Careless People Quotes

“Silicon Valley is awash in wooden Montessori toys and shrouded in total screen bans. Parents at work talk about how they don't allow their teens to have mobile phones, which only underscores how well these executives understand the real damage their product inflicts on young minds.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“In April 2017, a confidential document is leaked that reveals Facebook is offering advertisers the opportunity to target thirteen-to-seventeen-year-olds across its platforms, including Instagram, during moments of psychological vulnerability when they feel “worthless,” “insecure,” “stressed,” “defeated,” “anxious,” “stupid,” “useless,” and “like a failure.” Or to target them when they’re worried about their bodies and thinking of losing weight. Basically, when a teen is in a fragile emotional state. Facebook’s advertising team had made this presentation for an Australian client that explains that Instagram and Facebook monitor teenagers’ posts, photos, interactions, conversations with friends, visual communications, and internet activity on and off Facebook’s platforms and use this data to target young people when they’re vulnerable. In addition to the moments of vulnerability listed, Facebook finds moments when teenagers are concerned with “body confidence” and “working out & losing weight.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“When you have so many other people doing things for you professionally and personally, you stop taking responsibility for any of it.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“You weren’t responsive enough,” he says. “In my defense, I was in a coma for some of it.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“Autonomy disturbs a certain kind of powerful person,”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“My conclusion: It was just that Joel, Elliot, Sheryl, and Mark didn’t give a fuck. Joel was a veteran of George W. Bush’s White House. An issue in Syria would be met by a wave of his hand and, “Drop a bomb on it. I don’t care.” A joke, but also who he was. He was the man in charge of those countries for Facebook. And when it came to Myanmar, those people just didn’t matter to him. He couldn’t be bothered. There was no greater principle ever offered. People outside big companies sometimes wonder and speculate about how these sorts of decisions happen. This is how it happened at Facebook. And it wasn’t just Joel. None of the senior leaders—Elliot or Sheryl or Mark—thought about this enough to put in place the kinds of systems we’d need, in Myanmar or other countries. They apparently didn’t care. These were sins of omission. It wasn’t the things they did; it was the things they didn’t do.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“Effort, productivity, and the sacrifice of everything else in life are valorized and fetishized.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“The UN investigators point out many of the other issues we’d tried and failed to convince Facebook’s leaders to address: the woefully inadequate content moderation Facebook provided for Myanmar; the lack of moderators who “understand Myanmar language and its nuances, as well as the context within which comments are made”; the fact that the Burmese language isn’t rendered in Unicode; the lack of a clear system to report hate speech and alarming unresponsiveness when it is reported. The investigators noted with regret that Facebook said it was unable to provide country-specific data about the spread of hate speech on its platform, which was imperative to assess the problem and the adequacy of its response. This was surprising given that Facebook had been tracking hate speech. Community operations had written an internal report noting that forty-five of the one hundred most active hate speech accounts in Southeast Asia are in Myanmar. The truth here is inescapable. Myanmar would’ve been far better off if Facebook had never arrived there.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“By the end, I watched hopelessly as they sucked up to authoritarian regimes like China’s and casually misled the public. I was on a private jet with Mark the day he finally understood that Facebook probably did put Donald Trump in the White House, and came to his own dark conclusions from that. But most days, working on policy at Facebook was way less like enacting a chapter from Machiavelli and way more like watching a bunch of fourteen-year-olds who’ve been given superpowers and an ungodly amount of money, as they jet around the world to figure out what power has bought and brought them. That’s the story I’m here to tell.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“But what I’m seeing is that the more comfortable he gets, the less he cares. As his importance compounds, his regard diminishes.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“In other words, this is a moment when governments are more interested in surveillance than people’s privacy. Which is good for Facebook’s business.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“Parents at work talk about how they don’t allow their teens to have mobile phones, which only underscores how well these executives understand the real damage their product inflicts on young minds.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“I know something's up, when things don't move fast.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“One thing you learn as a diplomat, or maybe just as an adult: there are times to keep your thoughts and feelings to yourself.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“To me, this type of surveillance and monetization of young teens’ sense of worthlessness feels like a concrete step toward the dystopian future Facebook’s critics had long warned of.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“Facebook is operating illegally in China. One of America’s biggest publicly listed companies is completely indifferent to the rules.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“The sheer scale of the contemplated power grab silences us all. He’d control how the news is made, as well as the algorithm that targets and distributes it. What stays up and what doesn’t. Who is on the platform and who isn’t. Which would certainly come in handy if he runs for president.