Latest news with #CarelessPeople
The Hindu
27-06-2025
- Business
- The Hindu
Careless People: Inside Facebook's Failures and Ethics Crisis
Published : Jun 27, 2025 15:46 IST - 5 MINS READ Sarah Wynn-Williams' Careless People is a closely observed account of Facebook's ascent to global prominence and the persistent failure of its leadership to recognise or address the implications of that growth. The book avoids the tone of sensational exposé. Its focus is institutional, procedural, and grounded in lived experience. Wynn-Williams served as Facebook's Director of Global Public Policy from 2011 to 2017 and worked directly with Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg on issues relating to foreign governments, regulation, and strategic political risk. Her entry into the company was self-initiated. At the time, Facebook had no international policy team and no meaningful engagement with foreign state actors. Wynn-Williams identified this as a critical gap, given the company's growing influence over speech, access to information, and political mobilisation. Her proposal was met with limited interest. Executives dismissed the need for a diplomatic or policy-oriented function. Facebook operated with the assumption that global politics would remain peripheral to its business. Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism By Sarah Wynn-Williams Flatiron Books, 2025 Pages: 400 Price: Rs.899 This assumption came under strain as the platform became a site for organising political movements and circulating disinformation. The Arab Spring marked a turning point in Facebook's visibility on the international stage. Despite this, Wynn-Williams describes a consistent pattern of reactive decision-making. Policy frameworks were created in response to controversy or regulatory pressure, rather than through internal forecasting or principled planning. Also Read | Facebook owner Meta is planning a potential Twitter rival Wynn-Williams presents Mark Zuckerberg as technically capable and highly focused on engineering outcomes, but uninterested in public governance or the ethical consequences of platform decisions. Sheryl Sandberg emerges as more attuned to external perception, although her interventions were framed in communications language and had limited operational impact. There was no sustained effort within the company to develop ethical guidelines for speech, privacy, or civic disruption. Decisions about platform rules were delegated to teams with minimal institutional memory and limited understanding of regional political dynamics. A controlled, clear account of institutional decay The book contains an extended reflection on Wynn-Williams' attempts to introduce early-warning systems for geopolitical flashpoints, including proposals for structured risk review processes. Most of these proposals were rejected or deferred. Her colleagues considered them unnecessary, or believed that they would slow the company's capacity to scale. She identifies this tendency as part of a broader problem. The firm viewed growth metrics as the primary indicator of success. Political considerations were treated as reputation management rather than structural concerns. This becomes particularly visible in her account of Myanmar, where Facebook ignored sustained internal warnings about the platform's role in amplifying anti-Rohingya hate speech. Efforts to improve moderation or restrict ethnic slurs were deprioritised, even as user growth accelerated and offline targeted violence intensified. The narrative is interspersed with personal reflections. Wynn-Williams recounts a near-fatal shark attack at the age of thirteen, an experience that shaped her instinct for survival and confrontation with authority. This personal history informs her view of institutional passivity and her frustration with a corporate culture that consistently deprioritised accountability. Her tone remains composed. She avoids self-pity or moral grandstanding. The result is a controlled and clear account of institutional decay. The title, drawn from the American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby, is used here to describe the behaviour of actors who possess influence without consequences. The carelessness that Wynn-Williams identifies is not incidental. It results from a structural configuration that separates decisions from responsibility. Facebook's platform design encouraged maximal engagement. It offered limited tools for transparency or independent oversight. The leadership considered these conditions necessary for innovation and user retention. The book advances several contributions to the understanding of global platform governance. First, it documents the internal barriers to reform that exist even when individual employees raise ethical concerns. Second, it describes how private infrastructure has become the default venue for political discourse in many parts of the world. In the absence of external constraints, private platforms make decisions that affect public life without mechanisms for appeal, justification, or contestation. Third, it presents an insider's account of how international policy work is subordinated to domestic business interests, even when the company operates in hundreds of jurisdictions. No exaggerated conclusions The book avoids exaggerated conclusions. It presents Facebook as an organisation structured around product development and growth, with limited interest in democratic accountability. It also resists attributing systemic failure to individual malice. Wynn-Williams shows how institutional culture, incentives, and habits of leadership produced outcomes that were difficult to challenge from within. Careless People contributes to the literature on platform power, digital governance, and institutional design. It complements academic and journalistic work on surveillance capitalism and algorithmic governance by supplying a primary source account of how decision-making unfolded inside a dominant technology firm. It will be of interest to policymakers, scholars, and others concerned with the interaction between corporate platforms and the public sphere. Also Read | Hire and fire at will: What do global tech lay-offs mean for India? Wynn-Williams presents no theory of reform. Her aim is to document what happened, how decisions were made, and what structures prevented accountability. The narrative closes without prescriptions. The book serves as evidence of the limits of voluntary ethics in private institutions and the consequences of permitting firms to mediate public communication on a global scale without enforceable obligations. What Careless People ultimately reveals is how a generation that built the most powerful communication system in human history chose, at every turn, to treat that power as someone else's problem. John Simte is an advocate based in New Delhi.
