Fans of the HBO series “The Sopranos” will remember the internal conflict suffered by Jennifer Malfi, therapist to the protagonist, Tony Soprano. The conflict she dealt with had to do with her providing mental health services to the mob boss of a prominent New Jersey crime syndicate. The question she was forced to confront was whether she was helping Soprano to improve himself or was she helping a criminal to justify their actions through psychoanalysis?
Malfi found out the hard way that the road to hell can be paved with good intentions, as did Sarah Wynn-Williams during her time as a Facebook executive. Her story doesn’t end with the book, however, as Facebook is fighting back by attempting to halt any “disparaging, critical or otherwise detrimental comments” about Facebook by Wynn-Williams through legal arbitration.
In Wynn-William’s book “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism,” readers are introduced to the corporate culture of Facebook, now called Meta, during her tenure as director of public policy, a role she held from its inception through her own volition, onto the modern day. The book highlights all of the revenue driven ethical compromises Wynn-Williams had borne witness to as the company moves from a passive tech firm to international kingmaker.
In a story reminiscent of both Silicon Valley and tech bro culture at large, the thin veiled altruism that Facebook executives flaunted in the form of ‘connectivity for all’ was a mechanism to garner support for Facebook’s efforts to grow their brand internationally. Eschewing their moral platitudes about freedom of speech, the book goes into detail about the compromises and capitulations that Facebook made in the name of expansion and egotism. In the book, Wynn-Williams discusses how Facebook software became a propaganda tool for the military junta in Myanmar, how the company shares information with the Chinese Communist Party upon request and how Facebook sold the advertisement space that allowed misinformation to dominate the pages of American Facebook users going into the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
What readers will discover when they read “Careless People” is the same descent into laissez-faire exceptionalism present in tech companies throughout Silicon Valley. The “move fast and break things” mindset present in their corporate culture led to Facebook being the only internet access in Myanmar, following a deal with the military junta in power. The book further goes into how Facebook guided government control over freedom of speech by deleting accounts and posts that weren’t aligned with the junta’s policies. The further meddling in civic affairs appears domestically when Wynn-Williams discusses how the Trump campaign, using personal data from Cambridge Analytica in conjunction with Facebook’s unscrupulous advertising model, helped to spread misinformation leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
This review could go into detail about the myriad of accusations leveled by the author against all levels of Facebook executive leadership and stockholders, but the book’s controversy speaks more to the weight of the story. Although Meta has taken legal action against Wynn-William, book publisher Macmillan Publishing has defended the book as a matter of free speech. In a recent statement about the book, Macmillan said “We will absolutely continue to support and promote it,” despite no arbitration being taken directly toward the publisher.
Additional problems for the tech giant are coming as Wynn-Williams is scheduled to speak with Congress early in April, according to an X post from Republican Missouri senator Josh Hawley. In the post, Hawley says the purpose of the senatorial hearing is to determine the level of Facebook’s cooperation with the communist regime in China, including Facebook’s plans to build censorship tools, punish dissidents, and make American user data available to the Chinese Communist Party.
It’s unclear what the future of tech will look like after the waves this book has created finally settle. Despite allegations of sexual harassment among the executive staff, Uber continues to run unimpeded. TikTok, despite being accused of providing user information to the CCP, is still operating unimpeded in the U.S. despite threats of its sale to an American firm.
What’s to be determined in this senatorial hearing is the influence of the tech industry. If Facebook can successfully tamp down the concerns leveled by Wynn-Williams, then the senatorial hearing is only a formality. The result will be a tech industry that continues to determine which voices are meant to be heard based upon which government promotes engagement, regardless of scruples.
For people curious of what the tech industry, or any industry that relies on promotion such as non-profits that rely on charitable revenue, will look like in the coming years, this book will offer you a glimpse into the dark side of the corporate model of engagement. Each chapter offers anecdotes highlighting unassailable opportunities for the executive staff of Facebook to choose between morality and profitability, often choosing the latter.
What the book also discusses is the value of personal information on a grand scale. Whether it’s a person’s interest in certain fashion, misleading political posts based on a person’s concerns about their community or finding the most vulnerable moment in a young woman’s life to being marketing cosmetics, the presentation of information that some social media users may see as ubiquitous has been precisely designed to cater to their greatest insecurities.
What Wynn-Williams has published is an apology to mankind. Much like Malfi from “The Sopranos,” Wynn-Williams thought that she could help change the world for the better, but instead validated the ambitious in their venal rise to dominance.
Follow William Forseth on Instagram @WilliamForseth or email him at WilliamForseth@gmail.com