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“In America, they put staff in with the Trump campaign to help them stage the war of misinformation, trolling, and lies that won him the election.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“In China, they specifically built the software to order. In America, they put staff in with the Trump campaign to help them stage the war of misinformation, trolling, and lies that won him the election. And in Myanmar, they enabled posts that led to horrific sexual violence and genocide. A lethal carelessness. That’s what this company is,”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“For example, Facebook had planned to launch a Facebook for children code-named "Project Family," and Sheryl would occasionally remind the policy team of their "failure to do this while we had the opportunity," blaming the policy team for missing the chance to get kids on Facebook but she, like most of the leaders at Facebook with younger children, severely limits her kids' access to screens, let alone social media accounts. And she never shares images of her children on social media. Silicon Valley is awash in wooden Montessori toys and shrouded in total screen bans. Parents at work talk about how they don't allow their teens to have mobile phones, which only underscores how well these executives understand the real damage their product inflicts on young minds.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“I worry about this for everyone, even me. I worry about the day when people won’t tell me the truth straight. When they won’t have the hard conversation with me. When I sit in a meeting and everyone will agree with me. They won’t give me the bad news. They won’t challenge me. We are our own greatest risk. All of us.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“And it wasn’t just Joel. None of the senior leaders—Elliot or Sheryl or Mark—thought about this enough to put in place the kinds of systems we’d need, in Myanmar or other countries. They apparently didn’t care. These were sins of omission. It wasn’t the things they did; it was the things they didn’t do.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“This is the first time I’ve refused to do something they’ve asked, and it’s a clarifying lesson. I can see my bosses a little more clearly. And now I understand more about how they see me. It’s an uncomfortable realization of how little they care,”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“China is, in Mark’s eyes, just the end of a to-do list, the last major project to tackle. Like he’s playing a game of Risk and he needs to occupy every territory.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“Friends who have fallen for Sheryl’s Lean In schtick earnestly recommend going to her with my concerns. I get where they’re coming from—this is an issue she’s chosen to take a high profile on. Around this time she is quoted in a Bloomberg article recommending a zero tolerance policy to harassment and saying, “I think it’s great when people lose their jobs when it happens, because I think that is what will get people to not do it in the future. And I think it’s a leadership challenge. As a leader of a company, there needs to be no tolerance for it. People respond to what is tolerated and what is encouraged.” But having witnessed how she treats her own staff—not to mention her intimate relationship history with Joel, a relationship where he often stays at her house when he visits the Valley—and how often her actions differ from her words, I know that’s not viable.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“You could tell Facebook “don’t take my contacts” but then when you opened Messenger, they’d take them by default. And his team is instrumental in the development of the “People You May Know” tool, which is described by Mashable as Facebook’s “creepy as hell tool” for its ability to make uncomfortable friend recommendations, such as when a sperm donor was recommended a biological child he had never met. It’s a growth-at-all-costs approach.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“Maybe fearing that Vaughan won’t understand why Debbie’s correct, Elliot chimes in: Debbie is 100% right here. Vaughan, you need to appreciate that “respecting the rule of law” only goes so far to explain or justify government behavior. To many people who follow human rights issues and international law, the foundation of international law is the rejection of the so-called Nuremberg defense—the claim by Nazi’s that they “were just following orders” and respecting the laws and policies of the Nazi state. Vaughan simply thanks Elliot for “the articulate background.” I can’t tell if he’s being brazen or genuine. There is simply no putting this man off his putt. Either way, I think the point at which you have to explain Nuremberg to the head of the team leading your China entry is probably a red flag.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“I know Mark doesn’t particularly care for alcohol, but he now tells me he’s collecting either sherry or port, I never know the difference, and what matters to him isn’t the alcohol itself but that it’s from when Andrew Jackson was president. So I ask him who Andrew Jackson is and why he likes him so much. Mark explains that Jackson’s the greatest president America has ever had, that he was ruthless, a populist and an individualist, and that he “got stuff done.” He also spilled a lot of blood expanding the territory of the United States, sent five Native tribes out onto the Trail of Tears, but Mark doesn’t mention that.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“Parscale’s team also ran voter suppression campaigns. They were targeted at three different groups of Democrats: young women, white liberals who might like Bernie Sanders, and Black voters. These voters got so-called dark posts—nonpublic posts that only they would see. They’d be invisible to researchers or anyone else looking at their feed. The idea was: feed them stuff that’ll discourage them from voting for Hillary. One made for Black audiences was a cartoon built around her 1996 sound bite that “African Americans are super predators.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

“My conclusion: It was just that Joel, Elliot, Sheryl, and Mark didn’t give a fuck.”
― Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism