Can tech leaders be trusted to shape our future? What happens when profit and power trump ethics and accountability?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Careless People<\/em>, Sarah Wynn-Williams\u2014Facebook\u2019s Director of Global Policy from 2011-2017\u2014offers an insider account of her time working at Facebook. In this memoir and tell-all, Wynn-Williams alleges that Facebook\u2019s top leaders were dangerously reckless people who caused great harm in the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Keep reading to learn more about the dark side of Facebook, as told by an insider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n In Careless People<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Sarah Wynn-Williams recounts her time as Director of Global Public Policy at Facebook, where she worked closely with Mark Zuckerberg and other executives from 2011-2017. Through a series of vignettes that chronicle her seven years there, she shares her critical perspective on the character and conduct of these leaders. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Wynn-Williams joined Facebook because she believed in its potential to connect people and improve the world<\/a>. But over time, she came to the conclusion that Zuckerberg and company were reckless, uncaring, and corrupt.<\/strong> They consistently put business and personal interests before responsibility or accountability. And because of this, she says, Facebook became a source of harm in the world<\/strong>. It influenced the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election, enabled political corruption and genocide in Myanmar, and tailored its tech to the authoritarian interests of the Chinese Communist Party. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Wynn-Williams is a former diplomat and lawyer from New Zealand who\u2019s worked for the New Zealand government, the United Nations, and Facebook (now Meta). In this guide, we\u2019ll explore her claims about Facebook\u2019s leadership, the harm they\u2019ve caused, and the lessons we need to learn to shape a better future for Big Tech. In our commentary, we\u2019ll examine her claims and compare them with what others have said about the company and its leaders. We\u2019ll also discuss her testimony to the US Congress and Meta\u2019s response to her speaking up, as well as the state of US-China<\/a> AI race in 2025. <\/p>\n\n\n\n (Shortform note: In 2021, Facebook rebranded itself as Meta<\/a>. Throughout this guide, we\u2019ll refer to the company as \u201cFacebook\u201d when discussing its pre-2021 activity, such as when Wynn-Williams worked there. We\u2019ll refer to the company as \u201cMeta\u201d when describing its post-2021 activity.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n To begin, we\u2019ll characterize how Wynn-Williams experienced Facebook\u2019s workplace culture<\/a>. Then we\u2019ll cover what she says about three key leaders who created this culture: Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and Joel Kaplan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Wynn-Williams writes that when she began working at Facebook, the team was small, scrappy, and always pressed for time. When she joined their D.C. office, which handled Facebook\u2019s public policy in the US, she and her colleagues regularly worked until midnight or later, and they often began working again in the early morning. The work was nonstop, and they did all they could to keep up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The expectation at Facebook, Wynn-Williams says, was that everyone would dedicate themselves 110% to the work.<\/strong> Facebook wanted its employees to believe they weren\u2019t just running a business\u2014they were changing the world<\/a>. For Wynn-Williams and her colleagues, work was their purpose. And for some, family, hobbies, and life outside work weren\u2019t even in the picture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To make this intense, mission-driven culture possible, Facebook gave its employees perks, like shuttle rides to work, laundry service, childcare, and unlimited snacks in every office. Wynn-Williams explains: Leadership believed that if they took care of people\u2019s daily basic needs, they could and would work harder and longer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Wynn-Williams describes Mark Zuckerberg as a complex business leader with several fatal character flaws. She says that he began with an idealistic vision to connect the world but was ultimately preoccupied with his power and image, stubborn in his beliefs, and indifferent to the consequences of his decisions. We\u2019ll cover each of these in the sections below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wynn-Williams says that Zuckerberg wanted to be powerful and admired by world leaders and the public.<\/strong> To that end, she often worked to arrange or contrive meetings between Zuckerberg and heads of state. Around 2014 and 2015, as Facebook\u2019s global influence grew, she saw him become increasingly preoccupied with how he was perceived by figures like then-President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping<\/a>. After being snubbed by both at the same global conference\u2014Obama rebuffed him and Xi refused to meet with him\u2014Zuckerberg became visibly upset. These were people whose approval he\u2019d wanted, and he\u2019d been denied it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Zuckerberg also wanted everyday people to admire him.