Careless People
A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism
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4.4 • 612 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
#1 New York Times Bestseller
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK. NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY TIME, THE NEW YORKER, NPR, AP, THE ECONOMIST, SLATE, THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, AND MORE!
“Careless People is darkly funny and genuinely shocking...Not only does [Sarah Wynn-Williams] have the storytelling chops to unspool a gripping narrative; she also delivers the goods." -Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times
“When one of the world’s most powerful media companies tries to snuff out a book — amid other alarming attacks on free speech in America like this — it’s time to pull out all the stops.” –Ron Charles, The Washington Post
An explosive memoir charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them.
From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite.
Sarah Wynn-Williams's inside story puts you in the room during stumbling encounters with juntas through to the moment Mark Zuckerberg learned of Facebook’s role in Trump’s election and drew an unexpected conclusion. As she grapples with the reality of Facebook's influence on world events, she experiences the challenges and humiliations of working motherhood within a pressure cooker of a workplace, while Sheryl Sandberg urges her and others to “lean in” through it all.
Careless People is a deeply personal account of why and how things have gone so horribly wrong in the past decade—told in a sharp, candid, and utterly disarming voice. A profound, unflinching look at how technology and the people who control it increasingly shape our lives, Careless People reveals the truth about the leaders of Facebook: how the more power they grasp, the less responsible they become and the consequences this has for all of us.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Meta is a cesspool of petty tyranny and moral callousness, according to this explosive tell-all. Wynn-Williams recaps her seven years as Facebook's manager of global public policy, which entailed dealing with foreign governments on censorship, regulation, and other hot-button issues, as well as ensuring executives didn't make fools of themselves on the world stage (she once scrambled to prevent CEO Mark Zuckerberg from following Big Bird at the Global Citizen Festival). More seriously, Wynn-Williams describes how her idealistic enthusiasm for connecting the world soured as she witnessed the company collaborate with the 2016 Trump campaign to target users with political ads; bow to the Chinese Communist Party's demands to censor criticism; and refuse to take action when Myanmar's military used Facebook to spread disinformation that fueled the ethnic cleansing of the country's Rohingya minority. She hangs a witty picaresque of Facebook life around colorful profiles of its executives—Zuckerberg is "smaller, paler, and... angrier than I anticipated"—while taking aim at rampant overwork and sexual harassment at the company, claiming that she was forced by former COO Sheryl Sandberg to draw up talking points for a meeting while in labor with her first child and was fired after complaining about her boss Joel Kaplan's sexually charged comments. The result is a withering takedown of Facebook's hypocrisy.
Customer Reviews
This is the evil of our time
These tech corporations are the darkness of our time. TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, etc…they are evil, vile, and vapid. This book might be about Zuckerberg’s specific flavor of narcissism and incompetence but rest assured that if you peeled up the rocks at any of these places you would see the exact same rot.
Ripped the curtains off my eyes.
A must read to see into the minds and actions of a social media company and the role they play in the lives of people from different countries. And how it can be a tool to inflict/influence others in ways that can harm others.
A Woman With a Conscience
The old adage "absolute power corrupts absolutely" comes to mind in relation to this book. Wynn-Williams does a masterful job of setting her idealistic stage when first hired by Facebook and then slowly, bit by bit, exposing her disillusion and horror as the executive team cared only about money and vanity in the face of real human suffering and immorality. It explains so much about how Silicon Valley operates and how they leverage their technologies to corrupt governments and collude with bad actors.
A worthwhile read and a well-told, personal story.