The book Meta didn't want you to read

PRINT HEAD: The book Meta didn't want you to read

PRINT BLURB: Perhaps because the company attempted to ban the book, Sarah Wynn-Williams's exposé on her seven years of working at Facebook has become an overnight bestseller

Careless People: A story of where I used to work (Power. Greed. Madness.)

Sarah Wynn-Williams, Macmillan

***** (5 stars)

And they all lived happily ever after. If only Sarah Wynn-Williams’s whistle-blowing memoir about her seven years spent at Facebook could end like this, but we all know that it doesn’t. Zuckerberg is brown-nosing Trump and Musk is dismantling the US with the same bro-tech ideology that Zuckerberg coined and made infamous — “move fast and break things” — which Wynn-Williams pointedly references many times in her memoir as a signpost to Facebook’s moral bankruptcy.

Well, Meta didn’t move fast enough to stop this memoir from being published, though they tried their darndest. 

Earlier this month the social media company won an emergency arbitration ruling which placed a gag order on Wynn-Williams after they claimed that the book violated her nondisclosure agreement. The publisher pointed out that the arbitration ruling did not affect it, so the book hit the shelves.

In the past week, the memoir has become a runaway bestseller (selling out in shops, so best get your copy soon), number 1 on the New York Times list for nonfiction and third-best-selling book on Amazon. This is despite the fact that the author has been prevented from doing any interviews or launches.

So why would Meta not want us to read it? Take a peek here at what is in it with this exclusive extract.

EXTRACT

This three-week-long Asia tour is going to be a real test for Mark. It’s his first trip visiting multiple heads of state overseas, so I’m anticipating lots of questions and requests from him. I didn’t anticipate the only request he makes: a riot.

To be precise, his exact request is for a riot or a peace rally.

At first, I think he’s joking. Peace rallies are not my area of expertise, and — to be frank — I’ve never been asked to organise a riot before. Especially one for a tech CEO. I assume something has been lost in his communication — that it’s some sort of mix- up. “Riot” and “peace rally” are such completely different things. Then Debbie emails to say that she ran into Mark and he told her that he wants a peace rally or a riot and we need to come up with some ideas that will enable him to be surrounded by people or be “gently mobbed”. I don’t really know what “gently mobbed” means, so I push back against this whole idea. Debbie and I use the one argument that might change his mind, and remind him of how badly starting a riot in Asia would be viewed by the Chinese government. This does no good. He’s insistent. And I realise he is definitely not joking.

If anything, he’s really hung up on the size of the crowd. That’s what matters to him. A public rally of over one million people. That’s what he wants more than anything. He never says why he wants this, and I don’t feel I can ask. My guess is that he wants to test out how effective his product is in turning Facebook’s online tools into offline power. Like, there are all these people on the platform. Can’t we figure out a way to mobilise them? Put them on the streets?

But irrespective of why, my job is now to start a riot.

That’s why I’m nervous when we land in Jakarta after our weekend playing tourists in Java. By the time we make it to the Four Seasons, the relaxed holiday atmosphere has definitely dissipated.

The tension gets ratcheted up further with some wardrobe issues. Somewhere in the back-and-forth with various government officials, an expectation was seeded that Mark would wear the traditional Indonesian batik shirt, as a sign of respect, for his meeting with President-Elect Joko Widodo. The shirt is wax-printed with bright colourful patterns and is basically the opposite of what Mark wears every day. Early in the morning, I deliver it to his suite at the Four Seasons. As soon as he sees it, he baulks.

“There’s no way I’m wearing that.” Then he disappears back into his bathroom.

I try to make myself and the loud shirt inconspicuous in his suite, but we’re at a wardrobe stalemate. I’d told Mark that when we’re meeting heads of state, he should plan to wear a suit, and it appears the batik shirt is a bridge too far. I’m worried he’s going to revert to his usual uniform and we’re going to have yet another hoodie battle. Like when he wanted to wear his hoodie and T-shirt to meet the president of Mexico.

When he doesn’t emerge from the bathroom, I’m apprehensive. Mark still hasn’t prepped for this meeting with the president-elect of Indonesia. The only prep time is now. And yet our scheduled departure time comes and goes. It’s nearly 9am and we’re still at the hotel. We’re going to be late and unprepared, especially as traffic in Jakarta is unforgiving. And yet we sit there, Mark’s assistant Andrea and I, waiting for Mark to re-emerge in whatever clothes he deigns to wear.

We trade tense smiles as we wait. She’s a Chinese-American former gymnast who uses busyness as a sword and shield. Not one for polite chitchat. Eventually, she slips into Mark’s bathroom and I hear unexpected giggles.

Finally, Mark pops his head out of the bathroom.

“I split my pants.”

This wasn’t a problem I had foreseen. He usually wears jeans. While we have backup shirts to deal with the sweat issue, we don’t have backup trousers. But somehow Andrea has managed to mend the trousers amid the giggles in the bathroom. The president’s people are now calling me, wanting to know where we are and why it’s not city hall, where we’re supposed to be. I choose to blame traffic rather than trousers to explain our delay. By the time we pull up at city hall we’re seriously late. I push everyone out of the van as fast as possible.

I’m so focused on getting to the meeting as quickly as we can that it’s not until I’ve reached the top of the stairs in front of city hall that I realize chaos has broken out. A swarm of people envelop us and it’s rough. Some of it’s press, some isn’t, and they’re shouting and jostling us, forcing themselves between us, separating the Facebook team. They catch sight of Mark and everything kicks up a notch. There’s a frenzy to get to him. As we try to get through the doors of city hall, the crowd surges and I’m lifted out of my high heels and carried forward, my feet not touching the ground.

I find Elliot’s [Schrage - vice president of global communications, marketing, and public policy at Facebook until 2018] hand and grab it as I’m buffeted from side to side. I scan the melee trying to spot Mark. We’ve had some intense pre-trip security briefings, delivered by buff Israelis whose qualifications for the role I try not to think too hard about. They’ve taken our fingerprints to identify us in hostage situations, giving me visions of my fingers being individually mailed to Facebook’s headquarters. Now I start to worry that this mob scene could all be a setup. Like some Batman movie before someone gets taken hostage from city hall in the chaos.

I see Debbie and then Mark — who’s with Todd, the head of our security detail. Todd is a huge guy, ex-military. He’s holding an Indonesian man by the scruff of his neck, his muscular arm pulled back, fist balled, about to punch the guy square in the face.

We later learn that this guy he’s about to punch is the head of the Indonesian president-elect’s security detail, and apparently a two-star general. Which is funny, but only in retrospect. At the time, it’s pure adrenaline and terror.

This isn’t even the riot I organised.

The crowd continues to surge forward into the lobby and Elliot loses his grip on me. Now I can’t see anything because I’m too short and someone stomps on my feet. In the shock of pain, I’m pushed around the crowd and then eventually emerge in the clear. The crowd moves on. I can’t see anyone from our team. It dawns on me that they’ve already gone into the meeting room with the president-elect without me. I rush towards the door, which is guarded. But before I charge in, I spot my shoes, lonely and askew, in the lobby of the grand entrance. I go back for them, wipe the blood off my bruised feet, and put them on, knowing that it probably doesn’t help me look any more professional, I’m so dishevelled from the humid brawl.

Expecting some kind of pushback from the guards, I thrust my way into the meeting room and loudly disrupt what is clearly the quiet, polite protocol part of the meeting where Mark is asking the president-elect about his priorities. I awkwardly greet the president-elect in a studied Bahasa Indonesian phrase and sit down in the space Mark makes near him.