book club: careless people by sarah wynn-williams
Read this one a little while before it came up in the Gazette’s book club , but now will finally write a post for it :) I picked it up in a book shop while browsing, remembering I had heard good things and that I had planned to read it. Good to know: Meta is trying to combat this book pretty hard and got a gag order so that the author cannot talk about her book or promote it anywhere. It’ll also potentially bankrupt her if they win the case, unfortunately, so I think it is more important than ever to support the author and promote it on behalf of her. What you’ll find in the book isn’t just Meta-related; it quite literally is, as the cover subtitle says, a story of where Wynn-Williams used to work. It is also an autobiography, and you’ll get to know a bit about how the author grew up and what moved her privately during her time at Facebook. I don’t think these parts were lame or too much; they added quite a bit, and built rapport with the reader. It made me as much interested in her as a person as I was interested in the dirt she had on Meta. What surprised me is how closely she worked with the top leadership, Zuckerberg and Sandberg. When reading other “whistleblower-y” books, it often seems to be by just another small cog in the machine far removed from the top, and getting information about corrupt leadership filtered down from several layers. This is not the case here. You’ll read about a person who directly organized a lot in Mark’s worklife, together with a few other notable names. She was the person who sat in so many meetings and private jets with him, handled his outfits and appearances, and negotiated deals for him. No hearsay, this is a person who was directly involved and witnessed the things she talks about live. You’ll read a lot about not only how Meta had their hands in elections and political turmoil in other countries, but also their tax evasion, their questionable moderation issues, their obscene wealth, and more. You’ll also read about the danger they put their employees in, about the abuse the pregnant employees face, and the insane standards they have for mothers. It’s hard to summarize well, because you really have to read about how slowly it started to understand how all the puzzle pieces fell into place to where it is now - an intensely horrifying superpower with no ethics that will put their own employees into prison if it benefits the company. I greatly enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anyone; it was an easy, at parts entertaining, but also shocking read with a lot of secondhand embarrassment. I found it hard to put down and the short chapters lend themselves to binge reading. What I really wanted to talk about here is the criticism I found online. After I had finished reading, I was curious: Were there any statements by (ex-)Facebook employees? What did they say about the book, or how some of them were represented? Did Meta allow them to talk about it at all? It wasn’t super straightforward for me to find statements, as I don’t have social media accounts to access walled-off accounts (even LinkedIn etc.) and some names in the books were changed, but it wasn’t indicated which ones. But I did find this post by Katie Harbath. Harbath is also an ex-Facebook employee and left in 2021. Interesting bit in that post: ”Facebook contacted me to see if I would be putting anything out about the book, but they didn’t tell me what to say or pressure me.” That tells me one thing: Facebook immediately went into damage control mode and wanted to see whether they could expect an absolute shitstorm of other ex-employees going in on that and sharing their own stories in a sort of #meetoo-esque moment, or if they’d keep their mouth shut, or even give a public statement decrying the book. I don’t think you’d do this as a company if the things inside it were laughably false and the delusions of one disgruntled ex-employee that no one else could relate to. This is important to keep in mind. Moving forward: I think it’s shocking that Wynn-Williams can go to such lengths to report a boss for gross behavior and sexual harassment, and then another woman, who used to work there as well, includes praise about that boss in the book review and says she never experienced it, just to get weirdly hung up on tiny details like what year a team was formed, to defend that sex pest. Who even cares? This book details Facebook’s hand in genocide and the aggressively sexist bro culture and how your favorite boss retaliated against being reported for harassment, and all you have to say is “Damn, my ex-coworker thought we made that team in 2014, but there was one in 2012”. It’s just extra gross to me if another woman runs to defend a man who has credible allegations and significantly sabotaged the career of a woman that chose to report the harassment. A fair piece of criticism is this: ”There are many other places in the book where what she writes is factually true but missing crucial context. For example, yes, we embedded staffers with the Trump campaign, but she fails to mention that we offered the same to Clinton’s team. She also fails to mention that what Trump’s team did was similar to what Obama had done in 2012. I wouldn’t expect Sarah to know that, though - this was not her area of work or expertise. However, you might not know that from her book because she fails to mention it.” That’s indeed good to know, and sad that this context was missed. That’s why I want