Deccan Herald
18-05-2025
- Business
- Deccan Herald
All the President's men
When the world's second richest man, Meta's Zuckerberg, was displeased with the revelations of an ex-employee, Sarah Wynn-Williams, on unsavoury behaviour inside the company, he tried to prevent Wynn-Williams' tell-all book, Careless People from being sold in the US (it had already appeared in the UK).
National Observer
15-05-2025
- Business
- National Observer
What disappeared from the Pentagon website
These words stopped me cold. "Why are you considering compromising with traditional media? It's an industry locked in a death spiral... You're compromising with a dying industry rather than dominating it. Crushing it." This was Mark Zuckerberg talking. His words are revealed in Sarah Wynn-Williams' explosive memoir Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism. Zuckerberg is fighting to suppress this book with legal injunctions, but its revelations illuminate the hostility Meta has shown toward facts, news and the information systems democracy depends upon. The most damning aspect of Careless People isn't its documentation of Facebook's actions, but its exposure of the calculated contempt behind them — the disregard for human lives left vulnerable on their platforms, for democratic institutions undermined by their algorithms and for sovereign nations treated as mere extraction sites. They embody what Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff identified so precisely in 2019 as "surveillance capitalism." These are not just tech companies but extractive predators that harvest our most intimate data to predict, manipulate and monetize our behavior while skilfully operating beyond meaningful accountability. When Critical Information Disappears This letter marks the launch of an urgent fundraising campaign for CNO. As we witness unprecedented threats to both our information ecosystem and our national security, Canada's National Observer is stepping up a new stream of coverage we're calling "Reality Check." During the federal election, journalists Rachel Gilmore and Emily Baron Cadloff led this new fact-checking service at CNO, focused on dispelling climate disinformation. We need more funds now to continue to provide this vital service and to do more. We're seeking to build more dedicated reporting focused on the convergence of disinformation, climate change and democracy. To make this vital work possible, we need to raise $150,000 by May 31st. I hope you'll join us in this critical mission after reading why this initiative is more necessary than ever. The urgency of our work was brought into sharp focus for me in a shocking way as I was doing some research on national security and climate. In 2015, the US Department of Defense issued a historic report that explained how climate change was not just an environmental issue — it was a national security issue. The Pentagon warned that the impacts of climate change — instability, mass displacement and the failure of governments to meet basic needs — were real and accelerating. Fast forward to now, and try to find that report online. You won't. The link leads to a 404. The original document has been erased. That's because the Trump administration ordered US agencies last February to remove references to the climate crisis from their websites. What has been erased from official records is chilling — the disappearance of critical knowledge about the climate threats we face — threats that continue to evolve and become more dangerous with each passing day. This deliberate erasure of information isn't just bureaucratic housekeeping — it's information warfare. In a world where critical security assessments can simply vanish overnight, who preserves the knowledge citizens need to understand the challenges we face? Who has the facts? While government websites can be scrubbed clean of inconvenient truths, a firehose of disinformation continues unabated across podcasts, Instagram, TikTok and countless other platforms. It is happening in the US but needless to say, it also affects us in Canada. Over the past ten years, CNO has steadily built a permanent, secure archive with over 40,000 well-researched climate articles that will remain accessible to the public regardless of political shifts. Help us continue to build this vital archive. When Meta Abandoned Canada In August 2023, we witnessed Meta's true priorities when they abruptly removed all news content from their platforms in Canada rather than comply with new legislation. The impact was immediate and devastating. At CNO, our traffic plummeted and stories that once reached millions disappeared from Facebook and Instagram feeds. Our Facebook page went dormant and the 30,000 or so people who went there for news were disappointed. Fake news on Facebook dominates. This wasn't a business decision; it was a power play that revealed