First, let me just put this book right at the top so you don’t miss it.
What’s this?
Careless People is a memoir about Meta aka Facebook, written by Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former employee of Facebook from 2011 to 2017 wrote a memoir telling everybody how very, very fucked up things are over there.
Spoiler: it is indeed very, very fucked up.
But wait, there’s more. This is quite a tale, and it’s still a developing story.
Let’s start with the cover copy. It is something:
An explosive memoir charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them.
From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite.
Sarah Wynn-Williams tells the wrenching but fun story of Facebook, mapping its rise from stumbling encounters with juntas to Mark Zuckerberg’s reaction when he learned of Facebook’s role in Trump’s election. She experiences the challenges and humiliations of working motherhood within a pressure cooker of a workplace, all while Sheryl Sandberg urges her and others to “lean in.”
Careless People is a deeply personal account of why and how things have gone so horribly wrong in the past decade―told in a sharp, candid, and utterly disarming voice. A deep, unflinching look at the role that social media has assumed in our lives, Careless People reveals the truth about the leaders of Facebook: how the more power they grasp, the less responsible they become and the consequences this has for all of us.
Now, do you know the Streisand Effect, where by trying to block something, you only draw more attention to it?
Yeah, this is one of those. Y’all.
This book was released Monday, 11 March, 2025. Yes, four days ago. Meta sought emergency arbitration seeking to stop the book from being published and promoted.
On March 12, as reported by Mike Isaac in the NY Times (gift link), an arbitrator ruled that the author, Sarah Wynn-Williams, must refrain from promoting her book, and further must not “[amplify] any further disparaging, critical or otherwise detrimental comments.”
What are these ‘detrimental comments?’
Among other things, Careless People alleges considerable sexual harassment and a lot of terrible behavior from Meta executives: per Ron Charles’ newsletter from the Washington Post, “Wynn-Williams says she was fired soon after her harassment complaint against chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan was dismissed.”
Isaac further reports that Meta is basing this arbitration on a non-disparagement clause in her contract, though in 2023, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that it’s “generally illegal for companies to offer severance agreements that prohibit workers from making potentially disparaging statements about former employers, including discussing sexual harassment or sexual assault accusations.”
So she’s not allowed to promote her book, but Flatiron, the publisher, is all,
They released a statement on social media including Bluesky supporting the book and the author:
I guess Flatiron can thank Meta’s response for doing their job for them, because now a lot of folks are talking about it.
The Guardian has reported on this book, as have many other outlets. The NYT has reviewed it, with a headline that reads, “Careless People, a memoir by a former Facebook executive, portrays feckless company leaders cozying up to authoritarian regimes.” (Link – NOT a gift link).
Even more amazing to me is that Ron Charles of the Washington Post reported in the Book Club newsletter that Meta had been in contact with him to try to suppress coverage of the book, too:
Meta’s counterassault began even before “Careless People” was released on Tuesday.
Last Friday afternoon, I got my first message from Ryan Daniels, public affairs manager of strategic response at Meta. When I declined his invitation to talk by phone, he wrote back again: “I was wondering if the Washington Post was going to write a review about a book that’s coming out this upcoming week on Meta. Do you have a couple minutes to chat?”
So, I called. Daniels said, “We don’t have the book,” but the company had prepared “preliminary statements” about it. Although he didn’t share those with me, he wrote to me again on Saturday and again on Monday trying to get information about our review plans. (In my 27 years of reviewing and editing newspaper books sections, no company has ever done this with me.)
“In my 27 years of reviewing and editing newspaper books sections, no company has ever done this with me.”
Show Spoiler
Coverage of Ron Charles’ newsletter was also very popular prompting more people to discover Careless People.
Currently it’s a #1 bestseller in “Industries” on the ‘Zon, and #7 overall.
The library hold list is SUBSTANTIAL and it seems many of the libraries I use have only one copy. DC Public Libraries have 7 ebook copies with 292 holds (a 586 day estimated wait) and 5 audiobook copies with 252 holds, an estimated 709 day wait.
Northern California’s Digital Library will either buy more copies or folks will be waiting between 1800-1900 days – or over 5 years. (If you’re curious, that screen cap is from Library Extension.)
That’ll change soon. I salute you librarians, buying more copies!
You can read the prologue through preview on retailers, if you like. Some are sharing some of the more eyebrows-to-my-hairline paragraphs on social media.
Chelsea Devontez, host of the Glamorous Trash podcast, was sharing photographs of the book on Instagram. She reported that the book was ‘buried under NDAs’ in an IG story.
She also shared this page on IG:
The text reads:
…this denial and figure out what in the world he should say about all this, going forward. He can see the crisis in a way Mark can’t.
Over the course of the ten-hour flight to Lima, Elliot patiently explains to Mark all the ways that Facebook basically handed the election to Donald Trump. It’s pretty fucking convincing and pretty fucking concerning.
Facebook embedded staff in Trump’s campaign team in San Antonio for months, alongside Trump campaign programmers, ad copywriters, media buyers, network engineers, and data scientists. A Trump operative named Brad Parscale ran the operation together with the embedded Facebook staff, and he basically invented a new way for a political campaign to shitpost its way to the White House, targeting voters with misinformation, inflammatory posts, and fundraising messages.
Boz, who led the ads team, described it as “the single best digital ad campaign I’ve ever seen from any advertiser. Period.”
I have ordered a copy and I’m sure it’s going to make me shriek so hard people in Oregon will hear it.
And likely I wouldn’t have known about it if Meta hadn’t thrown a tantrum about it. The larger ramifications of disparagement clauses and the private arbitration have yet to be determined, but I hope this book is a bestseller for literal months.
Have you heard about this book? Are you going to be reading it?
