The Book I Want Mark Zuckerberg to Read
When did liberals become so afraid of confrontation?
When I first heard of Careless People, it was marketed as “the book Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t want you to read.” This was certainly a catchy hook for the book, which turned out to be a memoir about author Sarah Wynn-Williams’ time as a Facebook executive.1 However, I’m not convinced that this description was accurate to the story we got.
Careless People reads like a modern retelling of Paradise Lost where this once great amazing company of Facebook and its creator Mark Zuckerberg grow too arrogant and prideful and as a result, fall from grace. That said, I’m not convinced Zuckerberg changed all that much over the course of the book.
Instead, it seems to me, Wynn-Williams undergoes a more significant change as she becomes increasingly disillusioned with Zuckerberg and his Facebook enterprise.
As the story unfolds, this disillusionment creeps in and seems to influence Wynn-Williams’ approach to Facebook more than she realizes, much to all of our detriment.
Carpe Diem
Throughout the book and especially in the beginning, Sarah shares several enthralling stories of her exciting experiences before and early into her days at Facebook. In many cases, Wynn-Williams truly seizes the day and shoots her shot. To me, that’s what makes her story so compelling. She wanted something. She went after it. She got it.2
That said, my frustration grew with the chapter numbers due to the fact that she had this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shape the policies of Facebook, one of the biggest and most impactful companies in the world, yet so often she seems to spend her time feeling slighted by various small and big challenges she encounters.
It’s not that her irritation and resentment are unwarranted. It’s that they’re unhelpful in advancing her goals.3 In this sense, she squanders many chances to make Facebook a better company and to reduce harm in measurable ways.4 From what I gather, this is due to a belief that she’s morally superior to Zuckerberg and the other C-Suite Execs.
The thing is, this sense of moral superiority is a mirage, a myth, a lie our brains tell us when we want to wash our hands of our complicity in harmful institutions.5
The reality is we are all responsible. How much responsibility we bear comes down to how much power and capacity we have (From each according to his ability to each according to his need). Wynn-Williams seems to have had a great deal of both.6
The United Nations of Facebook
Here’s an illustrative story to make my point. About halfway through the book, Wynn-Williams relays an anecdote about Mark Zuckerberg speaking at the UN. When it comes time for him to speak, he goes on stage and begins his remarks to the crowd when a pre-recorded video of him giving the same speech begins playing simultaneously.7 Mark stops speaking and stands there awkwardly until it’s done.
When he leaves the stage, Wynn-Williams runs to him in a panic wondering what went wrong and suggesting she or someone should have done something differently. Mark reassures her repeatedly and takes ownership over the ordeal since, as he noted, if he was good at speaking it wouldn’t have been a big deal and he needs to work on that skill.
It seems like a good moment. Zuckerberg took accountability and responsibiliy. He’s the boss, so the buck ought to stop with him.8
Internet.org
Shortly thereafter, Zuckerberg wants to promote what they were calling “internet.org” which will supposedly bring the internet to millions of people in refugee camps and/or in the global south.9 According to Wynn-Williams, her idealistic view of Facebook soured around this time due to his handling of internet.org.10
What frustrates me here is that throughout the entirety of the book Wynn-Williams portrays her interactions with Facebook folks as her alerting them to something that was, for the most part, not even on their radar. Once she’s done this, they might dismiss her initially, but not too soon before long, they’re calling her up, asking her for more information and for her opinion on things, and giving her a seat at the table.
Then, once she has a seat at the table, it seems she doesn’t want it anymore.11 She doesn’t make the most of it, which is to say at some point she stops trying to push Zuckerberg and Co. to do better.12 She resigns herself to the belief that he’s just the bad guy, which is arguably surprising given their relationship growing closer.
My takeaway in light of this development and America’s calcifying political divide is this: Sometimes it’s not what you say, nor how you say it, but that you say it at all.
Reflection
I liked the book and would recommend it! It humanized Mark Zuckerberg and some other top dogs at Facebook without excusing their actions. It was captivating, well-written, and well-paced. It made me care about seemingly boring topics, like net neutrality— a phrase I haven’t heard in a decade— and content moderation because it captured the real-world consequences of these abstract techy things.
At the same time, I found myself pausing in frustration many times. How much of Wynn-Williams’ biting commentary did she share with Zuckerberg and Sandberg?
In my opinion, based on her accounts of events, it seems not that much and ultimately, not enough.13 I wonder, though, would things have gone differently if Wynn-Williams didn’t filter as much of her perfectly reasonable criticism? Would Mark Zuckerberg be doing what he’s doing nowadays?
It’s impossible to truly answer this question— although if anyone could answer it, it’d be Mark Zuckerberg (Speaking of whom, I hope he reads this book! At the very least, maybe he can read my review of it).
The Need for a Confrontational Liberalism
I think we really do ourselves and each other a disservice when we don’t give honest critical feedback. Although it’s often hard to hear, and maybe even more often hard to give, it’s so essential to individual and communal growth as humans.14
If we believe in democracy, then we must accept the reality that we may need to persuade people who don’t automatically agree with us. We also must accept the reality that someone seeing something differently than us doesn’t automatically make them a bad person.15 It just makes them a person who sees things differently than us.16
To clarify, publicly shaming someone on social media sites like Facebook, in the media, in the proverbial town square, or even in a book, is quite diffferent from confronting them and communicating with them directly.
