Careless People

The thing I wrote in my last comment remains throughout the book: it reads as if the author is very naive. Or if the narration is incredibly carefully edited to make it appear so. I'm still unsure which it is, exactly.

But the books is still very much worth a read. With the legal scrutiny its gotten, it'll be difficult for there to be outright falsehoods contained within, at least not the kind Meta's lawyers will care about.

So if you take the happenings at face value? Then from my own perspective as someone who knows some of the tech industry, it's not revealing may new things. There are more details, things that take the news stories and put them into a different perspective. It's very much worth it for that alone.

What makes it so interesting to me that i can't shake the feeling that it serves a purpose other than whistleblowing.

It starts with the fact that the chronology of this story is all over the place. It jumps between the different time periods of the author's work at Facebook, and quickly jumps back, making it seem events are connected immediately when they're years apart.

It turns out that the plot lines the book follows are more thematic. The theme of careless manipulation of politics. The themes of various relationships. And so forth.

Each theme is then laid out in ways that give the appearance of progressive worsening of the situation at the company. And while there is clear evidence of that, there are also episodes revealing plenty of telling moments early in the author's FB career.

This supports this sense of the author's naivety. Her insistence that she started with idealism, and FB contained possibilities. While this isn't something I doubt as such, when it's part of a development that, when laid out in honest chronological order, has red flags from the start, it's a hard sell. Because one has to reconcile that with the image of a woman who convinced Facebook to give her a job they didn't think necessary, and who is on a first name basis with some of the 1%.

So. It makes me suspicious.

But it don't know what exactly of.

The best I can think of that would make for this mixture is that the author wants the reader to believe her relative innocence so much, she's willing to obfuscate and mislead.

But strangely, it makes it seem more believable. Because we all want to be the heroes of our own stories. This reads like the edit the author made to her story to make her complicity acceptable to herself.

That's worth reading.

Die Autorin hat sieben Jahre bei Facsbook gearbeitet und beschreibt hier die Jahre von 2011 bis 2018. Sie hat als ehemalige Diplomatin die politische Perspektive in eine Firma gebracht, die bis dahin offenbar überhaupt keine Gedanken an die Auswirkungen auf Gesellschaft, Politik und Demokratie aufgewendet hat. Ein ganz offenbar politisch naiver Mark Zuckerberg, der — ganz Techbro — nur sein Produkt sieht und dem soziale Auswirkungen völlig egal sind, musste überhaupt erst in die nationale und internationale Politik eingeführt werden.

Die Beschreibungen sind dabei mitunter etwas zu detailliert, zeichnen damit aber auch das Bild von Leuten, denen die Folgen ihrers Produkts schlicht egal sind. Die sind nicht einmal aktiv böswillig dabei: sie sind einfach nur „careless people“.

Deutlich wird das an drei drastischen Beispielen. Da ist zum Beispiel der grausame Genozid in Myanmar, der ohne das soziale Netzwerk Facebook so vielleicht nicht möglich gewesen wäre. Sie schildert, wie Facebook zum Beispiel nur einen einzigen Mitarbeiter hatte, der burmesisch sprach und der auch wenig Interesse an einer Eingrenzung der Gewalt durch die Junta hatte. Wie es insgesamt ein völliges Desinteresse an dem Missbrauch der Plattform gab.

Das zweite Beispiel ist die Werbeabteilung, die gezielt die Emotionen von vulnerablen Teenagern vermarktet hat. Haben zum Beispiel Mädchen ihre Selfies gelöscht, wurden ihnen vielleicht gleich Werbung für Schlankheitsmittel angezeigt.

Das dritte Beispiel ist die offene Debatte bei Facebook um konkrete Hilfen, mit denen etwa die AfD und andere rechtsextreme Parteien in Europa unterstützt werden sollten, um eine Regulierung von Facebook zu verhindern.

Insgesamt beschreibt sie die Führungsriege als Menschen, die schlicht außer Geldverdienen kein Interesse haben. Etwa, wenn Facebook ein mögliches China Geschäft so wichtig ist, dass sie der chinesischen Regierung direkten Zugriff auf Userdaten und Zensurmöglichkeiten einräumen wollten.

Es ist der Konzern eines Megamilliardärs, der nicht nur keine Skrupel kennt sondern der die Welt durch seine Produkte aktiv schlechter macht.

First of all, I liked reading this book. But I have some aspects which made me think.

From the outside, as a user, you could clearly see Facebooks decline over the years, from an interesting platform connecting people to one of the most hateful places of the clearweb. It was interesting to read what led to this development from an inside view. This book mentions some places, where Facebook chose money over moral. All that from someone who worked at the core of this development. Additionally it shows what kind of workplace Facebook was: you were expected to not have a personal life or mention your personal life at work. How you, as an employee were treated, while publicly rallying for totally different positions.

But what bothers me is that Wynn-Williams does not really take blame for it, while having been Director of Public Policy. Sure, corporate America can obstruct changes, but the only thing she really takes blame for is introducing Zuckerberg to the world of politics. She says she tried to work the system from within rather than from the outside, but this is what they all say, right? I mean, I also get that she's not being too hard with herself, given that could destroy her personal standing.

So all in all, it's been a good read, but I have some mixed feelings about it. I also had the lingering fear of falling for confirmation bias allover the book: did my negative feelings about Facebook make me believe some things more blindly?