<\/strong> Wynn-Williams speculates that this is why he so often spoke in lofty, aspirational terms at public events about Facebook\u2019s mission to \u201cconnect the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wynn-Williams says that despite this attempt to cultivate a positive public image, Zuckerberg was indifferent in internal meetings to the real-world harm Facebook was causing.<\/strong> For example, she notes that when Facebook came under fire for the worsening mental health of young users, Zuckerberg refused to scale back the company\u2019s data-driven marketing tools. These tools allowed advertisers to target teenagers when they were most emotionally vulnerable\u2014serving them, for instance, ads for weight loss products when they expressed insecurity about their appearance\u2014but Wynn-Williams says Zuckerberg didn\u2019t care about these negative effects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As for Zuckerberg\u2019s conduct within the company, Wynn-Williams writes that he was a deeply stubborn leader who fiercely believed in his own ideas. <\/strong>Though he\u2019d sometimes listen to feedback, he more often insisted on pushing through his preferred decisions\u2014a habit that Wynn-Williams says often caused problems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For instance, he fought hard to keep the name Internet.org<\/em> on an initiative meant to deliver free, limited internet access in parts of the Global South. Wynn-Williams recounts advising him to change it because the name was deceptive\u2014it purported to be real internet service but was just a handful of Facebook-made web apps\u2014and multiple countries had bristled at it. It took the loss of Brazil\u2019s support for the program for Zuckerberg to concede that a name change was necessary (it became Free Basics). But by that time, the damage was already done: Key negotiations had failed, and the product\u2019s reputation was irreparably harmed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps what enabled Zuckerberg\u2019s fixation on being liked and his stubbornness as a leader, Wynn-Williams says, was the distance that his extraordinary wealth created between him and the ordinary world. She argues that his wealth made him out of touch: His power and privilege meant he didn\u2019t have to reckon with the consequences of his choices. Over time, Zuckerberg came to care less and less\u2014to be more interested in seeing what he could do, just because he could. According to Wynn-Williams, this was deliberate: He chose to ignore the harm he caused and to pursue his self-interested ends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wynn-Williams explains that Zuckerberg led the engineering and product side of Facebook, while Sheryl Sandberg\u2019s team handled public relations, policy, and politics. For the most part, Wynn-Williams worked under Sandberg. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Wynn-Williams portrays Sandberg as a charismatic and intelligent woman who was also a coldly calculating and self-interested hypocrite.<\/strong> She alleges that Sandberg\u2019s outward persona\u2014author of Lean In<\/em><\/a> and champion for women\u2019s empowerment\u2014hid who she really was. Behind the scenes, Sandberg ruthlessly played politics, expecting loyalty, obedience, and submission from her team members, many of whom were women. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For one, Wynn-Williams writes, Sandberg had a fierce temper and would take it out on whoever was nearby,<\/strong> even if they hadn\u2019t caused the issue that had upset her. After experiencing this several times, Wynn-Williams and others began keeping problems quiet to avoid drawing Sandberg\u2019s ire and jeopardizing their careers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beyond how she treated her employees, Sandberg failed to live up to the ideals of women\u2019s empowerment that she supposedly stood for.<\/strong> This became clear to Wynn-Williams after she discovered the \u201cFeminist Fight Club\u201d (FFC), a secret online Facebook group for women at the company who\u2019d experienced harassment or wanted to support others who had. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Harassment was a systemic issue at Facebook, Wynn-Williams says. But Sandberg, who believed in individual responsibility, didn\u2019t advocate for systemic solutions that would address the issue. Even when the FFC group broached the issue with Facebook\u2019s leadership, Sandberg didn\u2019t support them. Rather, she tacitly approved of her male counterparts who\u2019d come under fire (like Joel Kaplan, who we\u2019ll discuss in the next section) by remaining silent on this issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wynn-Williams also alleges that Sandberg behaved inappropriately toward some of her female employees. In one instance, Sandberg pressured Wynn-Williams to join her in bed during a trip on a private jet. When Wynn-Williams refused and stood her ground, Sandberg had a young assistant join her instead. This wasn\u2019t uncommon, Wynn-Williams says, and after her refusal, she lost Sandberg\u2019s favor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wynn-Williams also writes that Sandberg was a ruthless political actor<\/strong> who played a large role in deflecting criticism from Facebook and managing its reputation.