What I'm Reading: Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams (2025)

[delphi]

✓ kingstoken's 2025 Book Bingo: Over 300 Pages

Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams is a 2025 tell-all about the author's time as Facebook's Director of Global Public Policy in the 2010s. The book focuses on the ill-preparedness of Facebook executives to navigate the geopolitical situations they inserted themselves into in their obsession with perpetual expansion, including their role in the Rohingya genocide, as well as the general bizarre work environment and the sexual harassment that the author experienced.

Wynn-Williams comes off as a deeply careless person herself, albeit one buoyed along on a slightly different type of inflated self-importance than her former colleagues. There's a lot of what feels like completely unreflected-upon self-incrimination in the book that lends credibility to her stories. The seams show clearly enough where she's edited her interactions with others (usually to give herself the winning last word in conversations that clearly would have continued) that I'm inclined to believe the bulk of what's there, even if I don't buy the characterization of her responses or her assessment of her own moral fibre.

When this book first came out, I wondered if reading it was going to feel redundant alongside all the media coverage it was surely going to get. But the gag order Facebook imposed on the author banning her from promoting the book—combined with the avalanche of other news in early 2025 about tech billionaires dismantling democracy—seemed to result in fewer articles about the content crossing my path than I would have expected. For that reason, I'm glad I took the time to read it.

Also, it's worth noting that in my searching, I found many results on other search engines that didn't turn up on Google, even when they involved sources that Google usually indexes.

Now in his newest role, as vice president of public policy, Joel[ Kaplan]'s a very different boss from Marne Levine. Where Marne had been deliberative, thorough, ever questioning, Joel's her opposite, impetuous and dogmatic. Joel sees everything through the lens of US power. Facebook, like the US, is a superpower. When something goes wrong outside the US, he reflexively turns to the State Department to task them to solve it. Almost like he considers them an arm of Facebook. When the island nation of Nauru blocks Facebook out of the blue, Joel contacts the State Department to have the US government publicly condemn the block. Which they do. It changes nothing. I urge him, in this case and others, to reach out ourselves. Figure out why the government blocked us and contact them directly to resolve it.

Joel is surprised to learn Taiwan is an island. Often when we start to talk about pressing issues in some country in Latin America or Asia, he stops and asks me to explain where the country is. This happens so frequently that a few weeks into his tenure, I offer to buy him a world map. He turns that down, but days later, a large framed map shows up in his office.

Just a few weeks after he takes over Marne's job, Joel starts hiring a political sales team to push politicians—here and abroad— into becoming advertisers. The idea is, if politicians depend on Facebook to win elections, they'll be less likely to do anything that'll harm Facebook. If Facebook is the goose that lays the golden egg, no one wants to kill the goose. Get them hooked on those golden eggs. Also, unlike Marne, Joel wants the policy team to generate revenue. The way he sees it, Facebook is a business and the policy team should be contributing to the bottom line. He doesn't want to be viewed as a "cost center" internally. Political advertising is a way to change that. And elections are the biggest opportunity. Fresh-faced Harvard grads start moving into the Washington, DC, office to sell ads to politicians and political campaigns.

I find all this repugnant. I feel alienated from this new regime from the outset. As a foreigner, I have a very different perspective on money in elections. New Zealand, like so many other countries, has strict limits on electoral spending: under $20,000 per candidate. I'm astounded at the role money plays in elections in the US. It determines so much about whose voice gets heard on every issue from guns to abortion to much else. I'm also against exporting this value system. But Facebook is effectively bringing this in globally by stealth.

The result? In Brazil, Facebook's already facing fines of millions of dollars and court orders to block the platform for violating the ban on electoral advertising. In Mexico, Facebook is being investigated for defying restrictions on political ads.

My disagreements with Joel come to a head when he tells me to establish PACs in other countries. Political action committees, of course, are an American invention that pull together donors to give money to political candidates. There are PACs for every possible cause: to elect more women to office and to elect candidates who are friendly to Realtors, or beer wholesalers, or teachers' unions. Home Depot runs its own giant PAC, as does AT&T.

"We were so late in establishing Facebook's PAC in the US; I don't want to make that mistake in other countries," Joel says insistently. "We need to get moving to establish PACs outside the US. We should have done this a long time—"

"So, this is awkward," I cut in. Joel looks puzzled.

"That's illegal. Only US citizens can contribute to elections here. That's true everywhere. Nobody wants foreigners bankrolling their elections."

"Really?" Joel looks shocked.

"Definitely. That's why even though you regularly invite me to contribute to the Facebook PAC you founded, for me to do so would be illegal as I'm not a citizen."

"Well, I was actually meaning the other way," he says defensively. "Contributions to politicians in other countries. We need to get moving on channeling money to our key allies offshore, you know, our most influential politicians in other countries."

"Ah, that would be considered bribery and corruption in most of the countries I'm responsible for," I say, careful to strike a neutral tone.

Joel looks crestfalleen.

"Except the dictatorships," I offer. "They'll probably take your money."

For a minute I worry that he's seriously considering it.

Comments

[lookfar2]

Tristan really liked that book.

There is something I always object to in TV and movies that I call the "talk and walk;" person enters room, delivers confrontational message. Second person replies, first person speaks again to shore up aggressive message or add devastating further info, then walks away. This is absolutely nothing like the way people act. Usually Person 1 enters room and confronts, then there is a 10-exchange skirmish ("I know you are, but what am I?"), then a little personal attack or else diversion, then the whole dance of leaving the room, like "I'll see you in the meeting" or "I'll be out of contact till Wednesday" or other such things, then they say "Bye."

The talk and walk seems also to function as a chance to show you a different setting for a short period of time and thereby provide greater visual interest, but in fact, most information is exchanged in the same three boring rooms 99% of the time, not at the edge of the cliff overlooking the sea.

[delphi]

Oh yeah, the "talk and walk." I often notice that in TV and movies too, and while I get the purpose on the dramatic front and for visual interest, it's definitely one of those breaks from naturalism that doesn't always fit with the rest of what it's in.

Here, I felt like it stood out even more before there was no "walk." Wynn-Williams says the thing that needs saying and reveals her bosses'/colleagues' ignorance, and then the scene just ends, even though she's still in the room with those people, who presumably have a response for her—one that she presumably capitulates to, given how long she chose to stay with the company.

[pauraque]

I read a review of this book by someone on here who interned at Facebook at the same time the author was there, and their take was that the book seems accurate except that the author downplays her own complicity and makes herself look implausibly naive. Like, she describes being shocked months in at things the interns figured out in their first week. But I suppose that is often the admission price for whistleblowers to tell what they know.

[delphi]

Ah, that's interesting, and I think that tracks with my impression.

The author definitely seems to be downplaying her complicity moment-to-moment, particularly in scenes where she says what needs to be said but then fails to relay what happens next—where she presumably continues to comply and use her skills and knowledge of the system to deliver on what her bosses and colleagues want. But as a whole her complicity feels out in the open because it's the story of someone who has all the "right" convictions and yet whose breaking point with the company had nothing to do with any of their global actions but just where it was personally uncomfortable to her as an individual (harassment and lack of support for her health and family life).

The fact that she seems to have zero self-awareness of how this makes her look is what makes her general story seem believable to me, because I feel like someone who was doing more large-scale editing of the truth would have tried to adjust that aspect.

[bleodswean]

Facebook, to me, proves we are but lambs to the slaughter.

[delphi]

As someone who left the platform in 2005 (not out of any principle, just to avoid a stalker), I drastically underestimated everything that happened with it in the ensuing decade.