On the same morning I finished reading Careless People, the memoir by Sarah Wynn-Williams about her career as Facebook’s (later Meta’s) director of global public policy, my mom called to discuss the breaking news in Venezuela:
“We kidnapped the president of Venezuela,” she said. I hadn’t heard this yet. The invasion happened overnight, but I was buried in Sarah’s account of the role that Facebook played in the unrest and violence in Myanmar, and the company’s negotiations moving into China. Breaking news on Venezuela would have to wait.
If you are someone who follows tech news, Careless People may not reveal anything new about the inner-workings of Facebook. But it was the form, a personal narrative, that landed for me. I related to Sarah. A true believer in bettering the world, she invented her role at the company in 2011. Compared to the procedure-bound processes of the United Nations, where she previously worked representing New Zealand, Facebook seemed like a new, effective tool to advance social and global policy.
In the end, this is a memoir of acceptance and reconciliation. It’s a story about the existential questions people ask themselves when seeking integrity, coherence, and accountability from their work, not only a paycheck. You could say it’s ultimately a story about failure … a cautionary tale that changing a system from the inside is expensive. It consumes emotional energy and reputational capital. Ultimately, Facebook didn’t pay the price: Sarah did. On the other hand, maybe a part of her knew this would be the outcome, but she retained a sliver of hope. You could also say this is a story of someone deferring her leverage while accumulating a density of experience, knowing the stakes would eventually force public attention. She would have a book. I believe all of these perspectives are true at once.
Can we effect change from the inside? Or the middle? Do organizations grow more intelligent, or do they simply churn? This is the crux of the memoir, and a central question in the evolution of so many careers, mine included. It’s a line of inquiry that opens the door to even more considerations. Can you have influence without legible credentials from Ivy League universities, or powerful connections? What if you’re a woman, or a mother, or a person of color? What is the “right” thing to do: is it enough to focus on your personal success and your family’s well-being? What is the cost of taking a stand?
Over the course of the morning, more people were texting about Venezuela, so I turned my attention to the news. My limbs were already heavy and mind fuzzy. Sarah’s account that even people inside Facebook were comparing social media to big tobacco raised, again, the ethical question of using its platforms to promote the work of philanthropy and nonprofits. (But how could any organization justify removing themselves altogether if their objective is to garner public trust and attention? This is where attention lives.) I finally turned on the news. Overnight, the U.S. had invaded Venezuela and exfiltrated its leader under the guise of shifting justifications. It could have been the epilogue to Sarah’s book.
As you know, this was a Saturday. By now it was noon. I ran errands, made food and did laundry, hoping to shake myself out of my funk. By 4:30 in the afternoon, I decided to go to the gym. I never workout this late because the parking lot gets dark, but my sorrow had morphed into anger. So I rucked. I carried kettlebells. I did pull-ups. I worked hard for nearly an hour. Then, as I was winding down, casually scrolling through texts before I headed out, a woman walked up.
“Are you okay?” she said.
“Yeah … why do you ask?” I said, removing my earphones and orienting myself to her question.
“Just making sure,” she confirmed. Still bewildered, I pressed. “Did something happen?” She didn’t answer that. “I’m checking,” she said, “because I’ve had stalkers, and I’m sure you have, too.” Then she retreated to the corner where she continued stretching, barefoot, on a mat. I couldn’t understand why she would say this. I’ve never seen her before. A minute later, I caught her eye, said thank you, and turned to leave. There was only one guy working the front desk, so I couldn’t ask for an escort to my car: there’s no bodies to spare. I calculated the amount of light in the parking lot, and the distance I had to walk, and glanced around to see whether anyone was outside. I risked it.
Admittedly, I am friendly and outgoing at the gym. I smile at people and say hello. (I’ve written about this.) Even that day, I’d chatted with the new employee who had just moved to Vegas from Longmont. “You’re so nice,” he said afterwards. But outside of brief interactions like this, I’m focused on myself. On any other day, I might have brushed off that encounter. Instead, I spent the rest of the night wondering whether I needed to make myself less visible at the gym. My efforts to reclaim agency after a day of feeling powerless had backfired.
On Sunday, I woke up determined to emerge from under the cloud. Writing usually helps me transcend my perspective, so I sat down with coffee and my laptop and abandoned the post I had been working on. I spent several hours struggling in a deeper sense, grappling with language, still consumed by feelings of limitation beyond my control. All I could see was how influence compounds as a measure of one’s fit within a system: I wished I was a white man who went to Harvard. I wished I had real money, or connections, or power.
