Well, well, well, if it isn’t the worst people in the world. I don’t think I’ve been so infuriated since I read John Carreyrou’s ‘Bad Blood.’ I don’t believe there’s much left to redeem Silicon Valley at this point. Stick it all into the insinkerator and set the whole kitchen on fire for all I care. The funny thing is, I would probably have never heard of Careless People, let alone read it, if it weren’t for the suppression efforts. In a brilliant display of the Streisand Effect in action, Meta tried to stop the book from being published. They did have some success; it was ruled that the author, Sarah Wynn-Williams, had to refrain from promoting the book. But the ruling generated a lot of publicity in and of itself. So really, Meta ended up doing Wynn-Williams’ work for her. Whoops!
The thing is, most of us could have easily foreseen the outcome here. And you would think the pin-brains behind a social media company, which deals with the spread of information on a day-to-day basis could have also predicted this outcome? Yeah no. The people in charge here are so extremely detached from the day-to-day world, wandering around with their heads jammed so very firmly up their arses, that I don’t think they even considered how this could backfire. They’ve also tried to dismiss Wynn-Williams as nothing more than a disgruntled former employee. While, fair, she absolutely is a very pissed off ex-employee, they are unwise to write her off as a ‘just’. The activities and behaviors she describes in her book match up very well with what we already know about the dysfunction going on with Facebook/Meta. And their legal whinging and crying certainly didn’t stop the book from making it to the top of the New York Times Bestseller list.
So, exactly how bad is the dysfunction? What lead to Wynn-Williams ‘unfriending’ Facebook? Well, nearly everything, as it turns out. But I think—before anything—we need to talk a little about the author herself first. Sarah Wynn-Williams is originally from New Zealand, and the book open on not so much a charming anecdote from her childhood but instead a rather horrifying one; she was a victim of a shark attack as a teen. It wasn’t a minor attack either—she was grabbed on the torso and shaken around before the shark lost interest.
So of course, her injuries were not trivial. Her parents took her to the local doctor who stitched her up a bit and told her parents that she might be a little dramatic afterwards. The parents then decided to put all of their trust in the doctor and none in their daughter; despite the numerous complaints she made to her parents throughout the night, they basically ignored her deteriorating condition. It turns out the damage was more severe than first thought; her bowel had been perforated, and she was dying from sepsis.
Now, before anyone asks: Yes, there is a bit of a shared cultural thing in both Australia and New Zealand where we sort of walk off big dramas; she’ll be right mate, don’t have a whinge, etc. We’ve all heard that before. But no, the disregard Wynn-Williams’ parents showed towards her teenage self goes well beyond that. If I had had an experience like that as a child, I think I would have been double guessing every interaction I had with my parents from that point forward. I would not have been OK. I think the author’s intent when adding this anecdote was to show her tenacity; when her mother asked her if she was thankful for the doctor for saving her (this is after it became absolutely, transparently, undeniably clear she was very sick and she was airlifted to Nelson), Wynn-Williams made sure her mother knew that she saved herself.
I don’t know, I reckon a lot of readers might be taking away some different messages from that one?
So that gives you some idea of what Wynn-Williams is like. Prior to working at Facebook, she had been serving a diplomat for New Zealand. This job lead her to spending some time in Washington DC; easy to believe she maintained a US interest. Interestingly, as it turns out, Wynn-Williams never applied to an open position at Facebook; after becoming enamored with the idea of using social media as a tool to foster international relations and facilitate global diplomacy, she continuously pitched herself to them until she wore them down and they took her on board.
But the company she found herself in didn’t really want to prioritize global connections—remember, this is early on in their history. Instead, they were worried about growth. So at this stage in Facebook’s trajectory as a company, they were really only interested in the US market and potential US regulations—which to me came across as very short sighted. What happens then if you saturate the US market?
Three of the biggest players in their memoir are of course Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and Joel Kaplan. Of these three, I was already very familiar with he first two. And I cannot say that I had positive views of either of them going in. Kaplan was the only one that I had just a fleeting familiarity with before reading. And in the Kentucky Derby of Bullshit that makes up Facebook’s upper management, I reckon Kaplan might be winning by a nose.
Zucks is no surprise; he initially comes across as an antisocial, incurious little dweeb—who then gets worse. Even this early on in Facebook’s history, he’s seen as so temperamental that other members of staff allow let him win at board games like Settlers of Catan so not to hurt his fragile ego. Sandberg is awful as well. The Lean-in Lady is very clearly a hypocrite who’s happy to exploit the labour of younger female employees for personal gain. If someone tried to cajole me into doing unpaid work instead of my career work in order to help plan out her wedding because all girlies love a big day—you don’t want to be left out/in my bad books?—I would be so fucking mad. Biting-peoples-faces off mad.
It was aggravating to read, but the young employees under her at least had some self awareness about it. Wish they could have lent some of that to their boss, who was completely unwilling to exit her own comfortable little bubble. One of the more amusing anecdotes in the book involves the author having to point out that no matter how ill her beloved child is, Sandberg would NOT be able to waltz into Mexico, pop a spare kidney into her handbag, and saunter on her merry way, because that is considered organ trafficking. And that’s not legal.
And Kaplan. I hated him from the get go. And throughout the entire book, this hate never abated. It started with him trying to shame the author for not supporting the troops—the US troops, mind, to the obviously Kiwi Wynn-Williams—and he never got better from there. He doesn’t seem to understand how bribery works, or that it’s even bad to begin with. He’s just awful. Consistently stupid and awful.