<\/strong> For instance, when Facebook was criticized for doing too little to combat misinformation and its political consequences in Myanmar (an issue we\u2019ll discuss later), Sandberg downplayed Facebook\u2019s responsibility for the problem and exaggerated how much they were doing to address it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few years into Wynn-Williams\u2019 work at Facebook, Joel Kaplan became her manager. Wynn-Williams says Kaplan was a savvy and well-connected political operative<\/strong> who\u2019d been an adviser to US president George Bush and maintained ties to the Republican Party. He wasn\u2019t as publicly visible as Zuckerberg or Sandberg, but he had major influence over Facebook\u2019s approach to politics, policy, and content moderation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Wynn-Williams, Kaplan ensured that Facebook didn\u2019t moderate conservative content, however extreme or hateful it got. <\/strong>She says this enabled the spread of misinformation and disinformation<\/a> on the platform. <\/strong>She also alleges that Kaplan behaved inappropriately toward her on multiple occasions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Wynn-Williams writes that Kaplan often pushed for internal decisions that would benefit right-wing content and personalities.<\/strong> For instance, when Facebook was facing scrutiny from conservative lawmakers because of its apparent liberal bias, Kaplan ensured that Facebook didn\u2019t censor conservative pages that had begun spreading hate speech and disinformation. Wynn-Williams makes no judgment on his politics per se, but she does suggest that his influence\u2014especially around the 2016 US election\u2014was a big part of why Facebook did so little to combat political disinformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Wynn-Williams, Kaplan also played a key role in Facebook\u2019s morally fraught dealings with China and Myanmar<\/strong> (which we\u2019ll cover in more detail later). In both cases, he ignored or dismissed red flags, such as violent rhetoric on Facebook in Myanmar, and Facebook\u2019s willingness to build surveillance tools for China. Wynn-Williams says that his actions revealed his beliefs: Business growth<\/a> and profit mattered more to him than ethics or human rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beyond his power as a key decision-maker for Facebook\u2019s political strategy, Kaplan allegedly used his position to sexually harass Wynn-Williams.<\/strong> She describes multiple occasions in which he treated her inappropriately, such as making suggestive comments about her body after childbirth and drunkenly grinding on her at a Facebook offsite event. These weren\u2019t isolated incidents, she argues, but a consistent part of his character. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When Wynn-Williams eventually filed a formal complaint against him, the company launched an investigation. However, instead of holding Kaplan accountable, Wynn-Williams says Facebook\u2019s investigation team cleared him before she had a chance to provide all her evidence (such as inappropriate emails). Kaplan had powerful allies, including Elliot Schrage (Facebook\u2019s VP of public policy), who allegedly used his influence to ensure Kaplan wasn\u2019t held accountable. Instead, Schrage fired Wynn-Williams on what she says were trumped-up charges\u2014she was told she\u2019d been underperforming\u2014in the wake of her investigation filing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the previous section, we explained how Wynn-Williams characterizes Facebook\u2019s leaders during her time at the company. Next, we\u2019ll explore the key events that she says happened as a result of their recklessness.<\/strong> These include Facebook\u2019s role in genocide and political instability in Myanmar, its role in the 2016 US presidential election, and its collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wynn-Williams writes that in the mid-2010s, Facebook neglected to address hateful political rhetoric spreading on the platform in Myanmar. <\/strong>She says that this negligence led directly to real-world consequences: a violent campaign against the country\u2019s Muslim Rohingya minority that the UN later called genocide. For years, Wynn-Williams and others repeatedly warned key decision-makers, but these leaders chose not to act\u2014not because they didn\u2019t know, but because they didn\u2019t care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Facebook\u2019s unique role in Myanmar is central to understanding how this happened. Myanmar, formerly Burma, skipped over desktop computing and went straight to smartphones. Further, Facebook was so ubiquitous that most people thought it was<\/em> the internet, or at least the main way to go online. This happened because Facebook had struck deals with telecoms to preload the app on mobile phones and not charge for data spent using it. All in all, the platform had unprecedented influence over how people in Myanmar connected, communicated, and shared information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2015, Myanmar was preparing to hold its first democratic election in decades. But the military junta, reluctant to give up power, used Facebook to stir up chaos in the country and delay the process.