Welcome to Litsy!

I read this so you don‘t have to. The author does absolutely ridiculous things to gain the professional attention & affection of her bosses at Facebook, including answering emails while she‘s supposed to be pushing her baby out into the world. Mark Zuckerburg is an absolute nut job and increasingly a dangerous nut job. And Sheryl Sandberg! Good Lord. Lean In means abuse the underlings. The book is eye opening but not a surprise.

Jumped into last night on my Kindle and liking it.

Can someone help confirm for me that I'm not Mandela-effecting my brain right now? I've just started the tagged, and she's recounting the shark attack she survived at 13 (I don't think it counts as a spoiler here, it's in the first few pages). I SWEAR I've read/heard this exact story before. Has she told it elsewhere? In an article or on a podcast or something? Does anyone know?

Ooer. This is pretty explosive. Facebook doesn't sound like a great place to work if you didn't go to Harvard, especially if you're a woman. Their operations in Myanmar and China sound particularly sinister, as does using their users' data to target advertising (eg targetting teenage girls with adverts for beauty products and weight loss pills when they delete selfies). A fascinating, eye-opening book.

Reading about the damage Facebook has done to democracy and society made me horrified, depressed and sick to my stomach. I literally felt like throwing up at the chapters about Facebook‘s role in the destabilization of Myanmar and active influence in the 2016 U.S. election. May Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Joel Kaplan, etc. all burn in Hell. 😖

I didn't need this book to tell me the type and degree of human garbage Zuckerberg is, but it was eye opening to get such details. Now that I'm done I need a shower

3/5 - topical, interesting but aggravating book to read.
Everyone in this book, including the author, seemed very amateurish, sometimes incompetent, and yes, careless.
While the author points at clear dysfunctions and at the lack of values, and shares her disenchantment, it was hard for me to take her seriously: her appalling naivety, her indecision about quitting (she actually gets fired) makes me think that she too sold her values for money.

The lady doth protest too much towards the end. You‘re telling me that with her resume she couldn‘t find a single other job or pay for private health insurance for a few months while she did? Sus.

This was just making me mad…Bailed at 36%

2/3 of the way through. Having worked in tech companies for the past 10 years as a software engineer I can say the attitude/culture showcased in this book is not singular to Facebook. I can see how given the same power and financial goals many places I‘ve worked would have pursued similar avenues. Unlike many reviewers I empathize with Sarah feeling stuck and hold less judgement for her. These companies twist your sense of individual power.

By the end of the first chapter I hated everyone in this book, including the author. I believe what she says about how Facebook worked. I just don‘t trust her, only one-eyed person in the land of the blind, pose.

1) I think it was the tagged, which I ordered as soon as I learned Meta was trying to suppress it.

2) I would have thought series, but I think I have ordered more stand-alones. I don't read a lot of series, and when I do, I tend to read them when all the books are out so I can binge them.

@TheSpineView ##Two4Tuesday

Current audiobook… 🤦🏽‍♀️

(2025)

Facebook, ugh.

This is a memoir by a former director of public policy at Facebook. The leadership and corporate culture she describes is even worse than you'd expect even if you dislike Facebook as much as I do. The only thing that doesn't ring quite true is the author's pose of persistent idealism even while collaborating with awful people on their awful goals. Still, I'm grateful for the story and hope the telling helps her conscience

I‘ve been Anti Facebook since day one. My original excuse was I was too old (still am). But I did cave about the time I came here 3 years ago. All for the sake of connecting w/ author communities. Well that didn‘t work out & when I saw that Fuckerberg donated to DJT, I deleted my account that same day. No regrets. I‘m totally not surprised that all the upper management are POS.

Ultimately, this is a not so uncommon tale about how we all fail.

Met someone who runs a book club but never reads the selections. I wouldn‘t want to discuss the book and possibly ruin it for them…would you?

