Book Review | Facebook Unmasked By Page-Turner
Wynn-Williams’ journey with Facebook is chequered, uncharted and completely out of the box, just as her travels and meetings were
There’s Life without Facebook and the Internet? Really? Send me the link.
Funny, but not far from the truth. Our lives revolve around the ubiquitous and all-pervasive Internet, of which Facebook (now Meta) is one of the most colourful byproducts. For each, it comes with its own definition. But how many have actually wondered what goes on behind this most clicked application and how do people who run it put their heads together?
Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former New Zealand diplomat and an international lawyer found herself suddenly bitten by the bug to “save the world”, being overcome by a “Facebook epiphany”. This was way back in 2009, when it “still was possible to be hopeful about the internet” and “be optimistic about Facebook”. She pitched, and pitched real hard, for a job in Facebook, with a firm belief that she could make the people who ran it see that it was going to change the world. Her thoughts, and rightly so, were on the incredible amount of data at its disposal, which spelt power. Ironically, it was this data accumulation that would pose trouble for the company in future, and would to a large extent destroy subscribers’ confidence.
Wynn-Williams’ journey with Facebook is chequered, uncharted and completely out of the box, just as her travels and meetings were. The meeting with the German delegation is hilarious, “when the Germans disapprove of everything Facebook stands for”, as is Mark Zuckerberg’s reluctant interaction with the New Zealand PM. When she visits Cartagena, the bit about Hillary Clinton, then US Secretary of State, makes you sit up. But when this pregnant FB official takes on the junta and the Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in chaotic Myanmar, you miss a heartbeat. Davos, Colombia, Turkey – meetings and policy discussions are hilariously interspersed with the travails of a breastfeeding mother whose pump needs to be plugged in. And then there is that private jet travel experience with the Zuckerberg entourage and the ultra-luxurious stay in an Indonesian resort en route a three-week business trip in Asia. And while flowing through dinners at Samsung headquarters in South Korea and the fish markets and Michelin star restaurants in Tokyo, Sarah Wynn-Williams gets to know her boss, Mark Zuckerberg, for the first time.
Very heartwarming, very exciting and a complete list of who’s who in a book delightfully jovial and funny. It touches upon core issues like the app’s user engagement policies and a general nonchalance of the FB top rung towards its employees, among other notable elements. But Wynn-Williams’ pageturner is difficult to keep aside.
Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work
By Sarah Wynn-Williams
Pan Macmillan
pp. 390; Rs 899
