Facebook – Christopher Wink

Careless People: a Facebook whistleblower’s account

Mark Zuckerberg could reign “like the Queen,” writes Sarah Wynn Williams.

She’s the former Facebook exec turned whistleblower who’s new book Careless People details her time working closely with Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and other international staff.

“I’m struck by the impermanence of importance,” she writes. “And yet, Mark could conceivably continue to hold his place cheering world leaders for another 50 years. He’ll see these leaders off in the generations of leaders that follow them.”

Other former staff at Facebook, later renamed Meta, were critical of Wynn Williams’s portrayal. But the book is detailed and riveting. It portrays not evil-doers, but, like the characters in the Fitzgerald novel that originates the book’s title, self-interested and vain people who have more power than they’ve earned.

“A different path was possible,” she writes. “We all would be better off.”

Below I have notes for my future reference.

Newspapers were once the big tech platform companies everyone hated

This is adapted from a Twitter thread.

There are many parallels between early newspapers and today. Like then, today big tech platforms are vilified for taking creative destruction to a more harmful end to civic discourse.

Then partisanship and misinformation gave rise to the modern concept of editing. Perhaps something akin is happening again.

Facebook anonymous login [my KYW interview]

Whether Facebook anonymous login will matter or not will be determined if enough sites and apps see enough benefit in the frictionless vetting of users by Facebook that they’ll forgo trying to collect user data themselves. Find snippets of my interview with KYW in their quick-hit here.

The Social Network: thoughts and reading on the Facebook movie

I tend to watch films in move theaters when I think they’ll have a particularly significant impact, will be worth remembering years from now and, of course, when I’m lured in by the story.

The Social Network, Aaron Sorkin’s film that tells with some literary license of the meteoric first-year rise of Facebook, fit the bill.

Last week, I saw and was greatly entertained — call it a 9 out of 10, not perfect but sure close and worth the price of admission.

Continue reading The Social Network: thoughts and reading on the Facebook movie

Earlier this month, I proposed to my longtime girlfriend, saying that we would both be happier and healthier if we lived together for the rest of our lives. She agreed.