Book Review: "Careless People" by Sarah Wynn-Williams
When people started buzzing about Careless People, I admit that I found myself thinking "who cares? Meta is a morally rotten company run by greedy, out-of-touch sleezeballs? This isn't news." But as more and more people talked about it and I began to hear it discussed on non-privacy-focused mainstream outlets, I knew that my position as a privacy "expert" meant that I should probably go ahead and read it anyways so that I'd be prepared when people started to ask me about it. Sadly, I am a very busy person with very little time to read physical books - and I'm allergic to Audible - so I had to wait for a copy to become available at my local library. Over four hundred holds later, I finally got to give it a listen and see what all the buzz was about.
Sarah Wynn-Williams
Careless People is a memoir by Sarah Wynn-Williams, who worked at Facebook (later Meta) between 2011 and 2017 as Director of Public Policy. Wynn-Williams is a lawyer born in New Zealand who worked at the United Nations before joining Facebook. According to Wynn-Williams, she joined out of idealism: she recognized what a game-changing force for good Facebook could potentially be, and she wanted to help further that cause. Instead, as readers likely know, she became part of the platform's slow descent into the amplification of the most toxic parts of humanity, including cyberbullying, scams, authoritarian abuses, fake news, and AI slop.
Perhaps that's what drove Wynn-Williams to write this book. EFF's "How to Fix the Internet" has reiterated the idea that in order to criticize something, you first have to love it. Nobody accuses film critics of hating movies or food critics of hating food, but for some reason the moment you criticize tech, you're some kind of luddite who hates progress. In that spirit, it's easy to see how someone like Wynn-Williams looked at the "before" picture of Facebook's role in the 2011 Christchurch Earthquake (where she claims the website helped people account for loved ones, pass along information and resources, and more) and then the "after" of Meta literally enabling genocide and thought "my god, what have we done?" It seems only fair that she should feel the need (and be allowed) to criticize what Meta has become and to sound the alarm about the ongoing abuses.
It is this context, I think, that makes the book relevant to our current day and age. Meta seems unable to die, like some sort of eldritch horror that the world can't be rid of even as we all agree we'd be better off without it. I've yet to hear anyone say they'd be sad if Facebook disappeared tomorrow. Maybe Instagram or WhatsApp, but certainly not Facebook. Yet, it persists, begging to be put out of our misery, holding us in its grip like addicts and zombies. This book adds more explanation of how we got here and just how dangerous the radioactive, biohazardous waste has truly become.
Careless People
One reason I put off reading Careless People for so long is because I'm tired of listening to snowflakes (not the political kind) make excuses for why they're not part of the avalanche. While Wynn-Williams could've done a much better job of taking responsibility for her actions, it was refreshing to hear her at several points admit "I should've left at this point." Of course, we can't let her off the hook entirely. People switch jobs all the time under conditions like hers and more, so really she had no excuse. She simply chose to bury her head in the sand and let inertia take her, but at least she admits that.
Regardless, once I started reading I was hooked. Following Meta's spiral into complete psychosis is like watching a train wreck, a surgical training video, or a trashy reality show: you know it's going to be awful, but you just have to see it for yourself. Wynn-Williams's pacing is fantastic, each new crisis somehow more incredible than the last. In each situation, Facebook's current form begins to take shape as we see decisions made for the first time that would later seem to become precedent.
That said, there is nothing new here for most Meta haters: Careless People tells the story of a socially inept child who has no idea where he is, how he got there, or what to do now. Surrounding him are the leeches who are only interested in serving themselves, seeing their roles at Meta as existing purely to line their pockets with no regard for users, other employees, morals, or society. The company is run by the appropriately named careless people who want only to consume everything like the cancer they are to extract as much wealth and power as possible to continue their spoiled games like oversized children. Everything exists - they seem to believe - to serve them.
It became apparent to me very quickly that I could not listen to this audiobook on the way to work in the morning. At one point I actually apologized to my coworker, telling him I was reading that book and it had put me in a bad mood. The next day he asked "you didn't read that book this morning, did you? I can tell. You're in a way better mood today."
Perhaps the most eye-opening part - for me, at least - was just how truly detached from reality the rich and powerful really are. Among the many, many stories shared, Wynn-Williams relays a particular story about Zuckerberg's upcoming visit to Peru. To start with, Zuckerberg forgot his passport, so the plane sat on the tarmac while someone had to run back to his house and grab it. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg spent the whole time blaming everyone else (and of course, they all eagerly took that blame like the good little sycophants they are) as if he isn't a grown-ass man who should be able to account for and manage his own identification paperwork like the rest of us do without issue. Then, after that, Zuckerberg suddenly decided that Zika is a concern since he and his wife are trying to get pregnant. This is despite the fact that the town they're visiting has reported zero cases and no part of this trip would require any sort of recommended precautions. The entire team - in the jet, on the tarmac - proceeded to wait while they had to contact the Peruvian government to have an exact replica of his office built so he could isolate while there. Imagine if you had to travel for work and you sat in the car while you made someone else run home for your ID and then called the out-of-town destination and said "yeah I'm gonna need you to build me an exact replica of my office before I arrive tomorrow."
The book is riddled with stories such as these, anecdotes that make you pause, step back, take a deep breath, and go "wow, truly these people live in a completely different world." (And not in a good way.) From others letting you win in board games to sexually harassing your coworkers with impunity, it's shocking the immunity, isolation, and privilege these people walk around in, completely removed from all things. Anything you want, any time you want, never challenged. No wonder they're all children. I truly pity them: to be stagnant, to never grow, to never have to face yourself or any difficulty.
To me this was the hardest part of the book to read. "How can anyone possibly be this entitled, this out-of-touch with how things work?" Moreover, how can anyone be content with that? I'd be lying if I said I didn't wish I could afford to buy anything I want any time I want, but to be surrounded by vapid yes-men? To never grow as a person? To not understand the basic functions of the world? To be so self-absorbed that I'm oblivious to how despised I am, how everyone around me only indulges me for what I can offer them, and how truly awful and wrong I am? And to be happy with that trade off? It's truly baffling.
Conclusion
If you already hate Meta, Zuckerberg, or anything Facebook-related this book will only further entrench that belief. If you already hate the rich, this book will make you hate them more. If you're still using Facebook, perhaps this book will make you reconsider wanting to support these kinds of people. I won't say this is the "must-read book of the year" but I will say that it's worth your time, and it's a relatively easy read ("relatively" if you don't count the rage-induced blood pressure spikes). But personally I appreciate nearly any history book that helps explain how we got where we are today, and while this book may not put any major historical events into context, it certainly helps explain how Meta got to be what it is today, and given that Meta is such a major part of our society, that context alone might make it worth a read.
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