Careless People

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual violence and harassment and gender discrimination.

As the author, Wynn-Williams offers a memoir of her experiences as the head of global public policy at Facebook from 2011 to 2017. Initially, she had to convince Facebook to create this position. A native of New Zealand, Wynn-Williams saw the potential global influence of Facebook early. She believed that Facebook had the potential to transform global politics for the better, connecting people during natural disasters and empowering people politically and socially. Yet she chronicles a change among Facebook’s top management from apathy to global engagement solely for the purposes of economic growth.

At key junctures, management disregarded The Influence of Technology on Politics and People’s Lives and chose strategies that enhanced economic growth. For example, management was willing to allow China to use its platform for censorship and surveillance. As a result, Facebook came to have a dystopian influence on global and national politics. By titling the work Careless People, Wynn-Williams encourages readers to draw an analogy between Zuckerberg and Sandberg, the top leaders at Facebook, and Tom and Daisy Buchanan from