A review by kurtwombat
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams

challenging dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

5.0

 I was vaguely aware of many of the issues brought up about Facebook in CARELESS PEOPLE but it was nice to see them all in one place and the soil from which they sprang—seeded by greed and careless indifference. Facebook is actively trying to suppress the book and any negative reviews I’ve read attack the author not the message. This was all fertilizer for my interest in the book. CARELESS PEOPLE works on twin tracks. Track one is the idealistic view of the author of what good Facebook could do in the world. Track two is the path that Facebook actually follows. The author actively sought a job at Facebook hoping to ride it along her ideal track. Upon finally getting a job and virtually creating her own position, she found that the two tracks virtually never overlapped. Kinda like that dream where you are about to fall, you keep reaching to hold onto something but never quite get a grip—the author faces frustration after frustration in her attempt to get the tracks together. Fascinating to follow the growth of Facebook into an international machine demanding growth at any cost. I am tempted to go issue by issue but instead I will just highly recommend the book and let you follow the evolution of Facebook from benign social media apparatus to a global dangerous influence.