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car6330 's review for:
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism
by Sarah Wynn-Williams
dark
informative
sad
tense
fast-paced
I would recommend this book for everyone to know how insidious facebooks impact has had on our world. If anything, this should be assigned reading in schools.
I hope that with the next generation there will be tighter control in what companies like Facebook can do (from giving China external users data, targeting vulnerable teens with ad campaigns focusing on their insecurities, to censoring free speech and allowing hate speech to proliferate and lead to genocide) but I can’t help but feel disillusioned like the author herself. It seems that no matter what, people will always settle for money and forgo morality to get what they want which doesn’t give me much faith in ourselves as a species. The actions the company did in the background are so egregious it amazes me how Zuckerberg isn’t in jail already.
I do feel some empathy for the author as it’s a tough spot to be in with wanting to support your family and try to make the best of a bad situation, but her naivety and complacency contributed to a lot of things. She made contact with the government of Myanmar and within a few years of her initial meeting, genocide and crimes against humanity destroyed a population of people and whatever chance the country had of trying to become a democracy. Could she have possibly known where this could lead? Maybe not, but at some point working with people capable of such harm, I’d want out as soon as possible and couldn’t imagine being in denial for this long. That said, I am glad she had the courage to bring this story out into the light at least and hope that with stories like these coming out that actions like this will not be repeated in the future.
I hope that with the next generation there will be tighter control in what companies like Facebook can do (from giving China external users data, targeting vulnerable teens with ad campaigns focusing on their insecurities, to censoring free speech and allowing hate speech to proliferate and lead to genocide) but I can’t help but feel disillusioned like the author herself. It seems that no matter what, people will always settle for money and forgo morality to get what they want which doesn’t give me much faith in ourselves as a species. The actions the company did in the background are so egregious it amazes me how Zuckerberg isn’t in jail already.
I do feel some empathy for the author as it’s a tough spot to be in with wanting to support your family and try to make the best of a bad situation, but her naivety and complacency contributed to a lot of things. She made contact with the government of Myanmar and within a few years of her initial meeting, genocide and crimes against humanity destroyed a population of people and whatever chance the country had of trying to become a democracy. Could she have possibly known where this could lead? Maybe not, but at some point working with people capable of such harm, I’d want out as soon as possible and couldn’t imagine being in denial for this long. That said, I am glad she had the courage to bring this story out into the light at least and hope that with stories like these coming out that actions like this will not be repeated in the future.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Rape, Sexual harassment