Top 10 Insane Moments from the Facebook Memoir
Meta tried to bury this book. Here’s why they’re panicking.
Sarah Wynn-Williams’ Careless People isn’t just a tell-all—it’s a tell-everything-you-thought-you-knew-about-tech-was-a-lie. It’s a high-voltage exposé that drags Meta (formerly Facebook) out from behind its glass-walled campuses and into the fluorescent light of accountability.
This is not a memoir of humble lessons learned in the glow of IPO stock options. It’s a firebomb hurled into the heart of Silicon Valley myth-making, written by someone who spent years on the inside watching ethics get run over by engagement metrics.
Wynn-Williams was Facebook’s former global public policy director—an ex-diplomat who walked into Menlo Park believing she was helping to connect the world.
What she found instead was a profit-maximizing empire fueled by ego, recklessness, and algorithmic ruthlessness. From near-genocidal negligence to executives behaving like tech cult royalty, the book reads like a hybrid of Bad Blood, House of Cards, and Black Mirror.
Meta tried to suppress Careless People with emergency legal action. They should be worried. Here’s why.
➊⎯ Sheryl Sandberg Wanted to Normalize Organ Donation—By Hypothetically Smuggling a Kidney in Her Handbag
Let’s start with one of the most unhinged quotes ever uttered in a corporate strategy meeting.
In one of Facebook’s early international “do-gooder” initiatives, Sheryl Sandberg reportedly pushed for a global organ donation campaign. The problem? Facebook had no business playing registrar, let alone navigating the deeply complex and culturally sensitive terrain of global organ donation.
When Wynn-Williams and her team flagged the potential for black market organ trafficking and legal complications, Sandberg—frustrated that the initiative wasn’t bolder—allegedly shot back with:
“So you’re telling me that if my four-year-old was dying and the only thing that would save her was a new kidney, that I couldn’t fly to Mexico and get one and put it in my handbag?”
Yes, she really said that. According to Wynn-Williams, she had to carefully explain, as one would to a child about why you can’t just “borrow” a puppy from a stranger, that no, you cannot traffic a kidney across borders in your carry-on.
In the end, Facebook scaled back the initiative—though Sandberg still managed to make “registered organ donor” a Facebook life event, wedged right between “Got married” and “Moved to Denver.”
Because apparently, nothing says civic engagement like optimizing your News Feed for kidney availability.
➋⎯ Zuckerberg Accused Her of Cheating at Settlers of Catan—Mid-Flight, Mid-Ego Trip
Picture this: a private jet slicing through the sky, a CEO worth $100 billion locked in a battle of wits over Settlers of Catan with one of his senior female executives.
Wynn-Williams wins. Twice. Zuckerberg doesn’t take it well.
Instead of a congratulatory nod or even a chuckle, Zuck allegedly accuses her of cheating. Not once, but twice. And when she tries to show him the better strategy moves he could have made, the board game beef escalates into something deeper:
“You’re so used to being the winner who takes all,” she tells him.
This wasn’t just about a board game. It was about Facebook’s entire worldview: winner-takes-all, regardless of the damage left behind. And the scary part is he didn’t even seem to realize it.
➌⎯ Joel Kaplan Wanted to Funnel Money to Foreign Politicians—Because Apparently, Bribery Wasn’t on His Radar
Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s VP of Global Policy and former Bush administration official, is painted in the book as an embodiment of entitled ignorance.
While expanding Facebook’s political ad business abroad, he allegedly floated the idea of setting up PACs—political action committees—in other countries to court influence. Wynn-Williams had to explain that this wasn’t just unethical—it was flat-out illegal under most international election laws.
Kaplan’s response?
“We need to get moving on channeling money to our key allies offshore, you know, our most influential politicians in other countries.”
Again, she had to remind him: That’s bribery. Also, yes, Taiwan is an island. And no, Latin America is not a single country.
This is the man who helped shape Facebook’s global political strategy.
Sleep tight.
