Latest news with #Wynn-Williams
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.
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.'
Miami Herald
08-05-2025
- Business
- Miami Herald
Tell-all says Facebook used sinister tactics on vulnerable group
Sometimes, a book comes along that shocks an entire industry and exposes the secrets of a company that powerful business leaders have tried at length to keep buried. In March 2025, just such a book hit the shelves when Sarah Wynn-Williams released her memoir "Careless People," detailing her time at Facebook. A former executive at Meta (META) before the company's name change, Wynn-Williams held the position of director of global public policy for seven years. During that time, she witnessed many startling things that she described in her book. Don't miss the move: Subscribe to TheStreet's free daily newsletter Wynn-Williams has levied strong accusations against Meta, alleging that the company undermined U.S. national security by working directly with the Chinese Communist Party. Although Meta has denied such allegations, Wynn-Williams testified before the U.S. Senate. She also alleged that the social media giant engaged in other dangerous activities, targeting a particularly vulnerable group with highly concerning tactics. Throughout her journey helping lead what would become Meta, Wynn-Williams paints a vivid picture of a company whose leadership embodied the Silicon Valley creed of "move fast and break things." One clear lesson from her time there, however, is that there were few lines Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow executives weren't willing to cross. Related: Instagram co-founder reveals shocking truth about Mark Zuckerberg For anyone who follows Meta, that likely isn't surprising. The company has a long history of activities many have deemed ethically questionable. In 2018, a global backlash broke out when it emerged that Meta had allowed political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to harvest users' data without their consent or knowledge. The company has also come under fire for its highly targeted advertising methods, which have sparked concerns regarding discrimination and privacy violations. But Wynn-Williams claims that the sinister practices didn't stop there. In fact, she alleges that Facebook spent years targeting its advertising methods to teenage girls, typically between 13 and 17 years old, considered a highly vulnerable demographic. This involved tracking when these users would delete a photo of themselves, enabling them to "serve a beauty ad to them at that moment," seemingly in an attempt to capitalize on their insecurities. In a recent report, Futurism provided more context on the matter, stating: According to the report, Facebook used a similar technique to target young mothers, perceived as being in a high emotional state. Additionally, some emotional indices were mapped toward certain ethnic groups. More Social Media News: Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary offers TikTok deal updatePopular AI app faces US ban (just like TikTok)Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook, Instagram block new Apple product Wynn-Williams has made it clear that she saw these decisions as highly concerning. "To me, this type of surveillance and monetization of young teens' sense of worthlessness feels like a concrete step toward the dystopian future Facebook's critics had long warned of," she states. Despite the harsh accusations made in Wynn-Williams' book regarding the targeting of vulnerable groups, Meta has issued no direct statement on them, nor have they publicly disputed them since its publication. However, it has reportedly directed journalists to a 2017 company blog post following The Australian's report on its targeted advertising. Related: Meta Whistleblower reveals disturbing secrets in testimony In the post, Meta described the original article as misleading in premise and denied allegations that it had ever targeted users with ads based on their emotional state. "The analysis done by an Australian researcher was intended to help marketers understand how people express themselves on Facebook," it stated. "It was never used to target ads and was based on data that was anonymous and aggregated." Regardless of the accuracy of Meta's claims, it has opted against offering an updated statement directly about these allegations, despite the fact that Wynn-Williams' allegations renew focus on The Australian's original report and may lend credibility to its findings. Related: Veteran fund manager unveils eye-popping S&P 500 forecast The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.
