Review:
Back in 2009, Sarah Wynn-Williams was convinced that Facebook could play a powerful and important part in world politics. The problem was that, at the time, no one at Facebook seemed to realize it. She ended up having to pitch her own job (she was initially hired as Manager of Global Public Policy), and it wasn't until about 2011 that she convinced anyone to give her and her ideas a shot.
Even then, there were communication hurdles. While Wynn-Williams (who'd previously worked in New Zealand's embassy in Washington, D.C.) was used to focusing on government policies and talking to people who represented whole countries, none of that was clicking with the folks at Facebook, who were primarily concerned with whatever might help Facebook expand its user base. Many times, it felt like Wynn-Williams was still thinking of herself as working for a government when, in fact, she was working for a business.
This is one of those books I decided to read on a whim. Wynn-Williams paints a damning picture of Facebook and its executives - even in her earlier days at the company, there were moments that were discomfiting and/or enraging. That said, this was also an incredibly frustrating read, because Wynn-Williams encountered so very many red flags that often made it difficult to tell why she didn't flee Facebook well before her termination in 2017. In later portions, she had reasons that were technically understandable - she was due to give birth and needed the insurance, she was her family's primary breadwinner, etc. It didn't sound like any of those reasons applied during some of the earlier horrifying red flag moments, however (although I've realized that it wasn't always clear what year some of these events happened).
Overall, this was very readable, but I couldn't help but wonder how much of this global train wreck would have been possible if Wynn-Williams hadn't managed to convince Mark Zuckerberg that talking to politicians was worthwhile. Hands down, the most enjoyable moments in this book were the ones where Zuckerberg was humiliated, chastised, or ignored by someone he admired in some way...but in the end it's cold comfort at best.
Why "she didn't flee Facebook well before her termination in 2017" - I could ask a similar question: why am I still on Facebook despite its many issues? It's still the easiest (and sometimes but not always the best) way to keep in touch with many friends and family; and using Social Fixer (as well as a judicious use of Friends lists and Favorites feed) has helped me get by some of its negative aspects.
ReplyDeleteI probably should have included some specifics, but in Wynn-Williams' case, the red flags were things like Facebook execs asking her to test out whether South Korean would immediately arrest Facebook employees by offering herself up as a body to be arrested, one of the executives getting really mad at her because she refused to sleep in the same bed as them, and Mark Zuckerberg almost ruining an employee's chances of getting out of prison because he really wanted to turn their story into a feel-good post on his Facebook page. I'm similarly still on Facebook because it's the easiest way to keep in touch with many friends and family, but, if I were working there and seeing what Wynn-Williams saw, I'd have been in a panic to leave. She doesn't even bring up the possibility of trying to leave until relatively late in the book, and by that point she's too desperate to keep her health insurance (which I can also understand, although considering that she got censured for not being more responsive while in a coma, her eventual termination for whatever dumb reason they could think up seemed inevitable).
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