BINGO: white
hot take what an infuriating book–a real choice for the main read of my peaceful cabin-and-lake-and-forest vacation–and just a solid entry in “tech people are the worst sort of rich/powerful people” genre
Sarah Wynn-Williams joined Facebook in 2011, after working for the New Zealand embassy in DC for a number of years. She’s painfully, painfully earnest about her motivations–the zealot convert’s belief that Facebook would completely change the paradigm of the global geopolitical landscape–so much so that she basically whinges her way into a job, bombarding everyone she meets with her one-woman pitch for “perhaps you should work with governments and get ahead of their knee-jerk regulations.” She stays until 2017, when she’s fired for performance reasons, but she makes a convincing case that it was a retaliatory firing for reporting sexual creepiness by her boss (who, no surprise, still okay).
There’s two separate books in this book, and ymmv with each. The one you probably paid to see is lots of inside stories and goss about the various players–some more famous, some less–who made decisions that did end up shaping our world. The other is Wynn-Williams’ own story, her realization that Facebook might actually be a terrible place run by terrible people, and how she navigates the entire toxic stew.
Start with the first: look, I’ve got a very narrow leg to stand on, because I’m a former finance banker type. I don’t think I picked an industry known for doing great good or anything, and leaving wasn’t a principled stance as much as burnout and a desire to have a life. But! I will say that at least finance people just think they’re gods gift to finance and assume everything else is sort of beneath them.
Tech people are absolutely aggravating because they think their skills at programming/tech/hardware somehow also imply that they’re smart at everything else.
And this book is nothing but that thesis, proven right again and again. Why does Facebook get into internet for all, or the metaverse, or Chan Zuckerberg Foundation or whatever the hell? Because there’s this sense that if you can understand the intricacies of code, then nothing else can be as difficult. Complex geopolitical situations that involve centuries of history and nuance? Boil it down to the dumbest common denominator, move fast, beg forgiveness. It’s the worst, toxic trait of most of Silicon Valley and I cannot be happier that I am way, way the far away.
What I probably need to wrestle with is the pros of deplatforming oneself (to get away from enriching these infuriating folks) versus the cons of deplatforming oneself (losing the ability to participate in what passes for the communal space these days).
The other story, of Wynn-Williams…eh. I could take it or leave it. I don’t believe for a second that she’s as wide eyed and O.o and SHOCKED, SHOCKED TO FIND GAMBLING as she makes you believe she is. The timeline of the book feels purposefully confusing to create the narrative of small realizations snowballing into larger mic drops, but if you mentally adjust what you have is the story of someone who ignored the truth over and over again until it became too big. And then did it anyhow, until she was fired.
Plus, she ends the book with a paean to the powers of AI to completely change the paradigm of the global geopolitical landscape…