the tech giant's fundamental indifference to democratic discourse. The consequences extend far beyond our industry. While legitimate news vanishes from platforms, disinformation flourishes unchecked. This creates a dangerous reality where climate change becomes in some minds "just an opinion" and genuine national security threats go underreported or misunderstood. Recent polls show climate concerns falling among Canadians' priorities — not because the crisis has abated, but because the information ecosystem has been corrupted. As our recent podcast, The Takeover, documents, far-right influencers and business leaders in the oil industry are now aggressively trying to debunk the idea that there even is a 'climate crisis.' Our Plan to Fight Back After ten years as publisher of CNO, I've come to understand that disinformation is the fundamental problem we must solve before we can effectively address climate change and national security. That's why I'm asking for your support today. If we can raise $150,000 by May 22, we will be able to ramp up with: But if we can reach $250,000, we will create a fully dedicated desk with both a researcher and a reporter working exclusively on disinformation and security issues. At a time when U.S. agencies have been ordered to remove references to the climate crisis from their websites, and when Trump has weaponized tariffs against our economy, Canada needs to strengthen its information system. Independent journalism that preserves critical information and holds power accountable depends on people like you to play the role that it must. While Meta and other platforms can switch off access to news with the flip of a switch, your support ensures CNO remains resilient and independent. Unlike the vanishing Pentagon climate security report that now leads to a 404 error, we've built a permanent, secure archive that will remain accessible regardless of who holds power. The stakes couldn't be higher. The geopolitical order is in flux. Climate-driven disasters are growing in scope. And disinformation threatens to undermine our collective response to these challenges while making billionaires wealthier. Just this week, Meta announced they'd posted $42 billion in sales in the first quarter of 2025 alone. Why This Matters to Me Personally As many of you know, I came to Canada in 2001, a month after 9/11, to start a new life here. I became a Canadian citizen, raised two sons on this soil, divorced and remarried a Canadian. I came with an idealistic view of Canada that over the years has shifted to a more realistic view of its strengths and limitations, but I still believe that Canada is a world leader and gem of a progressive democracy with the potential to offer hope around the world as authoritarianism spreads. My home is in Canada, and it's here where I've built both a family and a publication dedicated to truth. The threats we face today are not abstract policy disagreements. They are direct challenges to Canadian sovereignty and security. With Trump attacking Canada's economy through tariffs and floating the outrageous notion of absorbing Canada as the 51st state, it often feels like his goal is to make us feel insecure, anxious and uncertain. This deliberate destabilization serves those who benefit from a confused and divided public. Together with you, we can help push back against confusion and falsehoods. This isn't just another fundraising campaign. It's about whether Canadians will have access to vital information when they need it most. What we build today will serve Canadians for generations. Standing Against a Dystopian Future In Careless People, Wynn-Williams reveals Zuckerberg's ultimate vision: creating a 'fifth estate' with Facebook as the singular news platform for billions. While he may have temporarily lost interest in this digital monopoly, the infrastructure and ambition remain. What stands between that dystopian information landscape and a healthy democracy isn't government regulation or corporate conscience — it's independent journalism with the resources to withstand pressure and preserve truth. Your support today doesn't just fund reporting; it ensures Canada maintains the information sovereignty essential to remaining the country we love, not the 51st state in someone else's empire. When I launched CNO in 2015, I could not have predicted how dramatically the information landscape would shift — how tech giants would claim to support journalism while plotting to "crush" it, how climate science would be erased from government websites or how disinformation would flood into the void where verified news once stood. What began as a publication focused primarily on climate reporting has evolved into something more fundamental: a guardian of facts in an era when facts themselves are under assault. The connections between disinformation, climate denial and threats to national security have never been clearer or more dangerous. When Trump speaks of tariffs and annexation, when Meta abandons Canada while disinformation flourishes, when critical climate security documents vanish without a trace — these aren't isolated incidents, but symptoms of a coordinated assault on informed democracy.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Senate Republican scrutinizes Meta over its handling of sexual harassment allegations
