Casey Mock at After Babel:
Meta’s governmental strategy and influence is now clearer than ever, thanks to Sarah Wynn Williams’s recently published memoir, Careless People. In her account of the culture of callousness, greed, unaccountability, and nepotism among Meta’s leadership – including Zuckerberg, former COO Sheryl Sandberg, and current President of Global Affairs Joel Kaplan – she details the company’s well-honed political playbook. Without any apparent sense of irony for a company that itself now refuses to fact-check, Meta is engaged in a legal and PR campaign to silence Wynn-Williams, claiming that the book contains fabrications and was not properly fact-checked. The publisher, Macmillan, stands by the book.
As someone with over a decade of experience in tech policy—including four years on Amazon’s public policy team—I found Careless People compelling and credible. Her insider’s account makes clear how Meta, despite widespread public awareness (thanks in part to Frances Haugen’s testimony), has repeatedly evaded meaningful accountability, even as the company facilitated genocide in Myanmar, created political chaos in the US and Europe, and manipulated the emotional vulnerabilities of teenagers for profit. Wynn-William’s revelations provide a behind-the-scenes look into a regulatory avoidance strategy I know well, because it’s the same political playbook Amazon uses, as well as Google, Microsoft, and other large tech and social media companies.
More here.
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