Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

by Sarah Wynn-Williams

One of the top ad executives for Australia calls me late one night to complain. Why are we putting out statements like this? he wants to know. “This is the business, Sarah. We’re proud of this. We shout this from the rooftops. This is what puts money in all our pockets. And these statements make it look like it’s something nefarious.” It looks bad in front of our advertisers, he says, for Facebook to pretend it’s not doing this targeting. He’s out there every day promoting the precision of these tools that hoover up so much data and insight on and off Facebook so that it can deliver the right ad at the right time to the right user. And this is what headquarters is saying to the public? “How do I explain this?” he asks. And thirteen-to-seventeen-year-olds? “That’s a very important audience. Advertisers really want to reach them. And we have them! We’re pretending we don’t do this?” As if to back him up, just three days after the false denial, on an earnings call Sheryl touts Facebook’s ability to target based on sex and age, stating, “We think that targeting and measurement are significant competitive advantages for us.… Just in basic targeting itself, just age and gender, we’re 38% more accurate than broad-based targeting according to Nielsen in the U.S. And that’s just age and gender.” I know I’m on vacation and I have a valid excuse to stay out of this, to not put any grit in the machine or damage my standing with leadership. I know anything I do or say at this point wil...