A top Senate Republican is pressing Meta for details on its handling of sexual harassment allegations going back more than a decade. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sent a letter to the company on Tuesday asking about allegations made public in March that one of its executives, Joel Kaplan, sent sexually harassing emails to an employee in 2015 and 2016. The letter also asked for information about any other substantiated allegations of sexual harassment or workplace misconduct against 'company leadership' since 2010 and for materials related to Meta's workplace training. Later Tuesday, Meta responded to Grassley by letter and said it planned to turn over an internal report that, according to the company, cleared Kaplan of wrongdoing in 2017. Meta said it investigated the allegations against Kaplan and found them to be 'entirely without merit.' Heidi Swartz, Meta's vice president of employment law and investigations, also offered in the letter to meet with Grassley's staff. Grassley's review of the matter appears to be in an early stage, and it's part of a broader set of questions the senator has been asking about how Meta is complying with federal laws that protect whistleblowers. Grassley's questions are part of the fallout from a bestselling memoir, 'Careless People,' by former Facebook employee Sarah Wynn-Williams. The book chronicles her six-plus years handling international affairs for the social media giant, a job that gave her direct contact with CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other C-suite executives. In the book, Wynn-Williams, a lawyer and former New Zealand diplomat, blames the company for upending politics in the U.S. and elsewhere. She also makes allegations against Kaplan, who was her boss, and writes that she faced retaliation and was fired in 2017 after she reported Kaplan internally. A spokesperson for Grassley said in a statement to NBC News on Wednesday that the senator was 'reviewing the allegations Wynn-Williams brought before his committee to try to determine their veracity,' and is also reviewing Meta's response. 'Cooperation from both Meta and Wynn-Williams is essential as his office works to determine the fact pattern surrounding Wynn-Williams' allegations,' the spokesperson said. Meta has pushed back on Wynn-Williams' allegations, saying that she was fired for performance reasons and is unreliable. 'Ms. Wynn-Williams brought her allegations only after it had been made clear to her that her ongoing and well-documented performance issues could no longer be ignored,' Swartz, the Meta lawyer, wrote in her response to Grassley. Swartz added that 'Ms. Wynn-Williams is the sole person to have made such an allegation about Mr. Kaplan during his 14 years working at the company.' And she accused Wynn-Williams of being a frequent 'instigator' of off-color jokes during her time at the company. In March, Meta won an arbitration order saying Wynn-Williams had violated a nondisparagement clause in her severance agreement. That has prevented her from promoting but not from releasing the memoir, which has spent several weeks on The New York Times' list of top-selling nonfiction. Grassley, who has a long record of advocacy for whistleblower protections in the Senate, has expressed concern about Meta's treatment of Wynn-Williams as a whistleblower. Last month, he wrote to Zuckerberg with concerns that Meta was 'bullying' Wynn-Williams into staying silent. Meta says there is no restriction on Wynn-Williams speaking with investigators. Last month, Wynn-Williams testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee, where lawmakers of both parties expressed deep anger at the company on a variety of subjects. Many senators focused on the company's yearslong quest to break into the Chinese market, where its apps Facebook and Instagram are banned, and the privacy compromises Meta considered before abandoning the effort in 2019. Ravi Naik, a lawyer for Wynn-Williams, said that Wynn-Williams welcomes Grassley's inquiry. 'My client appreciates the seriousness with which Chairman Grassley and his Senate colleagues are investigating these issues,' Naik said in a statement. 