In my humble opinion, we ought to go with confrontation over shaming whenever possible, and I wish Wynn-Williams did that a bit more here.
It seems so many of us today shame one another rather than seeking to connect. This corrosive tendency deepens divides and worsens polarization.17
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What do you think?
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Obligatory Disclaimer: all views expressed here are my own personal views and do not represent the views of my employer nor those of the U.S. government.
Thank you to Sarah Wynn-Williams for the thrilling, emotionally resonant read!
Thank you for reading!
For an audio version of this post that includes footnotes, see the embedded audio recording at the top of the footnotes below.
Footnotes & Asides
Audio recording including footnotes:
For context, Facebook, now called Meta, is a very popular and influential social media platform; I will be calling it Facebook throughout this article. Mark Zuckerberg is the founder and CEO of Facebook. Sheryl Sandberg was the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Facebook until August 2022. Sarah Wynn-Williams was Facebook’s Director of Public Policy.
even if not always in the exact manner or timeframe she would’ve wanted.
which matters to me since I overwhelmingly agree with her goals and assessment of issues, at least as she recounts them.
Of course, this perception could be due to the fact that she’s narrating the story which therefore includes her inner monologue, and maybe I’m miscalculating the extent to which she dwelled on these things.
In case it needs said, I’m not indicting Wynn-Williams. My critique is not personal. It’s not about her; it’s about all of us— myself very much included. My point is that operating out of resentment is not a neutral act, nor is it a righteous one. We do live in a society, and our actions and inactions directly affect other people.
Yes, she’s an outsider in that she’s from New Zealand and is a woman who doesn’t want to give up her personal life for the sake of the company, which she shouldn’t have to do. Still, she’s also— from what I can tell— an upwardly mobile white woman with a prestigious resume that includes working at an embassy, being a lawyer, and rubbing elbows with various important people.
Prior to his speech, there had been internal debate within Facebook as to whether he should speak live or submit a pre-recorded video. It’s decided he’ll speak, though it seems not everyone got the memo. There’s also some politics around where in the speaking line-up he’ll be, though that appears to have been resolved. This story can be found in chapter 25.
Wynn-Williams seemed surprised or caught off guard by this, which is understandable since it was maybe out of character for him. Regardless, we ought to encourage this kind of behavior! Especially from multibillionaires.
I think Wynn-Williams initial disapproval of Zuckerberg’s approach concerns his claim that internet.org will provide the internet to people in refugee camps, which she thinks he doesn’t actually intend to do. Then, internet.org gets rebranded and Facebook goes up against the governments of India and Brazil, among others.
Now, we’re in chapter 26 of the book, or maybe still chapter 25. For the sake of transparency, I’d like to note I have not yet finished the book. I paused a few chapters after these ones slightly out of frustration but mostly out of lack of time.
I don’t fault her for feeling that way. At the same time, I’m not overcome with grief for her that she’s oh so unfortunate to be in this position. I’m confused why she’s so burdened by it all. I’m reminded of the Taylor Swift song “Champagne Problems,” a great song by the way.
She disengages and decides her solution will be to carry out Facebook’s policies but with less enthusiasm than before. She attributes her adoption, to some degree, of this go-along-to-get-along attitude to very real considerations, like being pregnant at a company that seems like they’ll punish you for it and job and financial security in general. Still, I wonder how much money she was making and if she didn’t have other options? Perhaps only she can say, yet it remains the case that there’ll always be a reason not to do something and to stand up for what’s right and/or stand against something really bad. We all, just like Sarah, are tasked with asking ourselves where we would draw the line, how we would respond if we were in her shoes. I don’t have the answer, and I don’t blame her for her decisions per se, but it’s just something to think about.
That’s okay, of course. Most of us have a filter, and most everyone needs one.
That’s my current opinion anyway, but I’m more than open to hearing I’m wrong. :)
In the book, Sarah presents the net neutrality fight as though it is so obvious that her opinion is the right one, that being that giving people access to the internet with encryption, content-moderated forums, and other safeguards is an absolute imperative. However, one can certainly make the case for Zuckerberg’s opinion, which seems to be that providing something is better than nothing. That is not to say that Sarah’s opinion is wrong or right; it’s to say that the subject matter is more complicated than she makes it out to be. More importantly, Mark disagreeing with her on policy doesn’t in itself make his motives malicious, nefarious, or self serving.
Stay tuned for a future piece on how MAGA voters are not our enemies!
It’s made worse by the fact that many people seem to genuinely think this is the right way to approach conflict. I’ll say it again. I’m not shaming anyone for this, especially as I do it too (I loathe conflict). Still, I’m merely inviting anyone reading this to consider, if you haven’t already, that this communication dynamic is not the path forward.
Thanks for the education! I haven’t read the book but am now intrigued.