In 2021, when Sophie Zhang, a data scientist, blew the whistle on her former employer, Facebook, the world was shocked at just how much power Facebook had had over global political and social issues.

But no one was surprised that the company wasn’t the saintly, do-gooder it had claimed to be in the early 2000s, when most of us embraced Facebook for connecting us with old school mates.

Since then, the façade gradually fell and many of us grew skeptical of Facebook as the platform designed for community building and social connection. After the 2016 presidential election, however, whatever appreciation we had for Facebook plummeted down to the ditches and remained there.

There are so many things that Facebook did well in its early years. But as any registered company, Facebook also has the legal obligation to further its own commercial interests. Consequently, the platform that claimed to want to democratise the internet ended up causing extreme psychosocial harm across the world. The road to hell is paved with good intensions, as they say.

Over the weekend, I finished reading a book titled Careless people – A story of where I used to work. A book I devoured during my runs, gasping mildly, smirking, and shaking my head in disbelief at what I was hearing. It’s dark and funny and deeply disturbing.

It’s a memoir of a Kiwi-American, former-diplomat who created the international policy team at Facebook—just before it started engaging with governments. She remained in a leadership position throughout some of the biggest political and social events that Facebook was involved in, including (but not limited to) the internet[.]org project’s entry into Asia, the hate crimes in Myanmar, the “Facebook elections” in the Philippines and the US, the company’s stealth launch in China, and the preparations for the senate hearing.

In her book, Sarah Wynn-Williams talks about how careless the company’s leadership was in their handling of the power that comes with owning and managing tools that can manipulate the truth at scale.

There are plenty of themes in this book that’re great for staying up at night.

Things like workplace culture, how the corporate world sees motherhood and maternity leave, how sometimes girl bosses can be bad bosses, how the idea of heroes is deeply flawed, how whistleblowers spend years silent and complicit, how even big companies with thousands of employees can be dangerously  understaffed, and so much more.

I’ll be thinking and writing about these in the coming weeks, and if you also read the book, I’d love to hear your thoughts.