to highlight it here. But sadly, this seems to be the only good example of the claimed “inaccuracies and lies” that aren’t just “ummm ackshually 🤓☝🏻”-ing about numbers. Another criticism is that Wynn-Williams downplays the contributions of others in the company. I can see how it comes across that way for people who used to work alongside her, who feel like they want to get credited when this book gets so much attention. However, the book is literally a story of where she used to work (the subtitle!). It’s as much an autobiography as it is a whistleblower piece. I would also mostly talk about my contributions if that’s the focus I set for the book. This criticism is also in part interesting to me because it is not fitting that well to the other one I see. In general, even outside of that post by another ex-employee, I see people say that Wynn-Williams shifted the blame away from herself and downplayed her own involvement in it, which personally, I don’t see that at all. The entire book is about her personal involvement that she seems very ashamed of, and at multiple points in the book, she seems to acknowledge that she should have done something else, but ultimately complied due to pressure, guilt, pride, or being reliant on the job due to healthcare benefits. She is very open about the fact that she was co-responsible for a lot of things and paved the way for awful stuff to be happening; it was her supplying a lot of the ideas and connections, and the one who saved Facebook’s face multiple times when she didn’t have to. She did a lot to help Facebook grow and kept quiet for too long, and her entire book is about admitting that. I honestly attribute this criticism to our current media literacy crisis, in which people probably won’t be able to detect regret or atoning for ones own involvement unless the author literally writes “It was all my fault and I beg for forgiveness.”. The way readers blame her for saying she wanted to leave but then staying another few years before finally being kicked out is emblematic of another very similar problem our society has, and it’s faulting people who stay in toxic situations for too long, and pointing the finger at victims saying “If you knew it was bad, why didn’t you leave?”. Now, with the added circumstances of asking an at times severely sick person with a high cost of living and two children why they don’t just quit their well-paying job with healthcare. As always, it’s easier to point out the righteous decision as an outsider who got the information presented in a digestible manner, rather than being the person who has to live through it and then spend a while processing it all to make sense of what happened. Retrospectively, I am sure Sarah would agree with basically all advice readers would give. I just don’t think one can simultaneously downplay the work of others while downplaying one’s own involvement. Then whose work and actions filled these pages? An interesting criticism to discuss is: “ She also gives no recommendations on how to do things better other than to say they should be done differently. I would have liked to hear more reflection on what changes she would have made and how she would apply them to our discussions today about artificial intelligence. I suppose that’s not the point of the book, though.” I get that people would like most negative situations and facts to immediately be followed up with easy, beautifully packaged solutions. We finish that book and think: What now? We often hear people say that unless you can do the thing yourself perfectly, you shouldn’t criticize others who do badly in it, and that without a plan forward, your criticism is useless or just “hating”. I disagree, especially in this case. Tackling what should have gone differently and how to move forward would take up more pages than the original is now, and is almost impossible to limit in scope - where do you begin and where do you stop? A lot of Facebook’s cruelty and violence are direct consequences of unfettered late stage capitalism. To ask Wynn-Williams to solve things that are not only systemic in an org, but a systemic issue globally, in one book, is unfair. On many pages in the book, she actually even tries to convince leadership not to go through with things and offers alternatives, but seldomly succeeds. These are the only real solutions she can offer without going completely overboard and taking a deep dive into politics and regulatory. It’s an unfair standard to hold Wynn-Williams to as someone who should know how complex that is (seeing as Harbath founded technology policy firm Anchor Change, and joined the Integrity Institute, an organization that advises lawmakers on legislation around social media, and is a fellow at several think tanks focused on political issues). I couldn’t find much else criticism to discuss, or statements by ex-employees, but if you have any, let me see! I do believe that most of the stories in the book are true. Many people working in tech online have said it sounds in line with what they experienced or heard elsewhere. I choose to give her grace if there are a few inaccuracies based on the fact that I also don’t remember each email and conversation word for word after years. It’s already better retold than I could retell anything in my life. Most of the time, I will probably get a year wrong by 1-2 years too. All in all, a solid book and my favorite this year. Reply via email Published 28 Dec, 2025
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