Then comes the monkey’s paw—the company did eventually see the need to expand out of the confines of the US. And as a result Wynn-Williams’ role became so much more important. It’s such a pity that upper management—including these three frontrunners of awful—continuously screwed things up. And then the finger curled; when they did finally get things ‘right’, at least from their perspective, it was usually not in the service of the public good at all. It was for their growth. They all got the money. And the rest of us got smoked.
So how did Wynn-Williams become the disgruntled former employee? I’ll start with the personal: the first warning was when they were looking for a potential patsy for their dealings with South Korea. Facebook had not been following Korean laws very carefully and S. Korea had an arrest warrant out for Zucks. This raised the question; was it possible that any high ranking Facebook member could get arrested if they landed there? Lets insinuate that the best person to send to test this out is the lady who has a barely 6 month old baby at home—you guessed it, Wynn-Williams.
Then there was the sexual harassment. Much of this is detailed in the chapter Feminist Fight Club, where it is made clear that management was willing to say one thing and do another. Which translated to: do nothing. Wynn-Williams herself was harassed by two senior members of Facebook; one was Kaplan, which was an easy call. The other was a little less obvious. Have fun guessing that one.
The there was the bad performance review. Wynn-Williams had a hard time when pregnant with her second child, and the labour didn’t go well at all. Now it’s an absolute dick move, and very much an legal and ethical risk, to give someone a performance review for the time they are on maternity leave. But it’s a whole other pile of shit to give a performance review for the time the employee is in a damned coma.*
Well, guess who’s responsible for that one? In my Meta-Derby of Bullshit, it’s becoming real hard to call the trifecta.
Then there are the ethical issues, many which are still current; we have already seen that they flagrantly ignore laws when they’re not convenient. They don’t pay their taxes if they can help it. They lie to Congress, they lie to the courts. They indulge in collusion. They jeopardize so much to get access to China.
And this is where I want to start talking about Wynn-Williams again, because I have some very mixed feelings about her. There is a section of the book where she mentions someone calling her out by bringing attention to the fact she would sometimes lets her mask slip, and they didn’t like the real feelings she would show. I agree—after reading the book, I think she wears a great mask. And it doesn’t often slip. But it is there. Throughout the book, Wynn-Williams comes across as engaging and funny. She’s especially endearing when she reads the audiobook. Her narration is, for the most part, fantastic, with only a slight over indulgence in the whole ‘Can you believe that?’ schtick.
But to be the kind of person who could make it so long in the company before considering throwing in the towel, there has to be something a little more tenacious, a little something more there. And there are signs: one thing I picked up very early on in the book is that she spends quite a bit of time trying to convince the reader that yes, Sandberg, Kaplan and co seem rather nice. They’re people she’s wanting to endear herself to. But every time, this is tell, and not show. What actions does she show us? All the bad ones. Or the two-sided ones.
She also plays the up the ‘naive kiwi’ persona a little too heavily for my liking. While I’m not from New Zealand, I am from a regional part of the Antipodes, and even after nearly eight years overseas, I still come across things that surprise me now and then. But on the many occasions when she expressed shock or incredulity over certain events, I often found myself thinking: “Hun, no, really? Did that really, genuinely, surprise you? Didn’t you work in the diplomatic service? You’re not still a bogan from the bush.”
And what about her own role at Facebook? Why did she stay as long as she did? I’ve left off mentioning Myanmar until now, but Wynn-Williams was the one meeting with the Myanmar military junta as far back as 2012 in the hope they would ‘un-ban’ Facebook. She was aware of what was going on there. And long after her superiors had made it clear that they are more motivated by greed (and in Kaplan’s case, sheer stupidity; let’s not help refugees, they don’t have money), why was she was still helping them push Internet.org?
So why? Why didn’t she get up and leave the company after the Korean drama? The title suggests lost idealism. Maybe shark-induced skewed perspectives? But there’s something else that caught my attention: She does some spend time later on in the book talking about her need to maintain employment for both healthcare (the bad birth is not the only health issue she had to contend with) and visa-related reasons. Both were important if she wanted to stay in the US. And look, I have some experience with both and I can empathize to a degree. I suspect her husband could not have helped much with either of those, because he was not an American citizen. But someone correct me if I am wrong.**
But if things really were that bad, why not pull the plug and go back to New Zealand? This, I think is the real true reason: she may have been waiting for stocks to vest. That would have given her and her husband lot of economic freedom, no matter the country they ended up in. So money was also a huge motivator. And look, I can sort of see that too. But if you’re castigating everyone else for greed? Please.***
But the Wynn-Williams that exists behind the mask? She does excellent work in the latter part of the book. I would not cross her. Just give a read to everything post-Chapter 40, and compare the tone there to that of the start of the book. Most of the friendliness vanishes; this is the whistleblower singing like an angry teakettle. So many of Facebooks shady dealings are dragged into the light and laid bare. She wants it known that the company undermined national security when trying to gain access to the Chinese market. This is how they lied to the government. This is how they mess with teenager’s heads. And then a substantial mea culpa for Myanmar.
Please, even with some of the criticism here, please find time to read this book. Please amplify the Streisand effect. See it as a civic duty. And if you don’t want to pay, not only is the library an option, but I found it for free on Spotify Premium. The length falls within the 15hr quota for audiobooks. Meta and co. have only gotten worse in the last few years. I know not everyone can divorce themselves from Meta-related products, but if you can make the Silicon Valley dweebs squirm, if you can bring back shame, please do so.
Yes, shame them all. (Thank you Bec Shaw)