Those who had influence at Facebook were aligned with the company’s goals of revenue and growth. Sarah wanted the system to evolve, though: “I think all the time about how the company looked to me before I joined,” she wrote in her conclusion. “All the possibility of it, the promise of connecting everyone in the world. How I was so sure that Facebook would change the world for the better.”
Because I have an uncanny ability to focus, I pushed words around for a few more hours, then gave up and went on a walk. A friend called, and we talked about the cost and opportunity embedded in identity, and the days it feels like we give more to our respective causes than we get in return. We also spoke about how important it is to embrace the feeling of being a victim, too. I don’t want to be afraid of it. Then our conversation began to lighten, and we spoke about how opportunity is the result of years of effort. We keep going. Talking it out with someone else in the trenches finally began to limber me up.
What took me two days to remember is this: misalignment isn’t the same as miscalculation. Sometimes being “used” by a system is a necessary journey to find deeper insight and wisdom. If there were a reoccurring theme to the arc of my professional life—and to the challenges facing many of the clients I coach—it is in naming this truth, then depersonalizing it. Then deciding what to do next.
The fact is, moral engagement isn’t always rewarded. But it’s also how organizations discover their blind spots, or pressure-test narratives, or adjust before failure becomes catastrophic. The real kicker is that the impact is asymmetrical: a system can absorb the friction, but individuals often cannot.
This is how I relate to Sarah. Not as a whistleblower, but as someone whose mission is to hold out hope while also working to bring perspective to the system itself. I often, as a coach, provide support to those who are in similar positions, seeking to understand their strengths, or find their right fit. It can be a long, lonely journey. Sometimes there’s a hefty price to pay. The questions, unique to everyone, are: 1) when is that price too great, and 2) what will you do when you emerge, on the other side, with newfound clarity and wisdom?
While I was drawn to her initial idealism in the book, I don’t think any of the events seemed terribly surprising given that Zuckerberg is a human who was in the position to make monstrous wealth in a system that overwhelmingly and increasingly prioritizes financial success / power over everything else.
To that end, they chose to use algorithms that reward outrage engagement, or easy metrics like “likes” and shares and purchases, rather than metrics that reward, say, content that connects people from different demographics or translates values like empathy or fact-based education. They could change that. They could easily create those algorithms. But the dopamine and thus the money flows from the easier metric of stirring outrage inside self-renewing feedback loops.
When the technology first came about—going back to stuff like MySpace – it was thought of as a great way to connect people. It had, and still has, the potential to be used in more ethical ways (remembering her moment in the airport getting live updates of a tragedy) rather than being designed primarily to benefit shareholders. It wasn’t until the corporate drive to monetize everything at the expense of many other values took over that it became the beast it has become. ***Please notice here how that emphasis, and those values, dramatically grew and coincided with the rise of the MAGA values: me-first, insiders over outsiders, valorization of perceived strength [cruelty] over empathy and social collaboration*** One hopes these things are cyclical.
I remember when all of the tech / social media /AI giants, including Zuckerberg, grotesquely stood on the dais at the second Trump inauguration. For me, though we were already living in the effects of some of the worst uses of social media, their unification with Trumpers portended a dark future for the next tech wave, AI – which, similar to social media in its infancy seems so full of positive potential. If we follow the same narrative, though, (the same values), it’s going to be a struggle to weave – prioritize – altruism, social safety nets, collaboration, respect and empathy into it in a system that profoundly favors making money. However, I love that there are individuals who WILL risk moral engagement in these systems. We need them. We need them to be loud and take smart risks. I think you are one of them! Even if human nature in this system is to seek money and power at all ugly costs (?), those who can mitigate the damage, if not overhaul the whole system, are so very important.
I read Sarah’s book too a while back. I couldn’t finish it, not because it wasn’t good, but probably because it was too relatable. Not in all the ways, but many. Bummed me out and made me feel sorta sad. Ideally the systems we work for are also a work “with” and can evolve, particularly when they’ve sought us out to help do so. Folks are stubborn, territorial and resistant to change by nature though, so maybe success here depends on leadership. That’s a crap shoot too, as alignment is layered and priority mutable. Anyway! Thx for the read Steph, always a pleasure.