Why I Believe Sarah Wynn-Williams’ Careless People: Inside the Truth About Facebook and Meta

Who doesn’t know that social media has fueled unrealistic ideas and false standards, and that the culture of platforms like Facebook has been a problem for years? I remember stories about men luring young girls through Facebook. I have heard too many accounts of people meeting on the platform, and there was even a major police case in Nigeria that started there, just like in countless other countries. People have lost everything because of connections made online, from fraud to kidnapping.

Cybercrime has surged, and when people say, “Facebook users are living in their own world,” it is often because of how easily false narratives spread. Sponsored posts chase traffic, not truth. At the end of the day, these platforms are designed to generate profit, even when it costs people their peace of mind.

That is not an exaggeration. It is lived experience for many families. What started as a simple way to reconnect with old classmates slowly became something much more complicated, and in some cases, much more dangerous. Platforms like Facebook, now known as Meta, were built on the promise of connection. The message in the beginning was hopeful: bring the world closer, empower communities, and give everyone a voice. It sounded noble. It sounded necessary. But somewhere along the road, the mission changed.

Across the world, headlines began to reflect a darker reality. In 2016, a kidnapping case in Lagos shocked the public when investigators revealed that contact between victim and suspect began through Facebook messaging. In the United States, the tragic murder of Nicole Lovell began with online contact through social media platforms, including Facebook. Families who once believed these platforms were harmless gathering places suddenly saw how easily predators could create fake identities, manipulate trust, and exploit vulnerability.

These are not isolated incidents. They are part of a pattern. Romance scams that drained life savings. Fake investment groups promising wealth and delivering ruin. Human trafficking networks using friend requests as bait. Each time, the story begins the same way: a connection request, a message, a shared moment that feels harmless.

Behind the screen, however, lies a powerful machine built not on friendship, but on engagement.

Engagement means time. Time means data. Data means profit.

That is why the memoir Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams has unsettled so many readers. Wynn-Williams spent seven years inside Facebook’s global public policy division. She joined in the early 2010s believing deeply in the company’s founding ideals. Like many employees at the time, she believed it could genuinely strengthen democracy and community.

Her book tells a different story.

She describes what she calls “lethal carelessness,” a culture where growth became sacred and caution became inconvenient. According to her account, the internal priority shifted from protecting users to expanding markets and increasing revenue. Idealism slowly gave way to strategy. Responsibility became secondary to dominance.

One of the most disturbing areas she discusses is the platform’s influence on politics. During the 2016 United States presidential election, misinformation spread at a scale never seen before. False narratives traveled faster than fact-checkers could respond. Internal debates, she claims, revealed awareness of the risks. Yet meaningful intervention lagged. Engagement metrics remained strong. Advertising revenue continued to rise.

Then there is Myanmar. The United Nations later concluded that Facebook played a significant role in spreading hate speech that fueled violence against the Rohingya people. Wynn-Williams criticizes what she portrays as a slow and insufficient response to escalating danger. The consequences were not digital. They were human.

Another deeply troubling claim in the memoir concerns teenagers. She alleges that product features were designed to exploit emotional vulnerability because heightened emotion drives engagement. When a young person feels insecure, anxious, or excluded, they scroll longer. They compare more. They react more. And every reaction strengthens the advertising engine.

This is where the contradiction becomes impossible to ignore. Executives publicly speak about safety and community standards, yet many of them fiercely protect their own children from exposure. When lawmakers questioned Mark Zuckerberg in congressional hearings about privacy and user data, he appeared cautious about his own personal information. During one widely discussed moment, he declined to share details such as recent hotel stays or personal location history when pressed. The contrast was striking: billions of users’ data flows freely through complex tracking systems, yet the architect of the platform exercises strict boundaries around his own privacy.

Wynn-Williams also writes about alleged negotiations with China. According to her account, leadership explored building tools that would comply with Chinese government censorship requirements in order to enter that market. She frames this as a moral compromise, arguing that profit motives overshadowed human rights considerations. She further claims that transparency around these discussions was discouraged internally.

