5 ms·

> This book was SO GOOD. One of the (very valid, IMO) criticisms of the book is that the author tries to set herself apart from the culture she was deeply embe

> This book was SO GOOD. One of the (very valid, IMO) criticisms of the book is that the author tries to set herself apart from the culture she was deeply embedded within. I think it's becoming a trap to hold the author up as a hero when she was clearly part of it all to the very core. It was only after she got separated from the inner circle club that she tried to distance herself from it. So while reading it, be careful about who you hold up as a hero. In a situation like this it's possible for everyone to be untrustworthy narrators.

zaphar 7mo ago
There is nuance here though. Taking a step back and learning from an experience is something to be celebrated.
jmull 7mo ago
A strange response. Rather than address the comment you change the subject, “whaddabout the author!” Why do the dark work of deflecting on behalf of “Meta”? (lol, that name gets me every time. Might as well have renamed themselves NoIdeaWhatToDoNow)
- Nifty3929 7mo ago
  Because recognizing the author as conflicted and an unreliable narrator changes how you should weight and consider the information they are providing. It doesn't necessarily mean anything is untrue - but it does add extra, valuable information to how much you trust it. If someone tells me something, I'm mostly likely to believe it without further investigation. But not always.
  - jmull 7mo ago
    Another one. Deflecting the criticism of Meta with a “whaddabout the author!” Formed as an answer to a question, but not one that was asked. A different account than last time, though, so I’ll ask you too: Why do the dark work of deflecting on behalf of Meta (lol)?
    - bena 7mo ago
      I think the point is that up until she was fired, she was Meta. She wasn’t a random employee, she was their global public policy director. She wasn’t just implementing policy, she was responsible for creating it. The question remains whether or not she would have written this book had she not been fired. It’s not like she quit due to her ethical objections
      - jmull 7mo ago
        A third “whaddabout the author”! It’s almost as if…
      - tzs 7mo ago
        The question does indeed remain, but is it a question whose answer matters? If someone exposes a shady organization why should I care if they did it for ethical reasons or for something less noble like revenge for getting kicked out of that organization?
        bena 7mo ago
        Because it doesn’t really target the issue. Would she go do the same job at Alphabet? X? Probably, if they’d have her. And the only real thing that’d happened is the government has been used to remove other companies’ competition. Hooray I guess
        RHSeeger 7mo ago
        > but is it a question whose answer matters Yes. 100%. And the fact that you're not seeing why it does is confounding to me. This person has shown that they are willing to harm society (for their own benefit, presumably); by active choice. And, as such, anything they say needs to be viewed through the lens of "is this person lying for their own benefit". 1. Their previous actions do mean that we should not trust what they are saying outright, we should do (more) work verifying the information they provide. 2. Their previous actions to _not_ mean we should avoid holding other accountable when the information provided turns out to be true. You're asking your question like someone is arguing that this person's information doesn't matter (2); but the point being made is that we should (1).
  - croes 7mo ago
    The fate of every whistleblower
- Mezzie 7mo ago
