Careless crisis comms
Some unassailable facts...
Books about tech awfulness don't sell.
Books about Facebook-uh-Meta definitely don't sell.
Careless People is a boring title.
"A cautionary tale of power, greed, and loss idealism" is an even more boring tagline.
Nobody has heard of Sarah Wynn-Williams.
And yet a book about Facebook's awfulness, written by disgruntled former Facebook-uh-Meta staffer Sarah Wynn-Williams is about to become a massive bestseller.
Why? Because Meta's leadership is losing its fucking mind about it.
Here are some extracts from my social media feed yesterday....
If you're in any way tech-adjacent you probably saw the same posts, all from former or current Meta employees, all concern-troll dismissing the book as irrelevant or irresponsible, and all using incredibly similar language. The hallmarks of astroturfing crisis comms.
(Not for nothing, Campbell Brown is Meta's former head of media partnerships; Debbie Frost describes herself as a "recovering comms exec.")
Meantime, Meta's in-house PR team issued a lengthy rebuttal to the book, arguing that its most explosive claims are "old news".
Ah yes, the old "it isn't true, but everyone already knows it" two-fer. I know it well as it was the exact same technique used by Uber when they infamously threatened to spend a million dollars to go after Sarah and her kids over our reporting at Pando. (Not to be confused with, "I never made those threats, and they were off the record!")
The dumbasses even included a LINK TO THE BOOK in their rebuttals.
And sure enough...
Fucking idiots.
Until two weeks ago, nobody knew the book was coming - apparently because Macmillan didn't want Meta's lawyers to injunct it. Given the tight turnaround and the fact that Macmillan is legendary for not being able to get books to booksellers in a timely manner, odds are the book - boring title, unknown author, unpopular subject and all - would have made a few headlines and then dropped like a stone.
With Elon and his cronies dominating the news agenda and Zuck's recent rebranding as a midlife crisis incel there is literally nothing bad you could say about Meta that would move the outrage needle. And no force on earth that would drag most people to actually buy a book about any of those fucking weirdos.
As of three days ago, we had zero pre-orders for the book in the store. Nobody I spoke to in the Valley had even heard of it.
But now Facebook has issued a three-line whip against the book, buying a copy has become the literary equivalent of torching a Tesla charging station. A cheap-n-cheerful way to stick it to Zuck in a way that we now know for absolute sure will grind his gears.
As of right now, the book is the 30th bestselling title on Amazon, and rising fast. The pile of copies we ordered from Ingram (Macmillan, true to form, failed to deliver) have almost sold out and my inbox is slowly filling with customers asking if we still have copies.
But don't worry, even if we sell out today's delivery, we have more coming tomorrow. Why not buy one, or two, or even three - just to really stick it to them?
(If you do order three copies, I'll throw in a copy of Kara Swisher's book for free. I'm even quoted in the front, bless her heart.)
Order Careless People from The Best Bookstore.
Of course, Facebook could have avoided all of this if they'd just kept their stupid mouths shut. But ain't that the theme of tech bros in 2025?