Sarah Wynn-Williams worked persistently to be hired by Facebook, believing it could be a powerful force for good. Here she details her growing discomfort as she worked alongside company leaders including Mark Zuckerberg and Cheryl Sandburg. Particularly disturbing was the growing pattern of profit over ethical principles and partnerships with governments known for human rights violations. I read the audiobook narrated by the author (cont. below)

This was riveting, and I‘ve read some tech memoirs. Maybe it‘s the story telling, the cultural pieces of issues different countries had with facebook, or the juicy bits of gossip of the upper echelons of FB. Whatever it was, this one is engrossing and I highly recommend.

Weird ,but my post about buying this book that details just how much of a piece of garbage Zuckerberg is keeps getting taken off my Instagram......can't wait to read

You are invited to view my rambling May 23rd Friday Reads:

https://youtu.be/KHRLR4_jjVI

#LGBTQ #AsianHeritage #audiobooks #memoir #booktube

Next up

Imagine the daily awful you expect from 🤬uckerberg. This book chronicles that and a bit worse. Who didn‘t think Sandberg was a liar liar 👖🔥 with her fairy tale 💩of a book, but I wouldn‘t have pegged her as a sexual predator. While some readers point out how SWW doesn‘t truly grapple with her complicity, I‘m okay with her saving that for her own therapy sessions because we need more insiders spilling on this greedy & exploitative juggernaut.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Facebook whistleblower lays out some pretty disturbing, yet unsurprising, info. “Influence,” security, misogyny; and, sadly, that‘s just scratching the surface. There‘s a reason Zuckerberg didn‘t want this published.

I‘ve seen other reviewers say something along the lines of “no matter how horrible you think Facebook is, the reality is worse”. I‘m not shocked by anything here, but I am horrified by the depths of the depravity among the executives. I would have liked was more acknowledgment by Wynn-Williams of her own complicity. There‘s an astonishing lack of self awareness, but I appreciate this whistleblowing memoir. ⬇️

As a matter of fact, yes, I did forget to finish my #WeeklyFavorites collage for April until the 10th of May.

@Read4life

Zuck comes off as an absolute wiener. Wynn-Williams spills so much tea about Facebook and those in leadership positions. No wonder the company went to court over it resulting in the order to stop the advertising campaign. Ok, add to TBR. When someone tries to tell me NOT to read something, I‘m immediately reading it. Zuckerberg is a man-child who has been surrounded by enablers. A great, juicy, unsparing listen.

🤬🤬🤬

While this is a sad statement about any workplace, I laughed when I read it because my immediate thought was, “yeah, much like Facebook itself.”

“how things have been going” refers to the sexual harassment and toxic workplace environment that many feel at Facebook. There was even a secret group there. The Feminist Fight Club. In the FFC‘s effort to produce change, these disgusting tech bros would get in the way. If these men were not sexually harassing others, they were turning a blind eye. Collaborators are just as vile as perpetrators.

4.5/5

As bad as I thought Facebook (and social media as a whole) is, it's worse. This was a fairly demoralizing read, but I think it was good to get insight into some of the inner-workings of Facebook.

I get that this whole book is the author‘s mea culpa. I don‘t understand why she feels this need to hire someone for her role before she leaves FB. Find another job. Her husband doesn‘t sound like he likes San Francisco, so being black balled by tech bros shouldn‘t be an issue. And who would want to work for these disgusting excuses of humans anyway? Just find another job and leave.

🤬🤬🤬

I may need to check out Lean In from my library to truly appreciate how vile a person Sandberg is. Another anecdote has Sheryl insisting the author join her in bed on the private jet back from Davos. Apparently, that‘s a thing with Sheryl and her female employees…treating them like dolls. WTAF?

Here‘s just the beginning. They play Cataan next. Mark was poised to win, but Sarah beats him again. When he gets pissed, Sarah goes through all the strategic moves he could have taken to win the game and then broadens the context to how Mark‘s “winner takes all” attitude creates massive issues at Facebook. No wonder this asshat didn‘t want this book published. Now I want more. Who else who‘s witnessed this crap will be brave enough to speak up?

Observations the day after Trump won in 2016. And there‘s so many more that make me 🤮

Author comparing Zuckerberg 5 years earlier with no opinions and the priority of signing up more users to the 2016 Zuckerberg who‘s more concerned about writing a good FB post about his employee jailed in Brazil than calling government officials in Brazil to exert some influence in securing that employee‘s release. What an absolute POS.