  I believe what Sarah Wynn-Williams wrote in Careless People. I also think she's shown herself to be a person I'd want to stay away from. The reason this matters to me is because the more media attention Ms. Wynn-Williams gets, the more her ideas of what we should do about Meta will spread and be given credence. The more she will be given credence outside of simply reporting what she saw. I can both believe what she says and think it's best to stop fanning the flames and giving her personal attention. This entire saga reads to me as intra-elite fighting: Ms. Wynn-Williams is representing the cultural/educational elite, and obviously the Meta execs are the tech elite. As an ordinary person, I'm not under any delusion that either side has my best interest in mind when they fight, or when they advance policy, regulatory, or other suggestions. The derision and disdain Ms. Wynn-Williams has for people not in her milieu throw up a lot of red flags for me. It comes down to believing that Ms. Wynn-Williams wants to hurt Meta, not to help us. I also believe that blindly supporting people or organizations just because they also hate people or organizations you hate is a very bad idea. The enemy of your enemy can still be your enemy. In this case, regarding technological politics, Zuck and co. want us to become braindead addicted zombies, and Ms. Wynn-Williams will want us to have no control or access at all, because we can't handle it and it's for our own good. She's from the cultural group pushing for things like age restriction and verification, devices you can't root/restricting what you can install on your own device, etc. Both are bad. One sees us as cattle and the other sees us as toddlers.
  - alex1138 7mo ago
    I think the view you put here is legitimate, Greenwald had an article about Frances Haugen kind of saying the same sorts of things
ryandrake 7mo ago
The fact that she did end up setting herself apart is what's remarkable. For every one of her who was able to self-reflect, become horrified of the ethics of what she was doing, and took the hard steps of stopping and breaking away, how many current and former Meta employees don't do this reflection and remain contributors to the problem? 1:100? 1:1,000? 1:10,000?
- Oarch 7mo ago
  A few years ago I had a date with a backend engineer at Meta. I asked if they'd ever considered the societal implications of the work they did. They said "Oh wow I've never even thought about it". Probably a solid hire from Meta's perspective.
  - kingofmen 7mo ago
    Or you missed the eye-rolling sarcasm in the answer they have to give on every goddam first date.
    - smohare 7mo ago
      [dead]
    - Dumbledumb 7mo ago
      Getting to know the views and values of your date is not a weird thing to do on the first date. If it’s a question that annoys them, they should consider why.
    - ryandrake 7mo ago
      Maybe I'm just a wacky Bleeding-Heart, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect someone who worked on a product that amplified hate, leading up to a massacre in Myanmar, to at least address that without sarcasm while getting to know them.
      - sunnybeetroot 7mo ago
jancsika 7mo ago
You read the book. Did she have the receipts or not?
mykowebhn 7mo ago
To all future whistle-blowers: Please ignore comments like this one! What you are doing is a valuable service to society.
b00ty4breakfast 7mo ago
I haven't read the book, but I don't think there's anything dishonest about needing distance to see the context of what she was a part of. Now, if she is trying to paint herself as completely outside of that even while she was knee-deep in it, that's a different matter but hindsight isn't something to be dismissed.
matthewdgreen 7mo ago
If we require every whistleblower to be a saint, then we’ll never hear a whistle. If you have a serious criticism of their credibility, that’s potentially different, but arbitrary criticisms of someone’s moral worth is mostly irrelevant.
- RHSeeger 7mo ago
  The fact that someone actively worked against the welfare of society as a whole, in significant and impactful ways, _is_ a criticism of their credibility. It speaks to their morals and empathy for others. It doesn't mean that what they're saying is a lie, but it puts them firmly in the bucket where what they say needs to be verified.
  - navane 7mo ago
    It doesn't matter if she's as bad as the others. The message is that the others are bad. Pointing out that she's also bad is meek at best.
    - RHSeeger 7mo ago
      You are missing the entire point > The message is that the others are bad The message is that they're bad and the fact that they did these bad things proves they're bad. And the key thing here is that we need to decide if we believe "they did these bad things". If the person reporting them is well known as someone the is truthful and trustworthy, we're likely to believe them with little proof. If the person reporting them is well known as a bad person that does things to harm others for their own benefit... we're less likely to believe them until we can verify the truth of their statements. You're completely skipping over the "is this person telling the truth" part; I assume because they're saying things that fit in with your pre-existing view of the world. And that's not a good thing.
