Book

Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

Mar 2025 🇺🇸 Flatiron Books Ages 13–17

Careless People is Sarah Wynn-Williams' 2025 memoir covering her nearly seven years as Facebook's, later Meta's, director of global public policy. Most of the book concerns internal decisions about growth, censorship, and the company's pursuit of the Chinese market. It also recounts an episode she says she witnessed: a leaked April 2017 internal document showing Facebook offered advertisers the ability to target 13-to-17-year-olds across Facebook and Instagram at moments she says were flagged as emotionally vulnerable — feeling 'worthless,' 'stressed,' or 'like a failure' — including pitching beauty products to teen girls who had just deleted a selfie. She frames this as evidence that commercial incentives were allowed to override concern for young users' wellbeing. She later expanded on this account in written responses to U.S. Senate questions. TechKids Foundation includes the book for this specific, congressionally-referenced episode, not as an independent clinical finding.

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CITATION

Wynn-Williams, Sarah. Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism. Flatiron Books, March 11, 2025.

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