Careless People

A story of where I used to work

16.4 x 3.7 x 24.6 cm, 400 pages

English language

Published by Macmillan.

ISBN:
978-1-0350-6592-9
Copied ISBN!
3 stars (3 reviews)

Sarah Wynn-Williams, a young diplomat from New Zealand, pitched for her dream job. She saw Facebook’s potential and knew it could change the world for the better. But, when she got there and rose to its top ranks, things turned out a little different.

From wild schemes cooked up on private jets to risking prison abroad, Careless People exposes both the personal and political fallout when boundless power and a rotten culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative, Wynn-Williams rubs shoulders with Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and world leaders, revealing what really goes on among the global elite – and the consequences this has for all of us.

Candid and entertaining, this is an intimate memoir set amid powerful forces. As all our lives are upended by technology and those who control it, Careless People will change how you see the world.

2 editions

These are the people to avoid

5 stars

A complicated book: the author is complicit in the activities she describes, which no amount of ironic detachment or claims of trying to change the system from the inside can hide.

But it’s engagingly-written, frequently hilarious, and jaw-dropping on almost every page. She’s done us a service by painting this insider’s picture of Facebook / Meta. It’s one that I hope every politician who hopes to touch tech policy will read.

I also hope everyone in the tech industry reads it. Not only because it’s a cautionary tale in itself, but because the personalities described here are rife in the industry. I’ve never spoken to Mark or Sheryl or Joel or most of the rest of them, but I’ve met people like them, with those same sensibilities, and they are every bit as shallow and driven by power as is laid out here. These are the people to avoid. These …

A self-protecting ride through autocracy, kleptocracy, and capitalism

2 stars

First: the author, Sarah Wynn-Williams, is the former global public policy director of Facebook. The author is a coward and a person who tries to come off well through all of this; they don't come off well at all. From the start of this book:

I was one of the people advising the company’s top leaders, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, as they were inventing how the company would deal with governments around the world. By the end, I watched hopelessly as they sucked up to authoritarian regimes like China’s and casually misled the public. I was on a private jet with Mark the day he finally understood that Facebook probably did put Donald Trump in the White House, and came to his own dark conclusions from that. But most days, working on policy at Facebook was way less like enacting a chapter from Machiavelli and way more like watching …

avatar for pivic@bookwyrm.social

rated it

2 stars

Subjects

  • Facebook
  • Technology

Lists