62 pages • 2-hour read
Careless People
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Themes
The Problem of Corporate Greed
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, sexual violence and harassment, and gender discrimination.
The early employees of Facebook had stock options, making a lot of money even before the company went public. Zuckerberg’s wealth was in the tens of billions when Wynn-Williams worked at Facebook. Nevertheless, under his leadership, Facebook single-mindedly pursued a strategy of economic growth with no regard for the consequences. In detailing Facebook’s aggressive growth strategy and lack of ethical checks and balances, Wynn-Williams explores the problem of corporate greed.
When Facebook reached the mark of 1 billion users, its leaders feared that they were “running out of road” and sought new markets (69). Relationships with foreign leaders became more important. With its large population, China was especially attractive to Zuckerberg. Ignoring the human rights abuses by the Chinese government, Zuckerberg developed a three-year plan to get into the Chinese market. To do so, he was willing to facilitate Chinese surveillance and censorship. Wynn-Williams highlights a memo in which Facebook’s management recognized that its “employees w[ould] be responsible for user data responses that could lead to death, torture and incarceration” (306), yet Facebook proceeded anyway, determined to tap into a lucrative and large market.
Wynn-Williams also details how Facebook did everything it could to avoid paying taxes and did not meaningfully invest in the countries it operated in. She recounts how Facebook set up headquarters in Ireland due to a years-long tax-free deal with the Irish government. When the EU brought in new regulations to close this loophole, Facebook responded by trying to make a backroom deal with Ireland, even though the company refused to make any guarantees about remaining in Ireland if, or when, its tax-free deal expired. In dodging taxes in whatever way it can, Wynn-Williams suggests, Facebook hopes to maximize its profits while giving nothing back to society in return.
Additionally, Facebook allowed advertisers to monitor the emotional states of teens to make their pitches more effective. When this came to light, Facebook simply denied the allegation and did not make any changes. The goal, after all, is to maximize profits, regardless of the collateral damage. The failed Internet.org, later Free Basics, was also a gimmick intended to help Facebook’s bottom line even though it would simply doom two thirds of the world’s population to using an inferior version of the Internet.
In recounting Facebook’s priorities and business practices, Wynn-Williams suggests that the problem of corporate greed is of increasing relevance, especially as Facebook’s influence and reach continue to grow. In calling attention to this problem, she implies that the company needs to face meaningful checks on its greed before it is too late.
The Influence of Technology on Politics and People’s Lives
A key theme in the memoir is the influence of technology on politics and people’s lives, for both good and ill. Wynn-Williams sought a position at Facebook after she realized the company’s potential for greater global influence. Wynn-Williams claims that she was an idealist and believed that Facebook had the potential to help people and empower them politically. Later in her tenure at Facebook, she recognized that technology can also hurt and disempower people.
Wynn-Williams’s idealism was partly grounded in her own experience. When an earthquake hit her hometown in New Zealand, she, in the US at the time, had no idea if her family and loved ones were safe. She used Facebook to get information and communicate with her family. The local government was also able to get information to people via Facebook. Wynn-Williams also notes how the Arab Spring protestors often used Facebook to mobilize, which suggested that social media could help nurture pro-democracy movements across the world in various totalitarian or authoritarian countries.
Over the years, managerial decisions at Facebook changed the way this technology influenced politics and people’s lives, creating increasingly negative impacts. In providing advertisers with information to target emotionally distressed teens, the corporation created a means for manipulating and taking advantage of underaged users. They also used data to help advertisers create hyper-targeted ads for other groups, suggesting very invasive data collection. Wynn-Williams notes that while some countries, such as Germany and Brazil, have stronger regulation of social media and better protections for user privacy, Facebook has deliberately tried to evade regulation whenever possible.
The proliferation of hate speech on Facebook was also in part due to the company’s encouragement of inflammatory content. Such content gets more hits, and the cost structure makes such advertisements cheaper. Thus, in democratic countries, Facebook became a channel to allow candidates with divisive messages to succeed. The repercussions of unchecked hate speech then reached extreme levels of depravity in Myanmar, where military leaders used Facebook to stir up hatred against a minority and committed genocide. Wynn-Williams thus emphasizes that a lack of moderation and accountability can lead to real-world violence and increased social fracturing.
Wynn-Williams also suggests that, over the years, Zuckerberg and the top management have become more aware of Facebook’s political influence and keener to manipulate this influence for their own ends. In highlighting how Facebook has become a force not just in business but also in politics, Wynn-Williams suggests that Facebook may be becoming too dangerously powerful for society’s good.
Gender and Power Dynamics in High-Tech Industries
Wynn-Williams presents her experiences at Facebook as a case study of gender and power dynamics in high-tech industries. While she asserts that she first believed in the company’s rhetoric about caring for employees and their shared mission, she soon realized that the company fostered a punishing work culture that exploited women and lower-ranking employees.
Wynn-Williams stresses the disadvantages she faced as a mother of young children during her tenure at Facebook, arguing that the professed feminism of Sherly Sandberg and the management was a mere façade. For example, during Wynn-Williams’s first pregnancy, she was sent to Myanmar to meet with the military junta there, which she implies was an unsuitable task to give to a pregnant woman. In her travels, she experienced excruciating pain because she did not have access to places where she could pump her breasts. When she was heavily pregnant with her second child, Sandberg insisted that she accompany her to Davos, Switzerland. When she was still recovering and weak from the difficult birth of her second child, she was required to travel to India.
Wynn-Williams also shares her experiences with sexual harassment, which she says the company did nothing to address. Kaplan made a series of inappropriate remarks to her, such as asking about the source of her bleeding and telling her to study the “dirty Sanchez” question for her citizenship exam. Additionally, he reviewed her performance when she was on maternity leave, which is not legal. When Wynn-Williams reported the harassment to Shrage the first time, he implied that she would be let go if the situation did not work out. He told her that Kaplan’s behavior would improve if she dropped the complaint, but it did not. Kaplan reduced the size of her job as retribution, and the harassment got worse, with him grinding into her at a work party. Motivated by the Feminist Fight Club, a group of women at Facebook with similar complaints, Wynn-Williams reported the harassment again. This time, a sham investigation cleared Kaplan, and Shrage fired her. Wynn-Williams regards the firing as a retaliatory gesture for her complaints against Kaplan.
The power dynamics at the company also extended beyond gender, creating a toxic work environment that violated the boundaries of lower-ranking employees. Employees were given seeming perks, such as on-site meals, childcare, and laundry service, but only to ensure that they were productive and worked long hours. When a male employee, who was not an engineer or in top management, was arrested in Brazil because Facebook had not cooperated with a court there, Zuckerberg was unconcerned. While the employee was eventually freed, the management did nothing to secure his release, with Wynn-Williams implying that such employees are regarded as unimportant and expendable.
In documenting her experiences at Facebook, Wynn-Williams argues that many major tech companies continue to foster unhealthy work environments, posing special risks to female and lower-ranking employees who are relatively powerless within the company hierarchy. Her expose suggests that tech companies may not always abide by the progressive values that they publicly espouse.
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