The Word Of Jeff

If you were on Facebook, are now on Facebook, or are thinking about joining Facebook in the future, then “Careless People” by Sarah Wynn-Williams is a book you should read if you want to see what Zuckerberg and his top leaders really have in mind for their “Meta-verse” and your life.

The book is subtitled “A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed and Lost Idealism” and it is spot-on in that regard. Remember when Facebook was just family and friends connecting with one another and sharing photos and life events with each other? Those were the days, eh?

Zuckerberg’ s initial frat-boy “Hot or Not?” foray at Harvard had morphed into what seemed to be a real desire to simply connect people at the beginning of what we know as Facebook. But it seems that as the power and money that could be amassed by trading people’s data was discovered and grew, so did his lust for more and more…to be obtained by any means necessary, including sharing that personal data with Communist Chinese officials. All to expand the size and reach of Facebook and its other Meta platforms like Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads and Messenger.

The book’s title comes from “The Great Gatsby” where F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

While Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg were apparently not romantically involved, they were the same as Tom and Daisy in regard to the quote above. They both became morally and ethically bankrupt in order to hold on to and grow the reach of Facebook and its other Meta platforms. Wynn-Williams gives us insight into the conversations that took place regarding Facebook’s influence in handing the 2016 U.S. Presidential election to Donald Trump because they would not manage propaganda content on the platform and even embedded Trump campaign workers in their offices.

Wynn-Williams also shows us the metamorphosis of Zuckerberg from a “let’s connect people” idealist to an egotistical, drunk on power man who would even lie to congress during hearings about sharing Facebook data with China.

Today, he will still do whatever is necessary to stay in the good graces of those in power, as evidenced in this article from Forbes in January of this year.

Wynn-Williams shares how when her immediate supervisor was replaced by a man, Joel Kaplan, who was Sheryl Sandberg’s ex boyfriend, and that Kaplan began sexually harassing her and forcing her to work while on maternity leave after her second child’s birth almost killed her. When she tried to report the behavior to Kaplan’s supervisor and HR, nothing was done.

Unless you count firing her as nothing.

I completely left all Meta platforms a couple of months before the release of this book because of the kinds of things Wynn-Williams confirms about Zuckerberg and his company that I had already seen. Although I did not doubt my decision, I am glad go know my actions were justified. I wish I had listened to friends of mine earlier when they shared their concerns about the platform.

It IS too bad, because Facebook made it easy to stay connected with family and friends around the country and the world. I miss that. But it’s tendency to allow any kind of propaganda, hate speech, and racist behavior turned it into a toxic social media platform whose main purpose is to sell data about its members and allow forces of evil to divide them. I don’t miss that.

“Careless People” by Sarah Wynn-Williams is a fascinating look inside the leadership of Meta/Facebook and it’s evolution from a philosophy of connecting people to one of using the data of, and manipulating the feelings of, those same people.

Highly recommended.