Book banter: Careless People & Zuckerberg gossip

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The buzz about Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams has thrown Facebook, Meta and Zuckerberg into a major snit. SFGate reports:
Meta, which runs Facebook, is trying to squash the book’s splash. On Wednesday, citing her non-disparagement agreement, the company won an interim arbitration claim that blocks Wynn-Williams from further selling and promoting the book. It doesn’t appear that the order will extend to her publisher, Flatiron Books.

From a read of the book, it’s clear why Meta wants to stop the spread of Wynn-Williams’ account: Its chief executive comes off badly. Though many of the book’s larger points have been previously reported, the anecdotes from Wynn-Williams’ globe-spanning interactions with Zuckerberg are the fresh, detail-rich stories you’d expect in a tell-all memoir. She casts him as hot-tempered, unaccountable for his mistakes, ignorant about history and — in one cringey board game session — an extremely sore loser.
Some of the moments she describes were already public. Wynn-Williams accuses Zuckerberg of lying at a 2018 Senate hearing on data privacy and downplaying the amount that Facebook had worked with the Chinese Communist Party to try to get its app unblocked in the country.

The New York Post reports:
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is a “careless” executive who sought to convince China to let his company operate on the mainland by helping it develop censorship tools and bolster its artificial intelligence capabilities — all while concealing those efforts from Congress, according to a new memoir.

Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former Meta employee who worked at Facebook for seven years before the social media giant rebranded as Meta, is the author of “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism.”

The book detailed an alleged “rotten company culture” that included “shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards” under Zuckerberg and ex-No. 2 Sheryl Sandberg, who were described as “callously indifferent to the price others would pay for their own enrichment.”

Wynn-Williams, the former director of global public policy at Facebook, left the company in 2018.
Her book describes a culture of power, deference, and secrecy within Meta, where executives allegedly bend over backward to court authoritarian regimes and prioritize growth at all costs. She makes serious allegations, including claims of sexual harassment by Joel Kaplan, a top policy executive. Meta has denied these allegations, stating they were found to be “misleading” and “unfounded” during an internal investigation. Wynn-Williams’ memoir highlights Meta’s role in significant global events, such as exacerbating political violence in Myanmar and its involvement in Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Wynn-Williams criticizes the company’s handling of these situations and its lack of concern for the consequences of its corporate actions.


Zuck, far above the hoi polloi 



By Germaine: Posh dumb f**k

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