It’s nearly twenty years since Facebook moved from a university-only application to being available to a global audience, i.e., anyone over 13 with an email address. Its extraordinary rise from a sharing app to a global kingmaker has helped millions of users, whether by developing digital community groups, creating business opportunities, or bringing friends and family together. However, along with other social media operations, the company now faces a ban in the UK for users under 16. Some question whether this ban is enough to rein in a business model that benefits from addictive psychological hooks and reward mechanisms that encourage excessive, compulsive use. In the introduction to the book Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams’ damning account of her time at Facebook, Naomi Alderman, winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, points out how powerful people use the law to block whistleblowers. She explains that Sarah Wynn-Williams, after nearly 7 years as a global policy director at Facebook, has been blocked from talking about her book. Among many other shocking allegations, Wynn-Williams writes that Facebook helped fuel violence in Myanmar, contributing to real-world genocide; offered censorship tools for China in order to access that market; and offered advertising specifically targeted at vulnerable teens. Facebook’s owner, Meta, has issued a statement saying the book makes ‘out-of-date’ claims and ‘false accusations’ and has taken out an injunction banning the author from promoting it. This led to a hysterical situation in which Wynn-Williams appeared at the recent Hay Festival but sat on stage in silence while others discussed the book. If ever there was a personal account that proves the need to police social media rather than just ban it for certain sections of the population, Careless People is it.
