I read Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams on Feb 4th, 2026

If the book, An Ugly Truth provided an outsider’s view on Facebook, then Sarah Wynn-Williams’s new book, Careless People portrayed a firsthand view in the front row.

Welcome to the rocket ship

I was quite amazed how persistent Sarah pursued the non-existent role in Facebook simply due to her strong belief that the Facebook was a revolutional force to change the world and she wanted to be part of it. She found a common friend of Marne Levine, Ed Luce for introduction, and managed to pitch for the non-exising role with several email follow up. She finally landed a job as Manager of Global Public Policy after several rejections.

Her first job was to accommodate the visits of head of states to Facebook’s campus. Mark Zuckerburg was clearly not ready for the political spotlight. He was arrogant, ignorant and awkward in the beginning, then grew interest in the political activities. The highlight of the change is in Zuckerburg’s Asia visit, he jumped on the bandwagon with the Indonesia president-elect Jokowi to meet gently mobbed public in the slums. It was a nightmare for the staff, but Zuckerburg was really pumped.

Lady McMugget

The author also shed some lights on the #2 figure, Sheryl Sandburg, who was portrayed as a charming, warm feminist to aspire women to lean in. This did not stop Sandburg to flex her muscle in several scenarios. That is expected, right? These prominent political figures and corporation executives have fought all the way up ruthlessly with rubbles behind, how could be possible they are nice and benevolent?

Lean In was published in March 2013, and became a cultural phenomena to empower professional women for leadership. Though the author claimed that Sandburg take the “Strict rules, selective enforced and the baseline of ever-present fear ” approach to push the limit for her direct reports. Does this ring a bell? All dictators take this approach, and pardon the supporters’ corruption as awards.

The line between corporation work and personal benefit blurred when Sandburg requested Facebook employees to volunteer for events, or even hijack the meeting with Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe for book promotion. It was also speculated that this was one factors contributing to Sandburg’s step down on 2024.

Red flag

China was Facebook’s second largest market, accouting for $5B annual revenue on 2014 despite Facebook was banned in China. Facebook collaborated with Hony Capital for the code name Jupiter to store the Chinese user data in the mainland China, and enable the authority to review, purge, and block access of the content. Facebook would deploy Points of Presence(PoP) servers in China to speed the up the experience, which inevitably expose the non-Chinese user data to the Chinese government’s jurisdiction.

Contrary to the zeal in China, the attitude toward the Myanmar underscored the carelessness of the leadership. Thanks to the internet.org, Facebook was the de facto internet in Myanmar, but there were only two contracted content moderators in Dublin as it was not a priority in the SEA. The Burmese language in Facebook was not rendered in unicode due to the technical debt. Unofficial apps were popular in the marketplace, often lacked tools to report abuse. The militant buddhist groups had organized no less than seven hundred to spread misinformation and hate on Facebook. The succeeding UN investigation pointed out the lack of content moderation played a “determined role” in the Rohingya genocide.

King maker

In 2014, Joel Kaplan, a senior Republican political advisor, replaced Marne Levine as Facebook’s vice president of global public policy. In 2016, Facebook embedded staff in Thump’s campaign team for months, led by Brad Parscale. Trump’s team massed a database, named Project Alamo with profiles of over 220 million Americans. Combined with Facebook’s custom attributes, they managed to acutely target voters with misinformation, inflammatory posts, and fundraising messages. Trump campaign was regularly top advertiser globally, and Facebook was the largest source of cash of Trump’s campaign.

That might change Zuckerburg’s perspective: the political figures come and go while he had the playbook and tools. He later committed to visit 50 states of US in 2017, starting from the swing states.

Closing thoughts

I read the story of flop of Internet.org, the catastrophe in Myanmar from An Ugly Truth and news reports, but Sarah’s book added more color to Zuckerbug, Sandburg: they were extremely wealthy and powerful, and surrounded by an entourage. Maybe they were so detached that they simply could not resonate with regular people? It was an irony that they were operating a social network focusing on the emotions and connection.