➍⎯ Sandberg Invited Female Employees to Her Bed on Her Private Jet—Repeatedly
Wynn-Williams recounts multiple disturbing encounters with Sandberg on international flights, where the COO allegedly invited her—and other women—to lie down with her in the jet’s private bedroom.
One such moment followed an exhausting conference in Davos. While still in pajamas, Sandberg reportedly asked Wynn-Williams—more than once—to “come to bed” and insisted that she relax with her in the jet’s only sleeping quarters. Wynn-Williams declined.
When the plane landed, Sandberg allegedly told her: “You should have got into the bed.”
Let’s call this what it is: a serious breach of professional boundaries.
It wasn’t just awkward. It was coercive, wrapped in a #GirlBoss power dynamic that made it difficult to push back without consequence.
Lean in? Sure. But maybe not into the executive’s bed.
➎⎯ Zuckerberg Drafted a “Heartwarming” Post Defending an Exec Arrested in a Drug Case
In 2016, a Facebook VP in Brazil, Diego Dzodan, was arrested after WhatsApp (owned by Facebook) refused to turn over encrypted messages tied to a drug trafficking investigation.
What did Zuckerberg do?
According to Wynn-Williams, he drafted a Facebook post calling the arrest a “heartwarming” moment of community defense, praising Dzodan for protecting user privacy—even though the man was shielding violent criminal networks and undermining a judicial investigation.
His comms team begged him not to post it, pointing out it would sabotage their legal defense.
He never posted it. But the fact that it got that far tells you everything.
➏⎯ Facebook Tracked When Teen Girls Deleted Selfies—Then Sold That Pain to Advertisers
This is the part where it stops being farce and becomes deeply sinister.
According to Wynn-Williams, internal Facebook documents boasted about the ability to micro-target teens—especially 13-to-17-year-old girls—when they were in emotionally fragile states.
Think: “stressed,” “anxious,” “worthless,” or “like a failure.”
Example: Facebook tracked when teen girls deleted their selfies, then allowed advertisers to swoop in with a beauty product ad at that exact moment.
Facebook called this “opportunistic targeting.”
The rest of us call it psychological exploitation. And the kicker is no meaningful safeguards were ever implemented to stop it.
➐⎯ Facebook Fueled a Genocide in Myanmar—Then Looked the Other Way
Wynn-Williams helped broker Facebook’s entry into Myanmar while she was pregnant, believing it would empower a democratic future.
Instead, it lit the match for a human rights disaster.
Without any Burmese language content moderation, without community standards in the local language, and with only one contractor managing extremist content, Facebook became a viral breeding ground for anti-Muslim hate speech targeting the Rohingya minority.
The result? Ethnic cleansing. Mass killings. 700,000 Rohingya forced to flee the country.
The UN later cited Facebook as a key factor in the atrocities (Source: BBC).
And yet, Wynn-Williams says Meta’s leadership blocked efforts to address it in real-time. They ignored the warnings.
Because fixing it wasn’t the priority. Growth was.
➑⎯ A Woman Had a Seizure in the Office—And Her Boss Didn’t Look Up
This might be the most chilling example of Facebook’s culture in Careless People.
Wynn-Williams describes hearing a crash, running over, and finding a woman convulsing on the floor—bleeding from her face.
Employees nearby didn’t move or help. And her manager? Glanced up and said, “She’s just a contractor. Her contract’s coming to an end.”
Like she was an expired license key. Like she wasn’t human.
This isn’t dystopian fiction. This is the real, lived culture inside one of the most powerful companies on earth.
➒⎯ Facebook Used Shell Companies to Secretly Launch Apps in China
Despite being officially banned in China, Facebook still wanted in. Badly.
According to internal documents, the company quietly released apps through fake shell companies—bypassing government scrutiny. Employees were warned that complying with future data requests from Chinese authorities could result in “death, torture, or incarceration” of users.
But hey, the Chinese market is huge, right?
