Because like all things that get press for being ruthlessly litigated to protect Facebook’s interests, Careless People, A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn Williams put an emphasis on the role Facebook has played across the world in policy. Sarah Wynn Williams pitches her idea that Facebook will experience global regulatory forces as it grows, and she’s adamant that Facebook has great power for good in the world, an idealism she eventually loses as she works in policy for Facebook.

Initially, she reports that Mark Zuckerberg has little interest in politics and little interest in the kind of work necessary for Facebook to keep up with its exploding growth, which includes diplomatically working with governments throughout the world to address each government’s regulatory efforts, privacy efforts, and in some instances authoritarian surveillance interests. It seems Wynn-Williams has an almost prescient idea that Facebook will be this global free speech and revolutionary marketing tool. It’s important to note that when she pitches this idea about Facebook being a tool for social revolution, she’s met with less enthusiasm, but when she focuses on Facebook’s growth, she’s met with more enthusiasm for her ideas, further solidifying Facebook’s interests in business over interests in ethics and integrity.

It’s worth noting that when the new policy director is hired, Joel Kaplan, who is a former George W Bush staffer, Wynn Williams remarks at his American-centric ideas about the role of policy at Facebook, even as far as to funding PACs throughout the world, not realizing PACs are an American invention, and many countries have strict campaign finance laws that prevent such activities from occurring. She jokes that they could do that for despots and dictators, hoping full well Kaplan doesn’t do that, as it would be seen as bribery and corruption.

Wynn Williams’ explanation of Facebook policy is often the competing interests of the governments over Facebook’s need for extreme business growth. Zuckerberg writes an email about expanding into China, and gaining access to 650 million potential users, while China seeks to block free speech in general. Zuckerberg, committed to growth at all costs, negotiates with the Chinese for ways to overcome China’s objections to Facebook eventually finding workarounds that Wynn Williams catalogs in her book addressing data centers and access to data that has long term implications for American security and interests in the region.

An interesting observation Wynn Williams makes is that policy changes from content moderation policy developed by a team of policy experts to one man autocracy of Zuckerberg deciding what can and cannot be taken down. It seems the new policy put into place involves two criteria. The first is a credible threat to block Facebook in the country or the second is a risk to employees. Facebook clearly puts its own interests ahead of democratic ideals like free speech, the right to protest and gather, and the right to dissent. In essence, Facebook is putting its global corporate interests ahead of democratic ideals, which one might say is the situation we are now in with the rise of authoritarianism being upheld by the corporate sector across the world.

Wynn Williams talks about the coming Facebook hatred in the mid 2010’s, a backlash against Facebook for not paying taxes and for being completely obsessed with advertising dollars over actual benefit to individuals and governments throughout the world. They are in fact at this juncture experiencing a huge backlash. In response, they decide that politicians should count even more on Facebook for their political campaigns, which is like a Pandora’s box they can never close because in effect, Facebook is supporting and providing clearance for abysmal candidates with authoritarian tendencies. Could you say in some way that Facebook’s policies on content moderation and approval of undemocratic candidates have led to the predicament we’re all in? Autocracy rising throughout the globe, misinformation repeated and being labeled true. This indictment of Facebook’s role in the growing destabilization of democracy is just one way Wynn Williams talks about her loss of idealism in the face of her growing disenchantment with Facebook’s potential for good in the world squandered by the capitalistic goons in charge.

Wynn-Williams makes many points about Facebook’s need to find a way into China that is best left to someone who worked there and is worth a read to enlighten the audience into the subterfuge Facebook’s PR campaign is doing against its actual alleged actions in China. Wynn Williams makes her final points that there would always be an abundance of money for Facebook executives, yet they would never do the right thing to ensure autocratic regimes didn’t use Facebook data to arrest and harass individuals promoting human rights or dissenting views, or prevent misinformation in the election of Trump and others across the globe. It is so incredibly damning to watch Facebook’s failure and our inability to understand the long-term implications of technology like social media while the technology companies race to make Artificial Intelligence the next technology with unintended consequences.