[Book Club] Careless People
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism
Sarah Wynn-Williams
Three-Sentence Summary
A 5-star read from Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former Facebook (now Meta) global public policy, offering a critical insider’s view on the company’s internal culture and ethical failure. The book claims Facebook put profits or personal interests first, failed to handle major crises. Though Meta and Mark Zuckerberg tried to block the book's release, it only made this book more popular.
Who is this book for?
Ever wondered the following question?
Is my data safe on social media or with any tech company as they advocate?
Am I purposefully targeted (potentially wrongfully) on social media through ads and misinformation?
Does social media control what I see and what I read?
How to understand robot-like behavior of Mark Zuckerberg on court?
Do people still can get away from justice after collective or indirectly creating damage even under e.g., Nuremberg Principles (hide behind their job titles when their actions (or inactions) help cause real-world harm)?
Is tech giant any different than traditional big companies like they advertised about transparency, fairness, equality?
Should I trust by default the person’s dignity and value when they wrote books about those topics?
Does social media and technology more transparent and objective comparing to traditional press?
Major Concepts
Well, I will not summary the concepts or thesis of this brilliant and shocking book. Every condensed sentences will only make the vivid and fact-full material dry and distant. As we all have theories or have ever suspected the level of morals or ethicals of tech giants, only examples and facts with details can concretely support those ideas. By the way, this is also how story shapes the world we live in. Now, it is your turn to choose at which level to believe about Facebook.
Here are some exerts.
Elliot walks Mark through all the ways that Facebook and Parscale’s combined team microtargeted users and tweaked ads for maximum engagement, using data tools we designed for commercial advertisers. The way I understand it, Trump’s campaign had amassed a database, named Project Alamo, with profiles of over 220 million people in America. It charted all sorts of online and offline behavior, including gun registration, voter registration, credit card and shopping histories, what websites they visit, what car they drive, where they live, and the last time they voted. The campaign used Facebook’s “Custom Audiences from Custom Lists” to match people in that database with their Facebook profiles. Then Facebook’s “Lookalike Audiences” algorithm found people on Facebook with “common qualities” that “look like” those of known Trump supporters. So if Trump supporters liked, for example, a certain kind of pickup truck, the tool would find other people who liked pickup trucks but were not yet committed voters to show the ads to.
In April 2017, a confidential document is leaked that reveals Facebook is offering advertisers the opportunity to target thirteen-to-seventeen-year-olds across its platforms, including Instagram, during moments of psychological vulnerability when they feel “worthless,” “insecure,” “stressed,” “defeated,” “anxious,” “stupid,” “useless,” and “like a failure.” Or to target them when they’re worried about their bodies and thinking of losing weight. Basically, when a teen is in a fragile emotional state.
Facebook does work for a beauty product company tracking when thirteen-to-seventeen-year-old girls delete selfies, so it can serve a beauty ad to them at that moment.
“I always believe that when companies and people have to say things over and over it is because they want them to be true but they are not. When I was at McKinsey, they always said they were “non-hierarchical” because they were so hierarchical. Google is “not political.” One of our favorite candidates who almost joined us was ‘highly ethical.’
So that’s obviously complicated.”
Thank you friends, who pushed me update after such a long break.