Back in the day, I used to criticize television for being too addictive and manipulative, especially to uneducated folks, and I felt TV typically promoted lowest common denominator thinking. Then, undoubtedly, somebody would say, "Well, you can always turn it off."
OK, fine, true, the "you can always turn it off" retort perhaps worked with TV. But you just can't say the same about FANMAG (Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Microsoft, Amazon and Google) because it's impossible to escape these tech giants in everyday living.
The United States government — and the world's governments — desperately need to reign in these behemoths, especially Facebook and Google. Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism (2025) by Sarah Wynn-Williams strangely does not have Facebook in its title, but it is all about the author's seven years at Mark Zuckerberg's company that conveniently refused to consider ethics in its drive for expansion and profit.
Facebook, now called Meta, is a morally reprehensible corporation that willfully targets the vulnerable for engagement and by doing so, has worsened modern living. The corporation contributed to the end of local news media. It basically created selfies and self-centered advertising and echo chambers. It changed business and commerce so much that actual Facebook is passé now, and we live in an engagement-centered Metaverse that is at best amoral, but most likely completely immoral.
Facebook also has changed the outcomes of elections — especially Donald Trump's victory in 2016. Wynn-Williams honestly and skillfully walks us through her experiences at the company as its global public policy director. She confirms things about data and engagement that we suspect and a disregard to morality, and she has first-hand experiences of this. At the end of the day ... Sarah Wynn-Williams is a hero!
It make sense to me that Wynn-Williams originally is from New Zealand because I just don't see an American having the moral fortitude to stand up to Big Tech and stand up for important issues. Honestly, I am not even sure many Americans even care that much about the oligarch system of capitalism and Big Tech's rampant, hostile, unregulated take-over of modern economics, politics and socialization. To me, many Americans appear happy to over-consume, be overweight and live in a chubby haze of ignorance.
Americans, by and large, are on a toxic hamster wheel of constant work and consumption, and they just want to be obsessed by minor issues, celebrities, fear, misinformation or nonsense. Many have zero capacity for system thinking and realize that when FANMAG's market cap is bigger than nearly all countries, except maybe the U.S. and China, we have a real problematic balance of power shift that is not at all moral.
Wynn-Williams' book is masterfully written as it walks us through the glee in which many of us thought Facebook could be to the gross muck it is today. To me, a painful highlight of the book is when she explains how Meta seizes upon teenagers feeling worthless and how it markets to them in those moments.
Other eye-openers are the details on how Facebook literally put people on the ground in the Trump 2016 campaign and market ads of issues important to specific, vulnerable people on both sides. What stood out to me is that the Trump campaign and Facebook also posted constant anti-Hillary Clinton ads to liberals who were in the Bernie Sanders camp and minorities who were undecided.
The book also made me realize how billionaire oligarchs remain in power for lifetimes, while politicians come and go. It also made me see a few positive details and signs of hope, such as how Brazil was on the forefront of tech regulation and how Australia's ban of social media among teenagers should be a global regulation.
Careless People devotes a lot of time to Zuckerberg's goal to make China a client of users. That never happened, but China remains the second most lucrative market to Meta because of its ads. A quick aside: Why are people so worried about the Chinese government having access to data when the tech companies already have it and are using it against us with constant guerrilla engagement strategies and marketing?
Facebook started as a way to connect with friends, and it soon contorted to political marketing and product marketing without any ethics behind it. Engagement, engagement, engagement. We owe it to ourselves to stay away from the toxic site.
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