julianeon 7mo ago
We would have no book if the author was a hero: they would say "I'm not doing this," quit, and that would be the end of it. By this definition, only an unheroic person could've written it. By the same definition, an firsthand expose of Meta could never be written by a trustworthy person. This obviously protects the company: you are ceding this ground to them, "No trustworthy person could work at your company and write an expose." I don't think we should cede that to them.
- prepend 7mo ago
  Not really. Author could have whistleblown and quit early on revealing unsavory things. The book is mainly attempts to embarass Zuck (eg, he’s sweaty, he’s not good at Catan, etc).
- a4isms 7mo ago
  Why is it that the only people willing to testify against the cartel are murderers, drug dealers, and bank robbers? These are not trustworthy witnesses. Same problem.
- mekoka 7mo ago
  GP's point is not that only heroes should tell the tale, but rather that in this case the whistleblower was also an active part of the problem, but sought to distance herself from her then behavior by swapping it down instead for a more passive lack of situational awereness. That is, she reached for stupidity as an escape hatch from having to reckon with her own malice. And she's now being celebrated for it. The lack of accountability paired with the celebration of the "hero" are the problem. Not the fact of her testimony. EDIT: Some people who have similarly testified acknowledged the part they played in the situation they later denounced. So, it is possible for the story to be told and for the teller to also say "I knew what was up. I said nothing. I did nothing. I'm sorry."
SilverElfin 7mo ago
You are probably right that she was part of it all. There what money and power do to you. We need to limit it. The eat the rich stuff is the wrong messaging but the right goal. We need to reduce concentration of wealth and power.
ktimespi 7mo ago
Yeah, the fact that she realized what's going on and still worked tirelessly to give Mark / Facebook more negotiating power speaks volumes. I also can't buy the whole "I have financial woes and can't escape" spin that she puts on her situation. Otherwise, great book.
- prepend 7mo ago
  “I only make $4M/ year in RSUs and am an attorney, however will I pay for daycare for my three kids and teacher husband. I better continue acting unethically and profiting from hosing people.” This was such a weird argument. I think the author may actually be self-deluding herself as I can’t imagine her or her editors think anyone buys this argument.
popalchemist 7mo ago
Waking up from a cult doesn't make you a hero, but stopping the cult might.
j45 7mo ago
Sometimes you can still learn from a story. Humans are about making mistakes and learning from them, not hiding behind the disease of perfectionism. If there's something the author needs to say, I'm sure they are capable of using their words. The other side that could have happened so easily is so much silence that there was no book.
jmye 7mo ago
> I think it's becoming a trap to hold the author up as a hero Cool, then don’t do that. Every single employee at Meta is still vile and making the world a worse place every single day, and anything exposing the depths of their shittiness, no matter the source, is a good thing.
BloondAndDoom 7mo ago
> In a situation like this it's possible for everyone to be untrustworthy narrators. Even if you take her as trustworthy narrator (which I mostly did) she's stil evil in this story up until the publishing book.
DavidPiper 7mo ago
I don't know if anyone is holding the author up as a hero, least of all herself. The book reads as a masterclass in grooming, manipulation and abuse. If anything, the title "Careless People" does a disservice to its message: the people above and around her clearly knew exactly what they were doing, and took great care to evade any and all responsibility for anything.
gitaarik 7mo ago
So in this way we should dismiss all whistleblowers?