Meta has strongly denied many of the book’s allegations, calling them inaccurate and defamatory. Shortly after publication in March 2025, the company secured an emergency arbitration ruling based on a non-disparagement clause in Wynn-Williams’s severance agreement. The ruling restricts her from promoting the book publicly. The book itself, however, remains available and has become a bestseller in multiple countries.

Ironically, attempts to limit its promotion amplified public curiosity. Readers began asking why a technology giant would move so quickly to silence a former executive if the claims were entirely baseless.

Beyond corporate strategy, Careless People also describes workplace culture. Wynn-Williams alleges instances of inappropriate conduct by senior figures and describes an environment she found dismissive toward women, particularly during pregnancy and maternity leave. She recounts being assigned intense travel schedules while heavily pregnant. Whether one accepts every detail or not, the narrative presents a portrait of a company driven by ambition at a pace that left little room for humanity.

And yet, perhaps the most powerful aspect of the memoir is personal. Wynn-Williams does not portray herself as a distant observer. She admits she was part of the system. She believed in it. She defended it. Her gradual disillusionment forms the emotional backbone of the story. That internal conflict is what makes the account resonate. It is not merely an attack. It is a reckoning.

We must also speak honestly about how these platforms collect and use information. Every like, every pause while scrolling, every search term becomes data. That data is refined into detailed psychological profiles used to target advertising with surgical precision. This is not conspiracy theory. It is the business model. Users are not the customers. Advertisers are. Users are the product.

Parents increasingly recognize this. Many executives in Silicon Valley limit their children’s screen time. Some enroll them in technology-restricted schools. Meanwhile, millions of families struggle to manage the addictive pull of algorithms engineered to keep attention locked in place.

The long-term consequences are still unfolding. Rising anxiety among teenagers. Political polarization amplified by outrage-driven content. Fraud networks scaling globally with minimal cost. Reputations destroyed in viral waves of misinformation.

And yet, billions remain active daily.

Why?

Because connection is powerful. Because community matters. Because the desire to belong is timeless. That is what made Facebook brilliant in the beginning. It tapped into something deeply human.

The question now is whether the architecture of modern social media can ever truly prioritize wellbeing over profit. Can a platform built on surveillance advertising suddenly become a guardian of mental health? Can a corporation accountable to shareholders willingly slow growth in order to reduce harm?

Careless People forces these questions into the open. It challenges readers to reconsider the narrative that technology companies are neutral platforms. It argues they are powerful actors shaping culture, politics, and even life and death outcomes.

This is not about rejecting technology altogether. It is about demanding responsibility. It is about remembering that innovation without ethics becomes exploitation. It is about protecting the next generation from manipulation disguised as connection.

The stories that once shocked us are no longer rare. They are warnings. Every headline about online fraud, grooming, kidnapping, or radicalization that traces back to social media is another reminder that digital spaces are not separate from real life. They are extensions of it.

If millions are reading this, let it not be out of curiosity alone. Let it be because we are finally ready to confront what has been ignored for too long: the true cost of unchecked social media power, the illusion of harmless likes, the silent trade of personal data, and the responsibility that must come with global influence.

Connection should never come at the price of conscience.

Do I have a Facebook account? Yes, I do. Do I use it often? No, I do not. But here is the truth I cannot ignore: I believe this book.

I believe what Sarah Wynn-Williams wrote in Careless People because long before her memoir was published, the warning signs were already there. Governments raised concerns about Facebook’s influence on elections, misinformation, and data privacy. Ordinary people shared painful experiences about online scams, broken relationships, identity theft, and emotional manipulation. The alarm did not begin with her. She simply gave it a voice from the inside.

When a former executive of Facebook, now operating under Meta, describes a shift from idealism to corporate power and profit, it does not sound far-fetched. It sounds familiar. It reflects what users have been saying for years about social media addiction, data exploitation, targeted advertising, and the mental health crisis tied to constant comparison.

Before this book ever existed, I wrote a post in 2019 calling Facebook a dating app. At the time, I was watching Paternity Court, and episode after episode told the same story: relationships formed or destroyed through Facebook messages, secret accounts, online affairs, and hidden conversations. Because of the demographics on that show, I focused my post on Black America. But the truth is not limited to one community. It is universal.

