My first interactions with Facebook were wonderful, I used it to find a high school friend only to find out they lived an hour away and had got back together with their high school sweetheart who was also a friend. I connected with them and we had dinner where they got to meet my wife.
Early Facebook let me connect with friends I hadn’t seen in a decade, and brought me lots of joy. It was a useful tool instead of a cesspit of AI spam, misinformation and ads, with the odd glimmer of a real friend hidden somewhere between the shit Facebook wants you to see.
Careless People is a look at the building of Facebook from the inside. It’s early enough that world leaders were unwilling to give Facebook brass the time of day because they were some little internet company that thought it was important, not the Juggernaut it is today that can change the deal on governments leaving them with nothing but scraps.
Sarah Wynn-Williams was a Facebook insider that got to work directly with the higher ups and experience the real side of Facebook. She saw how Sheryl Sandberg talked a good game about supporting women in the workplace, but turned a blind eye towards sexual harassment at the company1. In fact Sandberg doesn’t think it’s odd to ask her subordinates to sleep in her bed with her on the private plane dedicated to Sandberg’s use2. Sandberg doesn’t see the issue, and cuts of most contact with the Wynn-Williams after her refusal to join the bed party.
After reading this book I’m struck by how dumb many of the people running Facebook are. They don’t seem to know how to manage people. They are constantly influenced by their friends, to the detriment of the company. They’re a bunch of idiots that happened into an idea at the right time and now have enough money to be insulated from the consequences of their stupidity.
This is a quick read, and it’s going to get you mad at how clueless the people running Facebook are.
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