The Hindu
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
unfriending facebook review of careless people a story of where i used to work by sarah wynn williams
Sarah Wynn-Williams' Careless People is a revelatory exposé of Facebook (now Meta) and its meteoric rise to global dominance, penned by someone who was once in the inner circle. As a former Director of Global Public Policy, Wynn-Williams had a front-row seat to the corporate and political machinations that shaped Facebook into one of the world's most influential tools, and in many ways, its most reckless. Within a few chapters into the book, you will know why Meta has tried to block the book's sale and bar the author from further promoting it. What Wynn-Williams offers is a darkly funny, shocking, and ultimately devastating portrait of a company that has irreversibly transformed how people interact, communicate, and perceive the world—often for the worse. Wynn-Williams' narrative is compelling because it is as much a personal memoir as it is a damning critique of Facebook's leadership, particularly Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. She draws a clear parallel between these figures and the careless characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, quoting the novel's infamous line, 'they smashed up things and creatures, and then retreated back into their money.' It's an apt analogy for Zuckerberg and Sandberg, who, despite holding immense power, seem unaware—or unwilling to acknowledge—the havoc their decisions have caused. Toxic culture The memoir opens with Wynn-Williams' idealistic vision of Facebook when she first joined in 2011. Coming from a background in diplomacy, particularly in human rights and environmental issues, she initially, naively saw the platform as a force for good, capable of social change. However, subsequently she discovers, Facebook's corporate culture is less about social good and more about cultivating a toxic environment fuelled by ambition, indifference, and a thirst for power. As the book progresses, Wynn-Williams' disillusionment deepens. She paints Zuckerberg as a man increasingly desperate for adoration, switching from an engineering focus to a more political one. The image of Zuckerberg at his first meeting with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in 2012, 'nervous and sweaty', is a stark contrast to the self-assured, power-hungry figure he would later become. His evolving ambitions, including a failed attempt at embedding himself in global political circles and even considering a presidential run, reflect his growing desire for influence and control over the global narrative, often at the expense of ethical decision-making. Critique of Sandberg Wynn-Williams also delivers a piercing critique of Sandberg, who, despite her feminist rhetoric, is depicted as manipulative and indifferent to the struggles of others. Wynn-Williams is unflinching in portraying Sandberg's dual persona—one that appeals to women's empowerment through her Lean In manifesto, but which, in Wynn-Williams' eyes, is a mask for deeply entrenched power dynamics and cruelty. Perhaps the most chilling part of Careless People is Wynn-Williams' account of Facebook's role in global events, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the genocide of the Rohingya people in Myanmar. She reveals how Facebook's platform was exploited for disinformation campaigns, helping to elect Donald Trump and enable the spread of hate speech that incited violence against the Rohingya. Despite being warned about these risks, the company failed to act swiftly, leaving millions vulnerable to the damage Facebook's algorithms allowed to flourish. Wynn-Williams' efforts to raise alarms about the crisis in Myanmar are particularly poignant, as she recounts the slow and inadequate response from the company, highlighting its complete disregard for the consequences of its global reach. Ethical flexibility The book also details Facebook's failed attempts to ingratiate itself with authoritarian regimes, such as its ill-fated plans to enter China. These efforts, code-named 'Aldrin' after the famed astronaut Buzz Aldrin who landed the first manned spacecraft to the moon, were designed to make Facebook compliant with the Chinese Communist Party's demands for censorship and surveillance. In a particularly damning passage, Wynn-Williams describes Zuckerberg's calculated deception when testifying before Congress, denying any complicity in China's suppression of free speech. This kind of ethical flexibility, coupled with a disregard for truth, is a recurring theme throughout the book. Yet, as much as Wynn-Williams exposes the flaws and moral failings of Facebook's leadership, she also forces a reckoning with her own complicity. There are moments in the narrative where Wynn-Williams acknowledges her own role in perpetuating the company's problems, from supporting controversial initiatives like to her failure to fully grasp the impact of the platform's exploitation until it was too late. As a policy leader within Facebook, she was aware of the risks but did little to stop them, instead choosing to follow the company's direction until her own position became untenable. Wynn-Williams' delayed recognition of Facebook's role in global harm and her eventual exit in 2018 speak to a broader issue within the tech industry: a detachment from the consequences of the decisions made in Silicon Valley's ivory towers. By the time Wynn-Williams left Facebook, she had become disillusioned with the company's leadership and their ability to effect meaningful change. Her disillusionment is painfully clear, and her personal reckoning is both heartbreaking and relatable. It underscores the moral compromise many of those who work in powerful tech companies face: the pressure to conform to a corporate culture that prizes profitability over social responsibility. A face to the damage Despite these shortcomings, Careless People is an important and brave book. It offers a rare, candid glimpse into the internal workings of Facebook at the highest levels, and provides readers with a nuanced perspective on the dangers of unchecked corporate power. It may not offer groundbreaking revelations—many of the issues Wynn-Williams discusses have already been covered in the media—but it puts a human face to the damage Facebook has caused and continues to cause. For readers familiar with Facebook's history and the broader tech landscape, Careless People is a sobering reminder of the perils of unchecked corporate power. For those who are new to these issues, it is an essential starting point to understand the way social media platforms can shape not only individual lives but entire nations and global movements. Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work Sarah Wynn-Williams Pan Macmillan India ₹699
