clear the Chinese government would only give Facebook access to their vast market if they in turn had access to all the Chinese users' personal data.

Then there was the clear evidence from the 2016 US election that Trump had won the presidency against the odds by his campaign’s ruthless use of Facebook to bombard voters with posts that had little regard for the truth. Also the manipulation of the algorithms to target vulnerable people such as teenage girls, anxious about their body image, with adverts and information tapping into those anxieties.

Careless People is a fly on the wall account of personalities, discussions, and disputes played out in meetings and on the international stage. We witness Facebook factions fighting for their stake in the enterprise and Mark Zuckerberg, guru, obsessive, growing richer by the minute and seemingly unable to see that this child of his Havard days was becoming an out-of-control raging monster creating havoc across the globe.

The book is a compelling read. It’s short chapters are full of humour that race along but while you enjoy the pace of the ride at the same time you are shocked and deeply concerned to see so much power, wielded by so few and with so little concern.

Meta Response to the News Agent's Podcast

"This former employee is trying to use the legal process to sell books, which an arbitrator already ruled broke the agreement she signed with a company when she accepted a large severance payment years ago. Her book is divorced from reality, disparaging and riddled with false claims."

To watch that episode of the News Agents click this image, which shows Sarah Wynn-Williams receiving The Freedom To Publish Prize at the British Book Awards - awarded jointly to Sarah Wynn-Williams and posthumously to Virginia Giuffre for Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, which recounts the abuse she said she suffered at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and others.