'Despite Meta and Mark Zuckerberg's claims of being free speech champions, they continue to silence my client, a whistleblower who stepped forward to report wrongful and illegal activity by the company that threatened the safety of its users, U.S. national security, and its employees.' In Grassley's letter to Meta, he quoted three emails from Kaplan to Wynn-Williams, all three of which Wynn-Williams also quoted in her memoir. In one from 2016, Kaplan asked whether her U.S. citizenship test included the phrase 'dirty sanchez,' a sexual slang phrase and racial slur. In a second email from 2015, after Kaplan secured funding for a new position on her team, he emailed, 'Who is your sugar daddy?' And in a third from 2015, he promised that if she met a budget goal, he would 'personally buy you 'something nice' (niceness TBD by the beholder/buyer).' Grassley wrote: 'I take very seriously allegations of whistleblower retaliation and sexual misconduct.' At the time of the emails, Kaplan was Wynn-Williams' boss and a vice president for global public policy. Wynn-Williams wrote in her memoir that she considered the 2015 emails 'pretty mild' but that the 'dirty sanchez' question was a 'new low,' 'totally inappropriate' and a sign that his behavior was 'getting worse.' In January, Zuckerberg promoted Kaplan to chief global affairs officer, making him the head of all lobbying activity for the company. Her allegations became public in March, when Wynn-Williams spoke about them in an interview with NBC News ahead of the publication of her memoir. Meta has not disputed the accuracy of the emails or commented on their contents. Kaplan has also not commented on the allegations, and did not respond to an email request for comment on Grassley's letter. Some current and former Meta employees, including women, have said they had positive experiences working with and for Kaplan. Swartz, the Meta lawyer, wrote to Grassley on Tuesday that the internal investigation of Kaplan did not cover his emails because, she wrote, Wynn-Williams did not raise the emails over the course of the investigation. Swartz wrote that she believed Wynn-Williams did not raise the emails at the time 'because she was aware that she was commonly the instigator and had a track record of making off-color jokes and did not want to prompt an investigation into her own behavior.' In her memoir, Wynn-Williams describes the investigation differently. She writes that Meta quickly closed out the internal review of Kaplan 'before they'd received or reviewed all the documentation and information I said I would supply.' Naik, the lawyer for Wynn-Williams, said in a statement: 'The emails and documentation speak for themselves. My client testified under oath before the Senate about this harassment and will continue to stand by the truth.' This article was originally published on
NBC News
14-05-2025
- Business
- NBC News
Senate Republican scrutinizes Meta over its handling of sexual harassment allegations
A top Senate Republican is pressing Meta for details on its handling of sexual harassment allegations going back more than a decade. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sent a letter to the company on Tuesday asking about allegations made public in March that one of its executives, Joel Kaplan, sent sexually harassing emails to an employee in 2015 and 2016. The letter also asked for information about any other substantiated allegations of sexual harassment or workplace misconduct against 'company leadership' since 2010 and for materials related to Meta's workplace training. Later Tuesday, Meta responded to Grassley by letter and said it planned to turn over an internal report that, according to the company, cleared Kaplan of wrongdoing in 2017. Meta said it investigated the allegations against Kaplan and found them to be 'entirely without merit.' Heidi Swartz, Meta's vice president of employment law and investigations, also offered in the letter to meet with Grassley's staff. Grassley's review of the matter appears to be in an early stage, and it's part of a broader set of questions the senator has been asking about how Meta is complying with federal laws that protect whistleblowers. Grassley's questions are part of the fallout from a bestselling memoir, 'Careless People,' by former Facebook employee Sarah Wynn-Williams. The book chronicles her six-plus years handling international affairs for the social media giant, a job that gave her direct contact with CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other C-suite executives. In the book, Wynn-Williams, a lawyer and former New Zealand diplomat, blames the company for upending politics in the U.S. and elsewhere. She also makes allegations against Kaplan, who was her boss, and writes that she faced retaliation and was fired in 2017 after she reported Kaplan internally. A spokesperson for Grassley said in a statement to NBC News on Wednesday that the senator was 'reviewing the allegations Wynn-Williams brought before his committee to try to determine their veracity,' and is also reviewing Meta's response. 