Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams’s account of her time at Facebook, has landed top of the New York Times’s bestseller charts and fourth in the UK’s Sunday Times equivalent. It owes its success in large part to a ferocious campaign that Meta – Facebook’s parent company – waged against it on publication.
When Meta faces a barrage of public criticism, which it often does, it typically stays quiet and gets on with things. And that approach works – its share price has continued to soar despite scandal after scandal. So when the company not only published a series of furious denials but also had staffers post about the book on their personal social media feeds, and even launched a legal action to prevent Wynn-Williams promoting it, people started to take notice. What bombshells must it contain to have animated Facebook so?
Meta is presently engaged in a legal fight for its very survival. Mark Zuckerberg and the public affairs team of which Wynn-Williams was once a member are frenetically lobbying Donald Trump to settle an imminent antitrust case over its purchase of WhatsApp and Instagram. But Careless People can’t trouble Meta on that front. Despite covering the period of both purchases, neither gets more than the briefest look-in.
The author has a background in the diplomatic service in New Zealand. One of her earliest stories comes something close to outright body horror. A detailed description of a shark attack she suffered in childhood is immediately surpassed by a terrifying account of the subsequent medical procedure. A later report of the near-death experience which followed the birth of her second child is equally evocative. This is not a book that flinches from the macabre.
But most of its pages are taken up with dissections of former colleagues and their foibles – social butchery done with the same gleeful savagery as that of the surgeons who so brutally mistreated Wynn-Williams. The habits of Zuckerberg, his onetime deputy Sheryl Sandberg and the aides surrounding them are set out in detail. A recurring theme is Sandberg’s icy demeanour, her blurring of professional boundaries and relentless self-promotion. We are also made fully aware of Zuckerberg’s efforts to conceive a child. This is every office worker’s fantasy of revenge – petty, malicious and, as a result, tremendous fun.
But we are still left wondering what Wynn-Williams expects us to make of her. Was she hopelessly naive about her job, or does she just want us to think so because it makes her look better? She imagined Facebook to be a responsible force for good in the world, and was frequently shocked that her role in the public policy team mainly involved advocating for what would be best for the company’s growth and profits.
She recalls how the first time she was invited to travel with Zuckerberg on his private jet she asked if she might fly commercial instead, to collect the air miles – apparently not understanding the value of facetime with her billionaire CEO. She was similarly surprised, and shocked, that Zuckerberg’s aides let him win at board games when he was in a bad mood, refusing to do so herself (and winning every time, as she lets us know). The cumulative effect of these stories is Panglossian. Wynn-Williams worked at Facebook for seven years from 2010, but quotes conversations as if verbatim, never explaining how her recollection is so good. The anecdotes appear too polished, moulded to the tale she wishes them to tell.
This is every office worker’s fantasy of revenge – petty, malicious and, as a result, tremendous fun
That makes the book feel especially weak when it gets on to serious topics. Many of the revelations that have made the headlines seem less substantial on the page. A suggestion that Facebook would hand over details of Hong Kong residents to China turned out to be the idea of one naive country manager. It would have involved reissuing terms of service to Hong Kong (where it would have been publicly noticed immediately), and never happened. The book closes with a damning account of how Facebook contributed to ethnic violence in Myanmar, and how the author was the only one of her senior colleagues who seemed to care. Why, then, is she only saying so now, long after the story was widely reported elsewhere? We never get a clear answer, though legal restrictions are hinted at.
There seems little of substance here to worry Facebook, and many of the executives made to look bad have in any case moved on. So Meta’s aggressive response appears less about protecting the business and more about the furious reaction of some of its key staff to being smeared in public – not least Joel Kaplan, who is accused of sexual harassment. (Meta says it investigated the claims and found them groundless.)
Kaplan is now president of Meta’s global affairs. It is hard not to wonder whether the team that handles the comms for a company with three billion users got itself drawn into a fight over its own office drama and blew it up to be seen by thousands who would otherwise have missed it. For that reason, if for no other, this book is worth a look.
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