Why do we allow corporations to behave like small countries but with less oversight?
This is the thought I had repeatedly while reading Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams.
I bought this book on an impulse, after seeing a thread about it on Reddit that mentioned Sarah had been issued a gag order by Facebook that stipulated she couldn’t talk about or promote the book, and I thought, “If Facebook doesn’t want people to read or hear about this, it’s probably worth reading and hearing about”. The Streisand effect. And so I bought it.
I hate just about everyone who is mentioned in this book. They are all beyond insufferable. It’s agonizing just merely thinking about having to work with these people. I think part of Facebook’s hiring process must have been to ensure whoever was applying was the worst, most vile person you could find for that position.
I don’t think most of the Facebook execs are even truly human. And not in the “lol Mark Zuckerberg is a lizard person haha” kind of meme-y way, but the ‘these people feel nothing and care for nothing and do nothing unless it is related to the acquisition of more money and power kind of way’, the ‘I will let you die if it means I gain’ kind of way. From heavily aiding Trump’s campaign in 2016, to hatching secret deals with China that would put everyone’s data at risk of being exposed, to being complicit in Myanmar’s genocide of the Rohingya people, Facebook and it’s execs should not be allowed to continue to escape the awful things they’ve done. In a just world, people would go to prison over this.
I personally believe I was unknowingly affected by the Trump campaign and Facebook’s efforts during the 2016 presidential election as I was still using Facebook regularly at the time. This particular paragraph about it really stuck out and upset me:
Parscale’s team also ran voter suppression campaigns. They were targeted at three different groups of Democrats: young women, white liberals who might like Bernie Sanders, and Black voters…The idea was: feed them stuff that’ll discourage them from voting for Hillary.
I belonged to two of those three groups mentioned: I was 19 in 2016 and I was very into Bernie’s campaign. I don’t remember any specific ads I was served since that was so long ago, but I do know I was heavily involved with political pages at the time. And guess what? I didn’t vote. I did exactly what they wanted me to do. They were successful and I hate that.
The book exposed to me that Facebook’s involvement in the 2016 election went beyond what I was ever aware of. Facebook embedded some of it’s staff within the Trump campaign team, it amassed a database of 220 million Americans from Facebook including very sensitive data and of course, using that data to raise campaign contributions (which was the largest source of cash for the campaign), and of course, the voter suppression tactics that I mentioned previously. The Trump campaign ran many millions of ads and spent many millions of dollars which Facebook loved. All of this inspired Mark Zuckerberg to begin preparing for his own run for president (which I think eventually must have fizzled out) and Sheryl Sandberg desperately wanting to hire Brad Parscale.
In chapter 30, it’s brought up that one of Facebook’s board members suggests Facebook should get closer with far-right political parties in Europe during a meeting they had in 2016.
This was the proposal that we should use the election support and campaign tools we were offering to US presidential candidates and offer them to the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)…and to Marine Le Pen and the Front National…Getting closer to these political parties and helping them into government would be the most effective way to stop governments from regulating Facebook.
While it’s never mentioned which board member proposes this, I strongly suspect it was either Peter Thiel or Marc Andreessen.
No, that image is not photoshopped, he just looks like that somehow. But anyway, both of these men are strongly involved in right wing American politics right now, with Thiel bankrolling JD Vance’s political career and Andreessen serving as a mildly relevant Twitter troll and Republican mouthpiece.
Regardless of who was the one to bring up the right-wing pandering though, it’s scary how that idea has become reality today. Twitter exists as a far-right propaganda machine and Instagram reels (owned by Facebook) has a tendency to heavily promote conspiracy theory content. We’ve recently seen a major right-wing shift in many countries all around the world. All of the wealthiest business owners in the US were at Trump’s inauguration with Elon closer to Trump than some of his own cabinet. Musk spoke at an AfD rally, again, Peter Thiel bankrolled JD Vance, and Zuckerberg has recently rebranded himself as a good ol’ American patriot.