This reads a bit like the memoir of someone who's escaped from a cult. The later parts of the book are a little repetitive, but overall it's maddeningly readable. Wynn-Williams seems to be working through her own feelings of culpability for the direction Facebook has gone, but that doesn't mean her claims aren't factual. I'm not sure I can justify keeping my Meta accounts after this.

"Mark tells Elliot to do something about the headlines and Elliot explains that would be difficult because they seem to be true."

I'm doing my best to take this book with a grain of salt as the account of just one person who has her own stuff to work through, but when the book itself, in describing a totally different situation, seems to predict how the release of the book was handled, I'm more inclined to believe the author about other things.

Poor Mark🤮

🤞🏼for any dish on his Hawaii compound. Really wish someone would do a deep dive on the crap he‘s pulled there. And I‘m talking book or documentary. Given how much land he‘s got, I‘d prefer drone shots for max impact on the rest of us peasants.

I knew this book would show truly deplorable behavior, but I was not ready for such bottom of the barrel depravity. I honestly believe there is nothing these people won‘t do to achieve their own ends, which is horrifying and terrifying. Such an eye-opening book. I hope a lot of people who continue to use Facebook read this and think on what they are supporting.

According to Sarah, Mark Zuckerberg believes Andrew Jackson was the best president of the US. WOW. That says so very much.

It was mostly the Barbara Streisand effect that led to me looking up to see if I could get the audiobook of this from the library… The Zuck getting a court ruling to prevent the author from promoting her book?? Interesting choice.

Well worth the read.

The “Mteam” (M for management because everything seems to be a shortcut with tech bros) allow Mark to win Settlers of Cataan.

When author asks him if he wants to win this way, his response, “I‘m not winning that way.”

Author adds, “He genuinely doesn‘t see it. Seems perplexed by my outburst.”

🤮

I‘m glad, after reading this, that I‘ve never used anything Meta (no SM at all apart from here! 😏).

I knew bits of this story, but was still shocked at the depth and extent of the immorality and degeneracy of the company and its people. More so with Sandberg actually - I‘d only ever really seen good stuff about her, probably because I wasn‘t previously interested enough in her to learn more.

Shocking and sobering - scary stuff!

Quote is from the Prologue, which sets the tone nicely.

On page 70 as I sit down this morning for more. This book already reaffirms my decision to delete FB and Instagram along with a slew of other social media.

I considered dropping a quarter point from the tagged for a solid A (questioning if author took enough responsibility for her own actions) but went with 5⭐️ because of the changes I need to make in my own habits after reading this.

5* = Loved It, want to shout out loud about this book! I do/will own/keep a physical copy. A+
4*= I liked it, would love to discuss. Solid B
3*=Meh, no need to discuss. Avg C
2*=Nope D
1*=DNF F

Flatiron Books posted this over on their Instagram today. Am at the part in the book that today‘s Senate hearing with Sarah was about. Can‘t wait to see how this plays out for Zuckerberg and Facebook.

When MZ sues to keep this from being promoted, I knew it was going to be a worthy read 🤣
This book hits on how out of touch the ultra wealthy are, how money and power change people and how dangerous FB has become in their role in politics from fake news to their algorithms. It sucks, but I do use it to keep in touch with people and learn new hobbies: up-cycling textiles, ball pythons, and sourdough bread making to name a few. Ugh.

Took my sister‘s dog, Hugo, for a walk this morning - and couldn‘t resist putting him in jail 🤣

Not a lot of reading happening this week - but I did listen to a couple of chapters of Careless People at work today.

This is one of the most shocking and disturbing books I‘ve ever read, and it makes me want to delete every meta app on my phone.

Sarah talked her way into a job at Facebook to direct their policy and contact with other countries. She entered as an idealist with hopes of social media connecting the world. In 2017, she‘s facing knowledge of the spying apps that Facebook has specifically develop so the Chinese Communist Party can ⬇️