Careless people A cautionary tale of power, greed, and lost idealism

Meta is a cesspool of petty tyranny and moral callousness, according to this explosive tell-all. Wynn-Williams recaps her seven years as Facebook's manager of global public policy, which entailed dealing with foreign governments on censorship, regulation, and other hot-button issues, as well as ensuring executives didn't make fools of themselves on the world stage (she once scrambled to prevent CEO Mark Zuckerberg from following Big Bird at the Global Citizen Festival). More seriously, Wynn-Williams describes how her idealistic enthusiasm for connecting the world soured as she witnessed the company collaborate with the 2016 Trump campaign to target users with political ads; bow to the Chinese Communist Party's demands to censor criticism; and refuse to take action when Myanmar's military used Facebook to spread disinformation that fueled the ethnic cleansing of the country's Rohingya minority. She hangs a witty picaresque of Facebook life around colorful profiles of its executives--Zuckerberg is "smaller, paler, and... angrier than I anticipated"--while taking aim at rampant overwork and sexual harassment at the company, claiming that she was forced by former COO Sheryl Sandberg to draw up talking points for a meeting while in labor with her first child and was fired after complaining about her boss Joel Kaplan's sexually charged comments. The result is a withering takedown of Facebook's hypocrisy. (Mar.)

An insider's account of some very bad goings-on at Facebook/Meta. Former New Zealand diplomat Wynn-Williams talked her way into an ambassadorial job of sorts at Facebook on the grounds that it was likely to become a political giant. She landed in 2011, thinking that the politics she had in mind would be for the good and that part of her job would be to keep the tech behemoth independent: "Information is power. At some point, governments would want to control it." Warning signs otherwise were there from the start: An outwardly apolitical Mark Zuckerberg decides that he wants to be seated next to Raúl Castro at a state dinner. (He flees when rebuffed by not just the Cuban leader but by Canada's prime minister.) A German delegation in turn is spurned when it asks for content mediation to curb hate speech: "We failed when it mattered," Wynn-Williams writes. "With the country we most needed to win over." Small wonder, she adds, that Germany opened an investigation on Facebook, which, jumping ahead in her narrative, explains why a company board member proposed courting far-right actors such as MAGA and Germany's AfD--the thought being that less oversight over those who cozy up to them means more profit. China is the grand curiosity: "The mission of the company--making the world more open and connected--is the exact opposite of what the Chinese Communist Party wants, particularly under President Xi Jinping," she writes at a time when the company is going hammer and tongs for market there. And now, the author says, Facebook is "dangling the possibility that it'll give China special access to users' data." Among all this intrigue, Wynn-Williams' accusation of some spectacularly louche and horndoggish behavior among the top brass seems an afterthought, but that gossipy element is there, giving a human touch to "these people and their lethal carelessness." Book: thumbs-up. Subject: frown emoji. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.