Speaking of Zuckerberg, let’s focus on him for a bit.
You can progressively see power get to Zuck’s weird little head throughout the course of the book.
I wanted to put him in situations that he’d be in if he were a head of state.
…
Presiding over a room full of the most powerful people in the world should have been a career highlight for both of us.
…
The way he saw politicians back then-he had no time for them, would never want to be one of them-I prefer that to the way he is now.
Me too Sarah, me too.
In the earlier years of Facebook, Zuck was an asshole who couldn’t be bothered to give the time of day to anyone around him, even mentioning he might miss the birth of his first son if he had more important things going on. (Once again- not a human). Overtime, he’s convinced that he should be meeting with politicians and world leaders, and after many initially nervous and sweaty meetings with them, Mark realizes something: Some of these people are scared of him and the power his company wields. And Mark likes that feeling. So, again, he stops giving a shit. These powerful people are beholden to him. He can do whatever he wants. There’s no consequences.
This love of power can be seen in the many times they play board games on private jets to different meetings around the world. The other people playing with him let him win and when Sarah calls him out, Zuck and the others deny that’s what’s happening. When Sarah wins some of the games, she’s accused by him of cheating. He can’t handle losing.
Sarah started off her job at Facebook incredibly optimistic about the future of the company and believed she could enact real, positive change in the world, and in the beginning, there’s a lot of charitability she gave to Zuck. Towards the end of the book though, and as she starts to realize how corrupt the people at the top of the company truly are, this charitability towards him stops, and I’m glad it does. He doesn’t deserve an ounce of goodwill.
And neither does Joel Kaplan. Kaplan not only looks like a piece of shit, he is one to his very core. He was Sarah’s boss toward the middle of her time at Facebook and was also incredibly creepy toward her. When she takes the citizenship test, he asks her “if she got the dirty sanchez question”. He calls her “sultry” in front of everyone at a work party. He asks her where she’s bleeding from in a meeting after Sarah had just given birth. The list goes on and on.
He’s the reason Sarah was fired from her job. When she went to speak up about her experiences with him, a case is quickly opened and then closed without Sarah even having the opportunity to submit all of her evidence. After this, a “performance review” is set up with Joel’s boss and the head of hiring where they fire her and tell her to leave the building without collecting any of her goods.
Joel Kaplan still works at Facebook and was just recently promoted to chief of global policy this year.
Facebook was also so incestuous in the way the people at the top tended to hire. They all knew each other, whether it being from going to the same school (in Facebook’s case usually Harvard), growing up together, or just being friends, soft nepotism was they way of the game. Sheryl Sandberg specifically seemed to like hiring people she knew, including her exes, one of whom was Joel. Birds of a shitty feather flock together I suppose.
Sheryl is everything wrong with the girlboss movement of the 2010s. She’s a fake feminist and a massive hypocrite.
She used her position in Facebook to promote her book about empowering women in the workforce. Which is bizarre coming from her considering her odd relationships with the women that worked for her. Sheryl had an female assistant that she would have sit in her lap at meetings, that she would have come over to her house after work, that she would ask to come to bed with her on the private jet rides. Sarah was also asked at multiple points to come bed with her after being told no. Just the weirdest most unprofessional behavior imaginable from a boss.
Now don’t let my revulsion for everyone in this book fool you, because I absolutely enjoyed Careless People and I highly recommend everyone read it. There was so much corruption that this book laid out. These people deserve to be exposed for what they are and I’m glad Sarah found the confidence to speak up about it, because I’m sure it wasn’t easy. I hope very much that this book leads to the positive changes in the world that Sarah hoped for when she first started working for Facebook.
Sarah testified today, April 9th, before the Senate’s Crime and Counterterrorism Subcommittee about the allegations against Facebook mentioned in her book and the major issue that Facebook cooperated with the Chinese government against US interests. I hope something actually comes from this.
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