Eventually, The New York Times exposed the scheme, and the Chinese regulators pulled the plug. But the fact that Facebook was willing to risk literal life and death for market share?
Chilling. And very on-brand.
①⓪⎯ She Reported Harassment, Went on Maternity Leave, and Came Back to a Pink Slip
Wynn-Williams says she endured invasive, sexist harassment at the hands of her boss Joel Kaplan—comments about her appearance, questions about her breastfeeding, inappropriate behavior at company events.
She filed a complaint. Meta investigated. He was cleared.
Then, while recovering from a high-risk birth that left her in a coma, she received a performance review citing that she wasn’t “responsive enough.”
When she returned to work she was immediately fired and escorted out by security.
Because at Facebook, care was a liability.
And speaking up meant you were next.
This Isn’t Just a Story About Facebook—It’s a Blueprint for How Power Breaks the World
Careless People isn’t just a memoir. It’s a morality play. A corporate Greek tragedy with algorithms instead of oracles and quarterly earnings instead of gods.
Sarah Wynn-Williams doesn’t just tell us how Facebook fell short—she shows us how the very design of the platform, its culture, and its leadership incubated crisis after crisis. Not by accident. Not by oversight. But by strategy.
Because what she describes isn’t failure—it’s infrastructure. A machine built to scale profits at the expense of human lives.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t about a few bad apples in tech hoodies. It’s about a system built to harvest attention and outsource harm. A system that rewards disconnection from consequences and punishes those who dare to say, “This isn’t okay.”
And Meta tried to bury that story.
They pulled legal levers to stop Careless People from seeing the light of day—requesting emergency arbitration, calling the book a smear campaign, and labeling Wynn-Williams a “toxic” employee with “performance issues.” Classic corporate playbook: discredit the messenger, deny the message.
But here’s the part they didn’t account for: The message is everywhere. And people are finally paying attention.
A Pattern of Profit-Driven Catastrophe
Wynn-Williams’ story isn’t a one-off. It’s a thread woven into the larger tapestry of what Facebook—and Big Tech at large—has enabled across the world.
Let’s zoom out. Because the receipts are mounting:
The Rohingya Genocide: According to a 2018 United Nations report, Facebook played a “determining role” in inciting violence against the Rohingya minority in Myanmar, helping amplify hate speech that led to massacres and mass displacement. One UN investigator described it as a platform that had “turned into a beast” (Source: The Guardian).
Cambridge Analytica: The data of over 87 million users was harvested without consent to manipulate voters using psychographic microtargeting during Brexit and the 2016 U.S. election. Facebook’s response? Minimal disclosure, delayed accountability, and fines they wrote off like parking tickets (Source: NYT).
January 6th Insurrection: Internal documents obtained by whistleblower Frances Haugen revealed that Facebook was well aware of how its recommendation algorithms fueled extremist echo chambers. Despite knowing its Groups feature helped incubate insurrectionist violence, executives repeatedly ignored flags from their own researchers (Source: Washington Post).
Teen Mental Health Crisis: Leaked internal research, also from Haugen, showed Instagram exacerbated body image issues for 1 in 3 teen girls, with some saying the app made them want to hurt themselves. Facebook not only knew this—it buried the findings (Source: Wall Street Journal).
This isn’t a glitch. It’s the system working exactly as intended.
Empire by Engagement
Think of Meta not as a company, but as an empire built on engagement.
Its currency = your attention
Its economy = your outrage, fear, insecurity, and loneliness.
What Wynn-Williams exposes is that the more unwell, divided, or radicalized people become—the more profitable they are to Meta’s bottom line.
And the platform has no moral governor. No off-switch. Empathy doesn’t trend. But extremism is algorithmic gold.
In the book, Wynn-Williams talks about internal presentations offering advertisers the chance to target teenagers when they felt “worthless,” “insecure,” or “stupid.” Imagine a boardroom where someone’s pitch is, essentially, “Let’s sell sadness.” And no one blinks.
