By Sarah Wynn-Williams
A Facebook insider's cautionary memoir
Subject
Themes
A young New Zealand diplomat with a taste for high-stakes work joins Facebook in 2011, drawn by the company's promise to connect the world. Sarah Wynn-Williams becomes a senior policy adviser, travelling with Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg to meet heads of state, negotiating Facebook's relationship with governments across Asia, Latin America, and beyond. In those early years, the mission feels genuine. People around the world share stories of how the platform transformed their lives: isolated individuals finding community, small businesses reaching customers, democratic movements gaining momentum. But behind the scenes, the machinery of a very different company is already turning.
A young New Zealand diplomat with a taste for high-stakes work joins Facebook in 2011, drawn by the company's promise to connect the world. Sarah Wynn-Williams becomes a senior policy adviser, travelling with Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg to meet heads of state, negotiating Facebook's…
Published in March 2025, Careless People arrives at a moment when the relationship between technology companies and democratic governance is under intense scrutiny worldwide. The memoir draws on internal documents, emails, and first-hand experience to provide one of the most detailed insider…
Facebook's relationship with truth follows a consistent and revealing pattern: the company systematically says one thing to the public while doing the opposite in private. This gap between public statements and internal reality is not the result of miscommunication or institutional complexity. It is…
Facebook's founding mission to connect the world functions not merely as a corporate slogan but as a totalising ideology that justifies virtually any action taken in its name. This mission, invoked constantly by leadership, provides the moral framework through which every compromise, every…
The relationship between Facebook and the world's governments reveals a company that has accumulated political power rivalling that of nation states while remaining subject to almost none of the accountability mechanisms that constrain sovereign authority. Facebook does not merely interact with…
The treatment of women at Facebook follows a pattern that is consistent, documented, and deliberately maintained by leadership. From the Feminist Fight Club's systematic cataloguing of harassment and discrimination to Sarah's own experience with Joel Kaplan, the account reveals a company where…
Running through the entire account is a profound tension between staying inside a corrupt institution to change it and leaving to preserve one's integrity. Sarah's seven years at Facebook trace an arc from genuine idealism through incremental compromise to the recognition that the system she hoped…
At thirteen, Sarah Wynn-Williams is attacked by a shark while standing in shallow water at a New Zealand beach. The shark locks its jaws around her torso, shaking her violently and pulling her underwater three times before she fights free. Fishermen carry her to shore, and her parents drive her to a…
The extraordinary wealth at Facebook becomes immediately apparent. Sarah's assistant wears Christian Louboutin heels; colleagues casually describe themselves as "price insensitive" thanks to early stock grants. Wealth correlates with tenure rather than title, so junior staff who joined early are…
Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In launches in March 2013, transforming her from COO to celebrity. Female staff are expected to do unpaid labour for book events, ironically mirroring the "office housework" Sheryl decries. Sarah, visibly pregnant, becomes the perfect visual prop for Sheryl's "Don't leave…
Sarah initially accepts being "the body" sent to Korea to test whether Facebook executives will be arrested. Tom points out she has a seven-month-old baby and suggests she simply refuse. The idea of saying no had not occurred to her. Tom accuses her of having Stockholm syndrome, suggesting she…
In South Korea, attempts to meet the president fail because Facebook will not make investments and arrest warrants remain active. A raucous karaoke party erupts on the private jet to Tokyo, where Mark belts Backstreet Boys and Disney songs during severe turbulence. Over dinners in Tokyo, Mark…
Colombian President Santos agrees to champion Internet.org at a public event with Mark, squeezing it in during FARC peace negotiations. The only available slot is the morning, but Mark has a strict policy: no appointments before noon. His assistant Andrea negotiates for 12:30 while the palace…
A packed September 2015 week reveals the gap between Mark's public image and private substance. His encounter with Chinese President Xi amounts to a one-minute handshake at Microsoft's campus; he posts a photo that breaches Chinese protocol, creating a diplomatic crisis at forty thousand feet. At a…
Days after returning from Davos, Sarah reports to US Citizenship and Immigration Services. She urgently needs American citizenship for complicated visa reasons. While waiting anxiously, Joel emails her a crude joke asking if she got "the dirty sanchez question" on the test. She googles the term and…
Sarah's recovery is gruelling. She cannot walk through a supermarket and bleeds for months. Joel contacts her constantly during maternity leave, taking video calls from his bed and repeatedly asking if the setting makes her uncomfortable. When she mentions ongoing blood loss, he presses her to…
Mark launches his tour of American states, documented by a photographer who previously covered Obama and Bush. He works a Ford assembly line, drives a tractor, does NASCAR laps, and sits with recovering heroin addicts. Each stop is scouted by an advance team and optimised on his Facebook page. He…
Under the code name Aldrin, Facebook assembled a large team of senior engineers to build precisely what the Chinese Communist Party wanted. The partner firm Hony Capital, code-named Jupiter, would store all Chinese user data in China, operate a content moderation team answering to the government,…
Trust between Facebook's staff and leadership disintegrates. Employees post in internal groups asking to transfer to teams where they would not be morally implicated. Prospective hires tell recruiters never to contact them again. Sheryl fumes that new interns ask about morality rather than the…
By Sarah Wynn-Williams
Subject
Themes
A young New Zealand diplomat with a taste for high-stakes work joins Facebook in 2011, drawn by the company's promise to connect the world. Sarah Wynn-Williams becomes a senior policy adviser, travelling with Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg to meet heads of state, negotiating Facebook's relationship with governments across Asia, Latin America, and beyond. In those early years, the mission feels genuine. People around the world share stories of how the platform transformed their lives: isolated individuals finding community, small businesses reaching customers, democratic movements gaining momentum. But behind the scenes, the machinery of a very different company is already turning.