Today I finished the audiobook of Careless People (2025), the recent memoir-exposé by Sarah Wynn-Williams about her time at Facebook. After a chapter about surviving a shark attack as a child, seemingly only included because how could you not mention something like that, we whizz forward to her petitioning Facebook for a role in policy and politics. The only problem is that neither the role nor the department exists. And yet, eventually, they are worn down – or at least see why the role should exist.
And what follows is a terrifying look at how Facebook runs. I’m only writing a short post today, because it’s late and I just got back home after going to Bristol to watch The Room, but a quick mention of some of its contents is chilling enough. Sexual harassment goes unchallenged (and, indeed, Wynn-Williams seems to have been fired partly for raising it); Cheryl Sandberg insists on assistants sharing a bed with her; Chinese Government’s human rights violations are accepted as a pesky necessity; Facebook lies under oath to Congress; Mark Zuckerberg barely cares when his employees are imprisoned for following his advice; a convulsing and bleeding employee is ignored by her manager and others around them because they are ‘too busy’.
None of us will have believed that Facebook was a force for good – it’s been clear since The Social Network and before that Mark Zuckerberg et al are ruthless, immoral, and selfish. But what Careless People exposes so well is exactly what the title (quoting The Great Gatsby) says: they are careless. They simply do not care about the terrible impact they are having – whether on their subordinates at work, teenage girls being deliberately served ads for weight loss products when they delete selfies, or human rights activists whose data will be given to people who will violently quash them. They are careless. It’s a new example of the banality of evil.
Sarah Wynn-Williams comes out of the book extremely well – so well that you have to conclude she is editorialising. I don’t doubt that the people around her were awful (she is even chastised for not responding quickly to work emails – while on maternity leave and in a coma) but I suspect she is not quite the tireless ambassador for morality that she suggests. It’s never quite clear why she takes so long to leave after she is disillusioned about the company – she mentions health insurance, but other companies have health insurance. Facebook/Meta are, of course, trying to tar her and say the book is all lies. I expect it is all truth, where they’re concerned. And this is just from one woman’s access to information – who knows what else they are hiding.
It’s a page-turner (or whatever the audiobook equivalent is) of a book, well-paced and unsparing. If you can cope with the info, since we all know that immoral powerful people are seldom likely to be held to account, then I recommend it.
Thank you for summarising this for me. I had skim read it to get the flavour and was not really that shocked. I have always been wary of the pernicious influence of social media on many and how it can be misused for harm. Hypocrite that I am, I make an exception for book blogs though!
I think the ‘too good to be true’ editorialising would have irritated me. That was a good point you made.
Yikes! I would definitely expect the topic to be bleak, because all of these companies just care about money. But you do make good points about her own involvement…
I’ve heard her in interview, so am vaguely familiar, but enjoyed hearing your take on all this. Just for context, health insurance offered by employers in North America varies soooo widely; it’d be difficult to gauge from afar, as not everyone here fully grasps it (limited employment or no-money talk). Even in Canada, where a lot of health care is covered, for what is not, it can vary with employers to the point where you pay only a very little yourself and most of the cost is covered, to you paying far and away the majority with some package coverage. And vary a lot in terms of what you have deducted off each cheque for this coverage. Especially if you have kids (or other dependents), or have a chronic condition, it means everything. But I agree it’s worthwhile to examine what makes a whistleblower stay for as long as they do, long past the point where they believe they can make a difference.
I’m delighted to read your excellent review as I have the audiobook of this and am looking forward (perhaps not quite the verb but you know what I mean) to listening to it. The antics of Facebook’s lawyers do seem to suggest that this is a truthful account of the company’s failings!
I think this is just too bleak for me to read. Even though as you say, nothing surprising in what is revealed!
I’ve got this book and I’m dithering on picking it up, mostly because I’m sure I’ll feel enraged but futile reading it. It sounds like a cracking read though!