Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism - Sarah Wynn-Williams - ★★

AUTHOR: Sarah Wynn-Williams

GENRE: Memoir, Business

PUBLICATION DATE: March 11, 2025

RATING: 2 stars.

In a Nutshell: An insider account of the allegedly nefarious people and practices at Facebook, written by one of its key ex-employees. Some familiar reveals, some worrisome ones. Slightly lopsided and selective in its narration – a common issue in memoirs. A decent nonfiction option for those interested in the topic, though it might be more impactful to those who still believe that social media is good for people and that corporations such as Meta don’t abuse user privacy. (Is anyone still living under this rock?) As with all memoirs, take it with a pinch of salt because there’s a lot left unsaid.

Sarah Wynn-Williams is a New-Zealand-born lawyer and public policy expert. Her childhood was noteworthy in one thing: she survived a brutal shark attack. Following a stint with the NZ government and with the UN after her law studies, Williams realised that she could make a bigger impact at a company that genuinely believed in making a difference: Facebook. (Yeah, I heard you snort. But keep in mind that this was pre-2011, when we still believed that social media networks were good. What ignoramuses we were!) After campaigning for a new post at Facebook, Williams joined it in 2011 as the Director of Global Public Policy. In 2017, Facebook terminated her employment, citing poor performance and toxic behaviour as the reason. Williams alleges that her firing was a result of her reporting her immediate supervisor for sexual harassment.

This book might have gone relatively unnoticed had it not been for Facebook/Meta threatening Williams with legal action and stopping her from promoting her “memoir”. But their aggressive stance created a Streisand Effect, leading to greater publicity for this supposed tell-all.

Williams’ revelations fall broadly in four categories: her personal/familial challenges (kept to the minimal, only mentioned when it is a critical challenge), Facebook’s approach towards data and user privacy, Facebook’s deals and agreements with various governments around the globe including the controversial ones, and the behaviour of some of Facebook’s top honchos, including Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. Each of these topics creates a different level of impact.

In the past few years, many of us are already aware of the extent to which our private data is floating out there on the World Wide Web and even beyond in the Dark Web. Whether we upload our photos or update our travel plans or share our emotional moods, every bit of information is utilised to modify our feeds and offer targeted adverts. As such, the data-connected revelations of the book might be surprising only to those who aren’t aware of such secretive data-mining. In 2025, most of this is old news. (And if it isn't, just remember that all these tech company top honchos don’t allow their children access to any screens, forget social media. There’s a reason you should be wary of how much you post on SM.)

The content about Facebook’s official deals with global governments might be a tad more explosive as much of this is unknown to the general public. Facebook’s lack of ethics and their twofacedness comes out well in these disclosures.

As regards Williams’ comments on Facebook employees, many of us are already aware of Zuckerberg’s shameless about-face on professional fact-checking after Trump’s re-election earlier this year. Even prior to this, Zuckie hasn’t exactly been an angel in public. So Williams’ divulgences just reveal greater details of aspects already known. But I must admit, her revelations about Sheryl Sandberg were more surprising to me. Sandberg is acclaimed widely for penning ‘Lean In’, her pioneering work on empowering women in the workplace. But when I read ‘Lean In’ in 2019, something about it rubbed me the wrong way. I know many of my friends went gaga over its message and its *helpful* tactics on balancing work and home, but to me, it seemed like Sandberg conveniently ignored several challenges faced by those who didn’t have the same support system or financial resources she did. I felt a bit guilty at having rated a book on such a necessary topic only 2.5 stars; not any more! Williams has echoed several of my misgivings, so whether she is right or not, I feel heard in my disquiet over the content.

I firmly believe that all memoirs must be read with a pinch of salt because they contain only one person’s recalled truth, which may differ from actual truth. This is no exception. William’s spirited attitude is clear right from the start – she is a courageous go-getter who doesn’t stop at anything to get what she wants. But this same attitude also causes her to ignore several red signals, some of which are very obvious. It makes me wonder how such an educated and strong-willed woman allowed herself to be a pushover so many times. Something doesn’t ring true; the book isn't telling us everything.

Further, some of her complaints feel entitled and/or ignorant to me. Like, if you are going to a corporate summit organised by the World Economic Forum in a small town in Switzerland, are you justified in complaining that the summit didn’t make baby-care arrangements for those travelling with their infants? Wanting a daycare option in offices is an understandable requirement, but at a summit that is meant only for attending professionals and not for families?

Lastly, there is a lot of “I, me, myself’ in this memoir, making it sound like Williams was the only Facebook employee with any kind of moral compass and gumption. Reality is never that imbalanced, especially in such a large corporation. There are many events where the author could have spoken up or turned around (I’m not even talking of major issues but relatively minor ones like the case where one team member was left behind in the hotel), but she doesn’t, and justifies her silence either with some excuse or by shifting the blame to another.

Let me make it clear: I am not dismissing all the author has claimed. She does shed light on quite a lot of questionable behaviours and practices. She even acknowledges at times that she should have acted differently on a few occasions. But many of her points feel ‘airbrushed’ for greater impact. There is a lot of defensiveness in her tone as well, especially when she attempts to explain her inaction over something that ought to have provoked outrage. I don’t think I am far off the truth when I say that she behaved the way she did for her career prospects, and in retrospect, is trying to ratify those very decisions and actions through a moral compass. I try hard to stay away from commenting on the author when I review memoirs/autobiographies, but this time, it is difficult not to say anything about the double standards.

I tried searching for some reactions to this book from the numerous colleagues she has namedropped. (Not sure if it was with their permission.) Most of them refute her version of the anecdotes, claiming that they are exaggerated or distorted. Then again, many of these employees are still working with Meta, so who knows what’s the truth! This article I found written by another ex-Facebook employee addresses some of my concerns about the content. As this employee says, “The contradiction between [Williams’] words and actions is glaring.” Perhaps read this to get a more rounded picture? As they say in Hindi, ‘taali ek haath se nahi bajti.’ (You can’t clap with one hand’, meaning that there are always two sides to a story.)

Overall, if you are looking for a book that supposedly reveals some dark truths about Facebook as a corporation and as a social media giant and also about its top people (and if you have been surprisingly ignorant about all of this even until 2025), you could give this a go. But if you want a more grassroot-level book about how social media is invasively and constantly prying on your online activities, skip this and try Sarah Frier’s ‘No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram’, which is more focussed on misuse of user data and behavioural pattern analysis. The first reveals biased information from a macro top-honcho viewpoint; the second is more factual and relevant to us lay readers.

I am not sure how to rate this book. It does focus on some unsavoury truths about Facebook but many of those truths have been public knowledge for years. It also tries to portray its writer as a good person caught in a bad situation, but honestly, most good people would have protested far sooner. Silence is also compliance. Being a whistleblower after being fired takes guts, but it would have been far braver to speak against the malpractices when they happened instead of staying quiet for your salary and stock options. Giving it 3 stars would mean that I “liked the book”, but I didn’t. I guess I’ll just hit the two-star mark and leave it at that.

This was a library read, accessed as an audiobook clocking at 13 hours 16 minutes and narrated by the author herself. She reads it well, so the audio version is a good way of trying this out if interested.