Watching those programs and listening to story after story about how social media disrupted families was deeply unsettling. Marriages ended over inbox messages. Children were born into confusion because of online relationships that began as casual chats. People who had never met in person were shaping each other’s destinies through a screen.

That is not a small matter.

Many still believe that what they see online is real life. They assume that influencers, bloggers, and online personalities share their full truth. They do not realize that many of those who profit from these platforms protect themselves carefully. Some have separate devices for business and personal life. Some share curated fragments, not reality. They understand the algorithm. They understand engagement. They understand branding.

But the average user treats social media as an extension of daily life. They post in real time. They argue in real time. They expose their pain, their location, their relationships, their struggles. And in a digital economy driven by data collection, targeted ads, and behavioral tracking, that level of openness can come at a cost.

This is where digital privacy becomes serious. Every click, every search, every reaction feeds a system designed to maximize engagement and advertising revenue. The business model of social media platforms is not built around protecting emotional wellbeing. It is built around keeping attention. The longer you stay, the more valuable your data becomes.

We must also be careful with sweeping judgments. It is easy to say that the wealthy do not care about ordinary people, or that corporate leaders see themselves as above everyone else. The truth is more complex. What is clear, however, is that corporate strategy often prioritizes growth, market dominance, and shareholder value. That priority can create distance between decision-makers and the everyday consequences users experience.

Many people do not fully understand what Meta actually is. It is not just a social networking site. It is a global technology corporation with multiple platforms, massive data infrastructure, artificial intelligence investments, and long-term ambitions in virtual reality and digital ecosystems. The scale of its influence is enormous. That influence carries responsibility.

This is why conversations about Facebook scandals, social media manipulation, online safety, and corporate accountability matter. They are not gossip topics. They are cultural turning points. When insiders speak, when governments investigate, when families share painful stories, we should pay attention.

Before Facebook bought Instagram in 2012, Instagram was simple, human, and almost innocent in its way. It was a space where people shared snapshots of their lives, not curated brands, not algorithms deciding your worth. It was raw, personal, and creative. You posted a picture because it mattered to you, not because a robot decided it would get you likes. People followed people they liked, shared moments that felt real, and discovered communities organically. The vibe was about connection and expression, not manipulation and traffic.

After the acquisition, everything changed. Slowly, subtly, and then all at once, Instagram became a machine. Algorithms replaced timelines. Instead of seeing posts chronologically, you were fed content designed to maximize engagement and, by extension, ad revenue. The platform learned how to keep you scrolling, clicking, and reacting. The more emotionally charged the content, the better it performed. Your joy, your sadness, your envy—it all became fuel for the algorithm.

What was once a personal photo-sharing space turned into a pressure cooker for attention, comparison, and exploitation. The clean, simple joy of sharing a moment became the constant chase for validation: likes, views, comments. Posts are filtered and pushed by invisible robots that decide what you see based on your behavior, not what you actually care about. The more the platform learned about you, the more it manipulated your emotions to keep you scrolling. Teenagers became targets because their brains are wired to respond to social validation, and Instagram knows it. Mental health studies now show rising anxiety, depression, and self-esteem issues linked directly to heavy Instagram use, especially among young people.

Then there’s content moderation, or the lack of it. Policies exist on paper, but enforcement is inconsistent. Dangerous challenges, misinformation, harassment, and explicit content still slip through, sometimes with devastating consequences. The platform profits from attention, even when that attention comes from fear, outrage, or shame. Meanwhile, journalists, former employees, and everyday users who raise concerns often feel ignored. Transparency is minimal, and decisions about what harms users are made by opaque corporate teams, far removed from the people who suffer real-world consequences.

Instagram has also become a playground for performative lifestyles. Influencers, celebrities, and brands dominate feeds, creating impossible standards. What was once a place to share life is now a stage where curated perfection sells products, lifestyles, and ideals that most people cannot reach. The lines between reality and performance blur. And while many users expose themselves completely, sharing their real struggles and moments, the platform still profits off their vulnerability, using it to feed the next ad or engagement metric.

