CARELESS PEOPLE: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, by Sarah Wynn-Williams

The publisher of “Careless People” kept the existence of this memoir a secret until a few days ago — with good reason, it turns out.

For seven years, beginning in 2011, the book’s author, Sarah Wynn-Williams, worked at Facebook (now called Meta), eventually as a director of global public policy. Now she has written an insider account of a company that she says was run by status-hungry and self-absorbed leaders, who chafed at the burdens of responsibility and became ever more feckless, even as Facebook became a vector for disinformation campaigns and cozied up to authoritarian regimes.

“Careless People” is darkly funny and genuinely shocking: an ugly, detailed portrait of one of the most powerful companies in the world. What Wynn-Williams reveals will undoubtedly trigger her former bosses’ ire. Not only does she have the storytelling chops to unspool a gripping narrative; she also delivers the goods.

During her time at Facebook, Wynn-Williams worked closely with its chief executives Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. They’re this book’s Tom and Daisy — the “careless people” in “The Great Gatsby” who, as Wynn-Williams quotes the novel in her epigraph, “smashed up things and creatures” and “let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

Wynn-Williams was so eager to work at Facebook that she pitched herself to the company for months before it eventually hired her. Born and raised in New Zealand, she had been working as a diplomat at her country’s embassy in Washington and, before that, at the United Nations.She was drawn to human rights and environmental issues.

Relying on Facebook to stay connected with her friends back home, she believed the platform “was going to change the world.” As governments realized what Facebook could do, she sold herself to the company by telling its officials they could use a diplomat. When they finally hired her, she was elated: “I can’t believe I have the opportunity to work on the greatest political tool of my lifetime.”