Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams
Publication date: March 11, 2025
Genres: Book Clubs, Debut, Non-fiction, Business, Memoir 
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Careless People is the memoir from Sarah Wynn-Williams who worked at Facebook from 2011-2017 as the global public policy director. A former diplomat and lawyer she joined believing they needed someone with an understanding of foreign diplomacy. She was hired, but for a time, no one knew what to do with her, as Mark Zuckerberg was still plucking the American low-lying fruit of people scrambling to join what they believed was an online social club that would keep them connected with friends and family who lived far away. Other similar countries had accepted Facebook as it was sold—an online community with strict privacy settings.
Which it may have been when Wynn-Williams joined, but within her time there she went from having to beg Zuckerberg to even acknowledge world leaders and attend meetings addressing their concerns about Facebook’s reach into the private lives of their citizens to watching him become the most important man in the room who used his newfound power and wealth to turn Facebook into a surveillance tool in countries run by dictators. Careless People documents how his previous apathy toward the time and effort required to meet a country’s strict online policies and laws turned into a callous disregard for any level of net neutrality. All of which led to the marriage made in hell with Donald Trump’s media team who paid for gigabytes of personal data and used it along with specifically detailed algorithms to swing the 2016 election in Trump’s favor.
Wynn-Williams is not an exemplary whistleblower. She comes off as plenty problematic in some of her attitudes. But Careless People is filled with documentation, receipts as it were, to back up her claims. And not just against Zuckerberg, but against the hallowed Sheryl Sandberg, whose feminist manifesto Lean In, has been cited repeatedly for its advice on how women can succeed in a male dominated professional environment. Her actions don’t align with her words at any point in Wynn-Williams’ experience working with her.
By the end of the book, the parallels between the current president and Zuckerberg are distressing. Both are venal, lazy, misogynistic, corrupt men with no interest in anything that doesn’t benefit them directly, namely money and power. It’s a meaningless gesture on my part given that Facebook has been tracking my likes/dislikes, political leanings, purchases and interests for almost 20 years, but I’m deleting my account. There are aspects of community I’ll miss, but after reading Careless People and knowing that all that data can be purchased by any entity with money, including political candidates, I’m ready to step away.
Interested in more memoirs about working for tech titans? Exit Interview is an outstanding one from an Amazon exectuive.
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I am so sorry you feel the need to be so political. Reading is my getaway.
It’s not a need I feel, but a reality. Everything happening in our country right now is political. Rising prices, rising unemployment, the loss of healthcare coverage for millions of Americans, the loss of $12 billion dollars in tourism revenue this summer…it’s all political. My escape is also reading.
Look at you reading nonfiction! But wowsa … this must have given enough inside info to make you turn your stomach and get rid of your FB account. I think I should get rid of mine too (just like I did Twitter a year or two ago). I never use FB … but ole Zuck owns Instagram too right? I’d like to get rid of the whole lot of these billionaire kill the ring types. Time for more escape reading next.
It’s infuriating because the original premise of keeping people in touch is critical right now but has been perverted by Zuckerberg’s chasing power and the almighty dollar.
Wow! What a great review. I’ll be adding this to my book club list!
It is definitely a book that will get people talking! At the same time it left me deeply saddened and questioning if we even have real elections anymore. It’s all about the money.