‘Careless People’ – How a New Zealand Lawyer Exposed Facebook’s Darkest Secrets

John Bowie, LawFuel publisher

Kiwi lawyer Sarah Wynn-Williams is very much in the red chair at present – sitting in the hot seat with a book about the increasingly hot-button issues involving the new nerdyverse in which we now live seemingly run by tech billionaires.

Wynn-Williams’ book, ‘Careless People’ has already created a firestorm of criticism, akin to a major Net outage, and made the former Silicon Valley high flier persona non grata in the Valley.

Coming at a time when the tech magnates like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos are busy genuflecting before the Trump administration, while Elon Musk seems to occupy Donald Trump’s side chair in the Oval Office, her book has shown Wynn-Williams to achieve a disrupter status all on her own.

“Careless People” is the scorching memoir that Mark Zuckerberg would prefer you didn’t read, but also throws a laser light on other operators in the tech industry that dominates the world of politics, power and privacy.

The book’s title stems from Tom and Daisy in The Great Gatsby, referencing Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, together painted as the techno-oligarchs dominating the political and media landscape along with their cohort of multi-billionaire fellow travellers.

“There were no adults in the room,” Wynn-Williams says about her six years at Facebook. “These are people who have assumed a lot of power, thinking none of the rules apply to them.”

From Wellington to Menlo Park

Before becoming Facebook’s global public policy director, Wynn-Williams built her credentials on solid legal and diplomatic foundations.

A graduate of the University of Canterbury with a BA in political science and Victoria University with a Master of Laws, she first cut her teeth as a policy adviser in the New Zealand government focusing on environmental and security issues.

Her trajectory shifted when she served as a diplomat at the New Zealand embassy in Washington, D.C. from 2007 to 2011. That posting would prove pivotal when Facebook came calling—offering her a front-row seat to what would become the most influential tech company in modern history.

Careless People maps her journey from idealistic recruit to disillusioned departee. At 45, she is five years older than Zuckerberg. Her book describes the Facebook world as being less a transparent corporate environment and more an echo chamber where accountability goes to die.

“People say ‘Mark and Sheryl are in a bubble,’ but that implies it’s transparent, that they can see the real world. This bubble is opaque—you can’t see outside the private jet,” she explains, describing her exit from the company in terms that suggest leaving a cult.

Her depiction of Zuckerberg is particularly unflattering: “a cross between a truculent teen and a toddler” she told The Times in a recent article about the expose and the lawyer.

Zuckerberg, she says, refuses to get up before midday even for prime ministerial meetings, while his sycophantic colleagues deliberately lose board games to him.

The Legal Aftermath

Meta wasted no time responding to her allegations. The company secured a temporary injunction from a US arbitrator preventing Wynn-Williams from further promoting the book, though this didn’t stop Macmillan from proceeding with UK publication.

By Friday night, the book had climbed to No. 4 on Amazon’s print bestseller list.

The legal battle illuminates the stark power imbalance between tech giants and their former employees. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone stated, “This ruling confirms that Sarah Wynn-Williams’ misleading and defamatory book should never have seen the light of day.”

The company claims she was dismissed in 2017 due to “poor performance and toxic conduct,” allegations Wynn-Williams disputes.

The China Connection

For legal professionals, Wynn-Williams’ allegations about Facebook’s dealings with authoritarian regimes raise serious ethical questions. She claims Zuckerberg’s “white whale” was always China’s 1.4 billion potential users.

“To try to access the Chinese market, Facebook guaranteed it would promote social order, and gave Chinese engineers detailed explanations of how its facial-recognition function works,” she alleges.

“Facebook also essentially offered to help the Communist Party censor viral posts, and the government provided the company with a blacklist.”

Despite Meta’s claims since 2019 that it doesn’t operate in China, Wynn-Williams notes that the company still made $US23 billion in revenue last year from China-based firms advertising on its platforms.

Perhaps most damning are Wynn-Williams’ assertions about Facebook’s role in the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, where about 25,000 were killed by military and nationalist forces.

“Facebook is so ubiquitous in Myanmar that people think it is the entire internet,” she points out. “It’s no surprise that the worst outcome happened in the place that had the most extreme take-up of Facebook.” Meta has since acknowledged it was “too slow to act” on abuse in its Myanmar services.

The Legal Perspective

Wynn-Williams’ legal training and diplomatic experience provided her unique insight into the operations of one of the world’s most influential companies—and ultimately compelled her to speak out.

“I had to ask myself: who was my silence benefiting?” she says. “I wouldn’t put myself through this if it didn’t matter.”

The AI Warning

After leaving Facebook, Wynn-Williams worked on an international AI initiative. She argues that we must learn from social media’s mistakes as we enter the next technological revolution.

“AI is being integrated into weapons,” she says. “We can’t just blindly wander into this next era. You think social media has turned out with some issues? This is on another level.”

Lawyers, already grappling with the multifarious benefits and threats from AI apps, see the consequential nature of technology and law connecting – colliding, even.

The stakes for companies like Meta, and the resources they will deploy to protect their cyber assets, are astronomical.

Whatever may be thought of the startling and often scary revelations in ‘Careless People’, the book and its account of life in the corporate metaverse have ignited key conversations around corporate accountability that the netizens in Silicon Valley and their outliers cannot afford to ignore.

Nor can we.