'Cooperation from both Meta and Wynn-Williams is essential as his office works to determine the fact pattern surrounding Wynn-Williams' allegations,' the spokesperson said. Meta has pushed back on Wynn-Williams' allegations, saying that she was fired for performance reasons and is unreliable. 'Ms. Wynn-Williams brought her allegations only after it had been made clear to her that her ongoing and well-documented performance issues could no longer be ignored,' Swartz, the Meta lawyer, wrote in her response to Grassley. Swartz added that 'Ms. Wynn-Williams is the sole person to have made such an allegation about Mr. Kaplan during his 14 years working at the company.' And she accused Wynn-Williams of being a frequent 'instigator' of off-color jokes during her time at the company. In March, Meta won an arbitration order saying Wynn-Williams had violated a nondisparagement clause in her severance agreement. That has prevented her from promoting but not from releasing the memoir, which has spent several weeks on The New York Times' list of top-selling nonfiction. Grassley, who has a long record of advocacy for whistleblower protections in the Senate, has expressed concern about Meta's treatment of Wynn-Williams as a whistleblower. Last month, he wrote to Zuckerberg with concerns that Meta was 'bullying' Wynn-Williams into staying silent. Meta says there is no restriction on Wynn-Williams speaking with investigators. Last month, Wynn-Williams testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee, where lawmakers of both parties expressed deep anger at the company on a variety of subjects. Many senators focused on the company's yearslong quest to break into the Chinese market, where its apps Facebook and Instagram are banned, and the privacy compromises Meta considered before abandoning the effort in 2019. Ravi Naik, a lawyer for Wynn-Williams, said that Wynn-Williams welcomes Grassley's inquiry. 'My client appreciates the seriousness with which Chairman Grassley and his Senate colleagues are investigating these issues,' Naik said in a statement. 'Despite Meta and Mark Zuckerberg's claims of being free speech champions, they continue to silence my client, a whistleblower who stepped forward to report wrongful and illegal activity by the company that threatened the safety of its users, U.S. national security, and its employees.' In Grassley's letter to Meta, he quoted three emails from Kaplan to Wynn-Williams, all three of which Wynn-Williams also quoted in her memoir. In one from 2016, Kaplan asked whether her U.S. citizenship test included the phrase 'dirty sanchez,' a sexual slang phrase and racial slur. In a second email from 2015, after Kaplan secured funding for a new position on her team, he emailed, 'Who is your sugar daddy?' And in a third from 2015, he promised that if she met a budget goal, he would 'personally buy you 'something nice' (niceness TBD by the beholder/buyer).' Grassley wrote: 'I take very seriously allegations of whistleblower retaliation and sexual misconduct.' At the time of the emails, Kaplan was Wynn-Williams' boss and a vice president for global public policy. Wynn-Williams wrote in her memoir that she considered the 2015 emails 'pretty mild' but that the 'dirty sanchez' question was a 'new low,' 'totally inappropriate' and a sign that his behavior was 'getting worse.' In January, Zuckerberg promoted Kaplan to chief global affairs officer, making him the head of all lobbying activity for the company. Her allegations became public in March, when Wynn-Williams spoke about them in an interview with NBC News ahead of the publication of her memoir. Meta has not disputed the accuracy of the emails or commented on their contents. Kaplan has also not commented on the allegations, and did not respond to an email request for comment on Grassley's letter. Some current and former Meta employees, including women, have said they had positive experiences working with and for Kaplan. Swartz, the Meta lawyer, wrote to Grassley on Tuesday that the internal investigation of Kaplan did not cover his emails because, she wrote, Wynn-Williams did not raise the emails over the course of the investigation. Swartz wrote that she believed Wynn-Williams did not raise the emails at the time 'because she was aware that she was commonly the instigator and had a track record of making off-color jokes and did not want to prompt an investigation into her own behavior.' In her memoir, Wynn-Williams describes the investigation differently. She writes that Meta quickly closed out the internal review of Kaplan 'before they'd received or reviewed all the documentation and information I said I would supply.' Naik, the lawyer for Wynn-Williams, said in a statement: 'The emails and documentation speak for themselves. My client testified under oath before the Senate about this harassment and will continue to stand by the truth.'