In short, Instagram transformed from a human, personal, creative space into a machine: a finely tuned, emotion-manipulating, revenue-generating engine. The soul of the platform, the sense of connection and authenticity, has been systematically stripped away, replaced by algorithms, ads, and psychological hooks designed to keep you glued to the screen. The reality is stark: what Instagram was meant to be is gone. What exists now is a platform that measures human behavior like data points, cares more about revenue than real connection, and, in the process, exposes its users to manipulation, pressure, and harm.

Over the last decade, Facebook, now Meta, has been called into court time and time again. These are not petty disagreements; these are cases that touch on privacy, data misuse, mental health, competition, and the very safety of users. The fact that these lawsuits keep coming should tell us something real: people are hurting, and the harm is serious enough to end up in court, not just in comment sections.

One of the biggest legal battles was an antitrust lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), arguing that Meta used monopoly power to squash competition, especially through its purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp. That case went on for years and even reached trial, with Mark Zuckerberg testifying under oath. In late 2025, a federal judge ruled in Meta’s favor, and the FTC is now appealing that judgment.

There are also court cases right now in the United States where parents and young adults are suing Meta for harm allegedly caused to children’s mental health and wellbeing. Plaintiffs in Los Angeles recently stood in front of a jury saying Instagram and Facebook were designed in ways that made them addictive, especially for teens, citing internal documents as evidence. These are emotional hearings, with parents describing real losses and struggles.

Across the world, Meta has faced court pressure over data and competition issues. In Spain, a court ordered Meta to pay nearly half a billion euros in damages to media outlets for unfair use of personal data to dominate digital advertising. And in France, 200 media organizations sued Meta for what they described as “illegal practice” of profiting from user data in ways that violated privacy protections.

These are not isolated incidents. In the United States, Meta previously settled privacy lawsuits involving facial recognition technology. States like Texas and Illinois took Meta to court for collecting and using people’s biometric data without clear user consent. The outcome: billions in penalties and new requirements on how social platforms can use people’s faces and information.

Then there are class-action lawsuits and collective actions. In the UK, a massive case has been certified on behalf of millions of users seeking compensation based on Meta’s handling and monetization of users’ personal data, a claim that could total billions.

And this is just the legal pressure from governments, companies, and media groups. Ordinary users have taken Meta to court too: people who had accounts wrongly disabled, people who felt unsafe or mistreated, people who lost personal content, all seeking justice or compensation. Some of these cases are small claims, others are ongoing civil actions. These individual stories add up to a chorus of listeners demanding answers.

Every time someone steps into a courtroom to challenge Meta, whether it’s a global regulator, a group of families, or an ordinary user fighting for their account, they are adding pressure to a system that has grown huge, powerful, and at times unaccountable.

We all know that no matter how strong Facebook may seem, whether it’s by the connections it has built or the digital world it has created, there is always a day of accountability coming. Even when some court cases seem to fail or stall, that should never stop people from speaking out, writing, and sharing the truth about the issues tied to Facebook and its platforms.

So don’t give up. It might take time. It might take many courtrooms, many headlines, and many voices. But one day, the goal of real accountability will become reality, not just on paper and every lawsuit, every testimony, every story matters in getting us there.

Yes, Mark Zuckerberg does have a Facebook page. He occasionally posts updates about Meta, company initiatives, and personal projects. However, unlike most users, his presence is highly curated and limited, he does not share personal life details in the way ordinary users do. Most of his posts are professional, promotional, or focused on announcements rather than daily personal interactions, but a reality check: does he actually run his Facebook page? I would say we all know the answer.

I still have my account. I still observe. But I no longer look at social media the way I once did. There is a difference between using a platform and trusting it. There is a difference between connection and dependency.

My hope is simple, which aligns with Wynn-Williams and millions of people: that people become wiser about how they use these platforms. That they protect their privacy. That they question what they consume. That they understand the difference between curated content and real life. And that they remember their worth is not measured by likes, comments, or digital applause.

Because in the end, social media is a tool. And any tool powerful enough to shape elections, relationships, reputations, and mental health must be handled with caution.

Let me say it plain: don’t be a fool. These platforms aren’t your friends, they’re a business. Guard yourself like someone is trying to break into your house, because every like, every click, and every piece of information is what they’re after. Treat it like your life depends on it, because in a way, it does.