<\/strong> Wynn-Williams\u2019s team found that covert groups employed by the junta spread anti-Rohingya hate speech and nationalist propaganda on Facebook. Her team documented numerous inauthentic accounts being used to stoke division, impersonate influencers, and coordinate harassment. Meanwhile, peace activists and other good-faith actors were silenced or suppressed on the platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What was at first just online hate speech<\/a> led to mobs rioting and burning mosques, shops, and the homes of Rohingya Muslims, according to Wynn-Williams. Despite this, Facebook\u2019s leadership chose not to act. Further, they had only a single Burmese-speaking contractor on staff at the time\u2014one person tasked with moderating Facebook in a country with tens of millions of users. Wynn-Williams managed to get a second Burmese speaker hired, but this was too little, too late. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2017, after Facebook\u2019s leadership had ignored and dismissed the problems in Myanmar for years, the country\u2019s junta launched a series of attacks against the Rohingya. Over 10,000 people were killed, thousands of women and girls were raped, villages were burned, and more than 700,000 Rohingya fled the country. The United Nations later concluded that Facebook had failed to moderate the hate speech and misinformation that led to this violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wynn-Williams also recounts how Facebook contributed to Donald Trump\u2019s victory in the 2016 US presidential election.<\/strong> She writes that Trump\u2019s team used Facebook\u2019s powerful advertising tools to spread inflammatory and often counterfactual<\/a> messaging on the platform\u2014an approach which she views as unethical. Facebook leadership knew about this: They were selling campaign services (like help using their ad tools) to multiple candidates, including Trump and other Republicans. But they only realized they\u2019d helped Trump win after the fact, according to Wynn-Williams, and by then it was too late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How did Facebook\u2019s advertising tools contribute to Trump\u2019s 2016 win, according to Wynn-Williams? Facebook ads allowed Trump\u2019s campaign to target voters based on precise demographic data: age, gender, race, location (down to the ZIP code), political affiliation, income level, hobbies, and even emotional states. For example, Wynn-Williams describes a tactic in which Trump\u2019s team targeted middle-aged Black men in cities like Philadelphia, who were likely to vote Democratic but had reservations about Hillary Clinton. The Trump team then sent these voters clips of her 1996 \u201csuperpredators\u201d comment<\/a>, widely seen as racist, to exploit those doubts and discourage voter turnout. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This worked so well because Facebook\u2019s algorithm was optimized for engagement, and outrage strongly engages people. The more people Trump\u2019s team could anger or rile up, the more people they could get to vote (or not to vote). Wynn-Williams says that Facebook leadership didn\u2019t take this issue seriously<\/strong> because they saw a Trump victory as impossible. But in the meantime, he was a great customer for Facebook\u2014the business profited massively from his campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wynn-Williams contends that Facebook made no meaningful effort to curb the spread of Trump\u2019s political disinformation. <\/strong>Zuckerberg and others downplayed the problem, despite internal warnings from employees and external pressure from researchers and journalists concerned about political manipulation. For his part, Kaplan made sure Facebook took no action that might be seen as anti-conservative, even when content crossed into hate speech or blatant falsehood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After Trump\u2019s victory, Facebook came under increasing scrutiny. But Zuckerberg needed to be convinced that Facebook had even played a role\u2014Wynn-Williams says he was dismissive of that idea until Schrage (Facebook\u2019s public policy VP and Wynn-Williams\u2019 superior) explained to him in detail what had happened. Even then, Facebook\u2019s leadership did little to address the platform\u2019s friendliness to misleading or counterfactual content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lastly, Wynn-Williams alleges that Facebook willingly cooperated with the demands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)<\/strong> in hopes of being allowed to operate in China. She says leadership was unbothered by the CCP\u2019s authoritarianism, and she alleges that Zuckerberg lied to the US Congress about Facebook\u2019s involvement with them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Wynn-Williams, Facebook spent multiple years working with CCP officials in an attempt to gain access to the largest market left for it to reach. Zuckerberg championed this initiative, outlining via internal communications in 2014 his intent and a three-year plan. To him, it was the most important move Facebook could make to keep growing (which was his main goal).