A book by a former Facebook employee about the inner workings at the social media giant has been assailed by company executives — but the mystique surrounding the book appears to have helped it soar on bestseller charts.
A recent edition of my Tuesday Tech Drop featured a blurb about a book written by Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former director of global public policy for Facebook who has filed a whistleblower complaint against Meta with the Securities and Exchange Commission. I specifically wrote about the most widely publicized claim: that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives took steps to censor Facebook users about a decade ago, as the company sought to expand into China.
The book features other striking allegations about company leadership, including recollections that portray then-Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg as unprofessional and Joel Kaplan, then Facebook’s vice president for global public policy, as creepily inappropriate and inconsiderate. (Kaplan did not respond to NBC News’ requests for comment, while Sandberg declined to comment.)
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The memoir, titled “Careless People,” also purports to shed light on scandals that have cast a pall over Facebook, such as its dubious use by the Trump campaign to target voters in 2020 and its role in spreading propaganda that helped fuel the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar.
Meta has characterized Wynn-Williams’ claims as “old news” and said her book is “a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims...
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