400 pp. Published March 11, 2025 by Flatiron Books. Non-fiction/memoir.
We love whistleblowers; how else are we going to know what’s happening behind closed doors? Particularly if said closed doors are at Facebook, where many of us all over the world have spent significant portions of our lives, and also served up so much incredibly personal data. Careless People is Sarah Wynn-Williams’s tell-all, with receipts.
I recently read a striking short story in Artificial Artifacts x John Fennec, a low-profile sci-fi collection. In The Great Scare of 2032, this happens:
Residents of Wilmington awoke to an entirely simulated reality that morning. Some were greeted by their usual morning television news broadcasts, only to find the familiar faces of their trusted anchors delivering shocking news about events transpiring in major cities nationwide. Artificially generated scenes were trending on popular social media platforms but seen only by the inhabitants of Wilmington. Personal social media accounts of citizens mirrored the same narrative, with counterfeit users—some linked to Wilmington citizens, others completely fabricated—propagating the same misinformation.
This to me is an illustration of the true danger of the power of Facebook, that Wynn-Williams saw firsthand and is now finally awake to, hindsight being 20/20. (It’s not even in theory; a similar thing happens in Careless People.)
Perhaps Careless People is written to warn the rest of the world about what we already know—after Myanmar, January 6, and elections that haven’t gone as expected or hoped in the US and elsewhere. (Who knows what else—maybe Brexit? Perhaps other things in other places that don’t matter to those in power?) Or maybe it’s Wynn-Williams justifying herself and trying to show how powerless she was as she watched things go wrong at Facebook. Certainly this doesn’t feel like her mea culpa. Regardless, for readers, it’s a deliciously gossipy, incredible, truly explosive look into the horrifying inner workings of what was simply, to us, the hoi polloi, a place to keep up with the babies of people we went to high school with, and a way to spy on our exes.
Perhaps Wynn-Williams hasn’t completely let go of the naive idealism that fell for the trick of trying to change Facebook from within. Sigh. If you go in assuming billionaires (or billionaire wannabes) are driven by greed and the lust for power, rather than altruism… Then, possibly, you won’t help them achieve their goals by lifting them to the status of world leaders—as, unfortunately, Wynn-Williams spent a large part of the 2010s doing for Mark Zuckerberg. This is very much the tale of how she made him aware of what was possible, then was shocked when he enthusiastically ran with it. Ah, well. (Also, she’s working in the field of AI and the military now—you know, nuclear weapons. No need to fear that, at all.)
It will always be true that the most powerful people in the world are not on our side; Careless People is a timely reminder. And perhaps the next-best time to delete Facebook is now.
PS. I’m really snarky about this one—but it’s a compelling read, really eye-opening, and highly recommended. And I salute Wynn-Williams for her bravery and integrity.
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