zaphar 7mo ago

There is nuance here though. Taking a step back and learning from an experience is something to be celebrated.

jmull 7mo ago

A strange response. Rather than address the comment you change the subject, “whaddabout the author!” Why do the dark work of deflecting on behalf of “Meta”? (lol, that name gets me every time. Might as well have renamed themselves NoIdeaWhatToDoNow)

Nifty3929 7mo ago
Because recognizing the author as conflicted and an unreliable narrator changes how you should weight and consider the information they are providing. It doesn't necessarily mean anything is untrue - but it does add extra, valuable information to how much you trust it. If someone tells me something, I'm mostly likely to believe it without further investigation. But not always.
- jmull 7mo ago
  Another one. Deflecting the criticism of Meta with a “whaddabout the author!” Formed as an answer to a question, but not one that was asked. A different account than last time, though, so I’ll ask you too: Why do the dark work of deflecting on behalf of Meta (lol)?
  - bena 7mo ago
    I think the point is that up until she was fired, she was Meta. She wasn’t a random employee, she was their global public policy director. She wasn’t just implementing policy, she was responsible for creating it. The question remains whether or not she would have written this book had she not been fired. It’s not like she quit due to her ethical objections
    - jmull 7mo ago
      A third “whaddabout the author”! It’s almost as if…
    - tzs 7mo ago
      The question does indeed remain, but is it a question whose answer matters? If someone exposes a shady organization why should I care if they did it for ethical reasons or for something less noble like revenge for getting kicked out of that organization?
      - bena 7mo ago
        Because it doesn’t really target the issue. Would she go do the same job at Alphabet? X? Probably, if they’d have her. And the only real thing that’d happened is the government has been used to remove other companies’ competition. Hooray I guess
      - RHSeeger 7mo ago
        > but is it a question whose answer matters Yes. 100%. And the fact that you're not seeing why it does is confounding to me. This person has shown that they are willing to harm society (for their own benefit, presumably); by active choice. And, as such, anything they say needs to be viewed through the lens of "is this person lying for their own benefit". 1. Their previous actions do mean that we should not trust what they are saying outright, we should do (more) work verifying the information they provide. 2. Their previous actions to _not_ mean we should avoid holding other accountable when the information provided turns out to be true. You're asking your question like someone is arguing that this person's information doesn't matter (2); but the point being made is that we should (1).
- croes 7mo ago
  The fate of every whistleblower
Mezzie 7mo ago
I believe what Sarah Wynn-Williams wrote in Careless People. I also think she's shown herself to be a person I'd want to stay away from. The reason this matters to me is because the more media attention Ms. Wynn-Williams gets, the more her ideas of what we should do about Meta will spread and be given credence. The more she will be given credence outside of simply reporting what she saw. I can both believe what she says and think it's best to stop fanning the flames and giving her personal attention. This entire saga reads to me as intra-elite fighting: Ms. Wynn-Williams is representing the cultural/educational elite, and obviously the Meta execs are the tech elite. As an ordinary person, I'm not under any delusion that either side has my best interest in mind when they fight, or when they advance policy, regulatory, or other suggestions. The derision and disdain Ms. Wynn-Williams has for people not in her milieu throw up a lot of red flags for me. It comes down to believing that Ms. Wynn-Williams wants to hurt Meta, not to help us. I also believe that blindly supporting people or organizations just because they also hate people or organizations you hate is a very bad idea. The enemy of your enemy can still be your enemy. In this case, regarding technological politics, Zuck and co. want us to become braindead addicted zombies, and Ms. Wynn-Williams will want us to have no control or access at all, because we can't handle it and it's for our own good. She's from the cultural group pushing for things like age restriction and verification, devices you can't root/restricting what you can install on your own device, etc. Both are bad. One sees us as cattle and the other sees us as toddlers.
- alex1138 7mo ago
  I think the view you put here is legitimate, Greenwald had an article about Frances Haugen kind of saying the same sorts of things

ryandrake 7mo ago

The fact that she did end up setting herself apart is what's remarkable. For every one of her who was able to self-reflect, become horrified of the ethics of what she was doing, and took the hard steps of stopping and breaking away, how many current and former Meta employees don't do this reflection and remain contributors to the problem? 1:100? 1:1,000? 1:10,000?

Oarch 7mo ago
A few years ago I had a date with a backend engineer at Meta. I asked if they'd ever considered the societal implications of the work they did. They said "Oh wow I've never even thought about it". Probably a solid hire from Meta's perspective.
- kingofmen 7mo ago
  Or you missed the eye-rolling sarcasm in the answer they have to give on every goddam first date.
  - smohare 7mo ago
    [dead]
  - Dumbledumb 7mo ago
    Getting to know the views and values of your date is not a weird thing to do on the first date. If it’s a question that annoys them, they should consider why.
  - ryandrake 7mo ago
    Maybe I'm just a wacky Bleeding-Heart, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect someone who worked on a product that amplified hate, leading up to a massacre in Myanmar, to at least address that without sarcasm while getting to know them.
    - sunnybeetroot 7mo ago

jancsika 7mo ago

You read the book. Did she have the receipts or not?

mykowebhn 7mo ago

To all future whistle-blowers: Please ignore comments like this one! What you are doing is a valuable service to society.

b00ty4breakfast 7mo ago

I haven't read the book, but I don't think there's anything dishonest about needing distance to see the context of what she was a part of. Now, if she is trying to paint herself as completely outside of that even while she was knee-deep in it, that's a different matter but hindsight isn't something to be dismissed.

matthewdgreen 7mo ago

If we require every whistleblower to be a saint, then we’ll never hear a whistle. If you have a serious criticism of their credibility, that’s potentially different, but arbitrary criticisms of someone’s moral worth is mostly irrelevant.