<\/p>\n\n\n\n To operate in China, Facebook would have to abide by CCP regulations on media companies. <\/strong>These include giving the CCP the ability to censor speech on the platform, access user data and local servers, and broadly surveil citizens. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Through 2015 and 2016, Facebook worked with Chinese officials to develop technologies that would maintain what the CCP called \u201csafe and secure social order\u201d on the platform. Wynn-Williams, who wasn\u2019t part of the China team until later on, recounts reading internal reports detailing Facebook\u2019s engineering of special tools for moderation and censorship. They included mechanisms for keyword blocking, a viral post flagger, and a master switch that could wipe out viral content during politically sensitive times (like the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square incident).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Facebook also agreed to store Chinese users\u2019 data in China\u2014something it had refused to do for other governments like Russia or Brazil.<\/strong> According to Wynn-Williams, Facebook leaders knew that the CCP would access the servers and gather data. They also acknowledged that the Facebook employees building the censorship tools could be implicated in political violence if the CCP used them for ill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the end, Facebook didn\u2019t succeed in gaining access to China. All the same, Wynn-Williams says, the episode demonstrated clearly that Facebook\u2019s leaders were willing to ignore the ethical dilemma of working with an authoritarian regime if it meant they\u2019d profit. In addition, Zuckerberg allegedly lied about it to the US Congress: When asked whether the platform would comply with CCP regulations, Zuckerberg said that \u201cno decisions had been made.\u201d This was four years after they\u2019d begun working to enter China and did all of the above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So far, we\u2019ve laid out Wynn-Williams\u2019 allegations that Facebook leaders were reckless, unaccountable, and ethically compromised in character and conduct; and that they caused major harm in the world. We\u2019ll look next to her main takeaway. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Put simply, Wynn-Williams argues that Facebook\u2019s recklessness continues to go unchecked<\/strong>\u2014that Zuckerberg and company haven\u2019t changed at all. She adds that this could be disastrous for the AI race between the US and China<\/a>,<\/strong> in which both countries want to develop superior AI for military and economic use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2024, Facebook\u2019s leadership chose to open-source their AI models, or make them publicly available to license and build upon. In doing this, Wynn-Williams says, they\u2019ve enabled Chinese tech firms (like DeepSeek) to compete with formerly dominant Western AI companies (like OpenAI) and potentially get an edge.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOverview of Careless People<\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Facebook\u2019s Culture and the Leaders Who Created It<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Facebook\u2019s Culture: Hard Work and Long Hours<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Zuckerberg: Detached and Self-Absorbed<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Zuckerberg\u2019s Self-Absorption<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Zuckerberg\u2019s Indifference<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Zuckerberg\u2019s Stubbornness<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Zuckerberg\u2019s Disconnection<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Sandberg: Ruthless and Hypocritical<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Sandberg\u2019s Temper<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Sandberg\u2019s Hypocrisy<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Sandberg\u2019s Politicking<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Kaplan: Biased and Badly Behaved<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Kaplan\u2019s Conservative Bias<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Kaplan\u2019s Dismissiveness<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Kaplan\u2019s Harassment of Wynn-Williams<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Facebook\u2019s Harmful Impact<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Facebook Enabled Violence in Myanmar<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Facebook\u2019s Role in the 2016 US Presidential Election<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Facebook Collaborated with the Chinese Communist Party<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Averting a More Reckless Future<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n