This is not “oops, we didn’t know.” This is we knew—and we did it anyway.
Because it works. Because it pays.
Surveillance Capitalism in Designer Hoodies
Shoshana Zuboff, in her seminal work The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, warns that we’re entering a new age—where tech giants don’t just predict our behavior but shape it. Where human experience is raw material, mined and refined for behavioral futures markets.
Wynn-Williams gives that theory a pulse. A name. A plane ride. A series of Slack messages. She lived inside the system—and her memoir shows just how normalized it becomes to trade ethics for metrics.
Executives didn’t just ignore international law—they didn’t even understand it.
Leaders didn’t just overlook human rights—they saw them as “brand risks.”
Abuses weren’t bugs—they were business as usual.
A Culture of Cowardice in Designer Glass Walls
What makes Careless People so terrifying is not just the decisions being made—but the culture behind them.
A culture where a woman convulses at her desk, and no one stops working.
A culture where loyalty to leadership matters more than international law.
A culture where retaliation for whistleblowing comes swifter than consequences for abuse.
Wynn-Williams describes an environment where morality is inconvenient, compassion is off-brand, and doing the right thing is a career liability. It’s not just toxic. It’s optimized for harm.
They Built a Machine That Can’t Care
Here’s the most chilling part: this empire cannot care. Not because the people inside are monsters (though some definitely play the part). But because the machine wasn’t built to care.
It was built to grow, monetize, and dominate. Care gets in the way.
Careless People shows us that when human suffering becomes a spreadsheet line item, you’ve already lost the plot.
And when a company reaches a point where it can influence elections, radicalize populations, destabilize countries, and still be treated as a private enterprise—it’s no longer a company. It’s an unelected superpower.
The Truth Is Trending—And It’s Not Going Away
Meta tried to silence this story. But the story is already out. It’s in your TikTok feed. Your WhatsApp group chats. Your mom’s Facebook wall.
Because you live inside this empire. We all do. And now, thanks to Wynn-Williams, the empire has been mapped. The walls aren’t invisible anymore. The harm has a name.
This isn’t just about Facebook. It’s about the world we let it build. So here’s the truth, as simple as it is terrifying: We’re not dealing with careless people. We’re living under a careless empire. And finally—finally—people are starting to see it.
So let them panic. Let them scramble. Let them send cease-and-desists and rewrite their PR scripts. Because the truth is trending.
And this time we’re not looking away.
I've now read the book, so could come back without fear of spoilers.
I do think everybody should read this book, and I think you have picked out 10 excellent reasons why.
The other things that stood out to me is how everything just gets worse as the book progresses, and also that it feels like it really gives so much insight into how everything is changing so quickly right now.
This is a really great review. I love your writing style. It's better than anything in print. Great work! Thank you, Lexi!
I recently heard a British host say, "everyone loves a top 10." The show was ten years old, but that's still true today. Who doesn't love a Top 10 of the lowest schemes driven by the greed of one of the richest people in the World?
And just when you thought you had heard it all about the greedy, treachous tech bros with no regard for young girls' lives... out comes this bombshell.
Im noticing a pattern that the top richest people is the world are also the lowest bottom feeders in the world. I wonder if they are sociopaths with no moral compass and ethics, and noregard for life?
As bad as this is, I know it's worse than what the author wrote. Targeted young girls who deleted selfies as vulnerable shows that they have no ethics and only care about monetizing people's privacy. I can assure you that Fb is even worse than this. Trust me. When I realized how evil Facebook is, I stopped using it.
I find it hilarious that some people are worried and afraid about China violating Americans' privacy with tick tock. LOL. Could Fb, Google, eBay and some car makers be any worse with our data? No! Domestic companies, not Tick Tock, are the clear and present danger.
Domestic tech companies that collect, manipulate and sell our data must be regulated and held accountable.
I'm glad the author came out and told the truth about Fb's evil schemes. It's about time.
#PrivacyNow
#F_Zuck