RHSeeger 7mo ago
The fact that someone actively worked against the welfare of society as a whole, in significant and impactful ways, _is_ a criticism of their credibility. It speaks to their morals and empathy for others. It doesn't mean that what they're saying is a lie, but it puts them firmly in the bucket where what they say needs to be verified.
- navane 7mo ago
  It doesn't matter if she's as bad as the others. The message is that the others are bad. Pointing out that she's also bad is meek at best.
  - RHSeeger 7mo ago
    You are missing the entire point > The message is that the others are bad The message is that they're bad and the fact that they did these bad things proves they're bad. And the key thing here is that we need to decide if we believe "they did these bad things". If the person reporting them is well known as someone the is truthful and trustworthy, we're likely to believe them with little proof. If the person reporting them is well known as a bad person that does things to harm others for their own benefit... we're less likely to believe them until we can verify the truth of their statements. You're completely skipping over the "is this person telling the truth" part; I assume because they're saying things that fit in with your pre-existing view of the world. And that's not a good thing.

julianeon 7mo ago

We would have no book if the author was a hero: they would say "I'm not doing this," quit, and that would be the end of it. By this definition, only an unheroic person could've written it. By the same definition, an firsthand expose of Meta could never be written by a trustworthy person. This obviously protects the company: you are ceding this ground to them, "No trustworthy person could work at your company and write an expose." I don't think we should cede that to them.

prepend 7mo ago
Not really. Author could have whistleblown and quit early on revealing unsavory things. The book is mainly attempts to embarass Zuck (eg, he’s sweaty, he’s not good at Catan, etc).
a4isms 7mo ago
Why is it that the only people willing to testify against the cartel are murderers, drug dealers, and bank robbers? These are not trustworthy witnesses. Same problem.
mekoka 7mo ago
GP's point is not that only heroes should tell the tale, but rather that in this case the whistleblower was also an active part of the problem, but sought to distance herself from her then behavior by swapping it down instead for a more passive lack of situational awereness. That is, she reached for stupidity as an escape hatch from having to reckon with her own malice. And she's now being celebrated for it. The lack of accountability paired with the celebration of the "hero" are the problem. Not the fact of her testimony. EDIT: Some people who have similarly testified acknowledged the part they played in the situation they later denounced. So, it is possible for the story to be told and for the teller to also say "I knew what was up. I said nothing. I did nothing. I'm sorry."

SilverElfin 7mo ago

You are probably right that she was part of it all. There what money and power do to you. We need to limit it. The eat the rich stuff is the wrong messaging but the right goal. We need to reduce concentration of wealth and power.

ktimespi 7mo ago

Yeah, the fact that she realized what's going on and still worked tirelessly to give Mark / Facebook more negotiating power speaks volumes. I also can't buy the whole "I have financial woes and can't escape" spin that she puts on her situation. Otherwise, great book.

prepend 7mo ago
“I only make $4M/ year in RSUs and am an attorney, however will I pay for daycare for my three kids and teacher husband. I better continue acting unethically and profiting from hosing people.” This was such a weird argument. I think the author may actually be self-deluding herself as I can’t imagine her or her editors think anyone buys this argument.

popalchemist 7mo ago

Waking up from a cult doesn't make you a hero, but stopping the cult might.

j45 7mo ago

Sometimes you can still learn from a story. Humans are about making mistakes and learning from them, not hiding behind the disease of perfectionism. If there's something the author needs to say, I'm sure they are capable of using their words. The other side that could have happened so easily is so much silence that there was no book.

jmye 7mo ago

> I think it's becoming a trap to hold the author up as a hero Cool, then don’t do that. Every single employee at Meta is still vile and making the world a worse place every single day, and anything exposing the depths of their shittiness, no matter the source, is a good thing.

BloondAndDoom 7mo ago

> In a situation like this it's possible for everyone to be untrustworthy narrators. Even if you take her as trustworthy narrator (which I mostly did) she's stil evil in this story up until the publishing book.

DavidPiper 7mo ago

I don't know if anyone is holding the author up as a hero, least of all herself. The book reads as a masterclass in grooming, manipulation and abuse. If anything, the title "Careless People" does a disservice to its message: the people above and around her clearly knew exactly what they were doing, and took great care to evade any and all responsibility for anything.

gitaarik 7mo ago

So in this way we should dismiss all whistleblowers?