Zuck lied under oath, says "Careless People"
Careless People, the bestselling memoir of ex-Facebook exec Sarah Wynn-Williams, includes an interesting anecdote. Mark Zuckerberg is testifying, under oath, to a Senate committee in April 2018. Zuck is asked about Facebook’s plans for working with the Chinese Communist Party.
Wynn-Williams describes what happens next:
Mark’s answer is mostly a lot of blahblahblah about how, because Facebook is blocked in China, “we are not in a position to know exactly how the government would seek to apply its laws and regulations” to the platform. This is not true. The Chinese Communist Party has told them exactly how it would apply its laws and regulations. And Facebook has developed technology and tools to meet their requirements and tested them together with the CCP. Then he says, “No decisions have been made around the conditions under which any possible future service might be offered in China.”
He lies.
Title 18, Section 1621 of the U.S. Code defines perjury. The penalty for someone who lies under oath is that they “shall be fined [or] imprisoned not more than 5 years.” (Interestingly, it’s the same maximum penalty even if they’re not under oath – as explained here.)
In other words, a New York Times bestseller contains verifiable evidence that a billionaire CEO committed a federal crime.
No wonder Facebook wants to shut down the book. As Sarah Wynn-Williams told the Senate committee in her own testimony on April 8, 2025 (emphasis mine):
The measure of how important these truths are is directly proportional to the ferocity of Meta’s efforts to censor and intimidate me. . . . they brought a case against me for hundreds of millions of dollars. Now they have a legal gag order that silences me even as Meta and their proxies spread lies about me. . . . This gag order was sought by a company whose CEO claims to be a champion of free speech.
I seriously doubt that Zuck will ever be sent to prison for perjury, as straightforward as the charge appears to be. But I do appreciate that there’s a book that makes the case, just on the off-chance we someday find the political will to prosecute misbehaving Big Tech CEOs.
I spoke about Careless People on this week’s Techtonic. Here’s the episode page, or you can click this to stream the show. As I say in my introduction, I would have much preferred to have Sarah Wynn-Williams herself on the show to talk about her book, but she’s subject to a gag order, thanks to Zuck (really showing his commitment to free speech).
The book is well worth reading, if you’re at all interested in learning how Zuck and his lieutenants make the decisions that affect billions of users worldwide. Wynn-Williams has written an engaging, and enraging, page-turner that plainly lays out the arrogance, cluelessness, and shocking lack of ethics throughout the senior leadership at Facebook/Meta.
Reviews of Careless People have latched onto some of the more embarrassing or salacious details in the book. Zuck doesn’t like to lose board games, for example, and his employees make sure to always let him win Settlers of Catan. And Sheryl Sandberg once asked Wynn-Williams to come to bed with her on a private jet. Such anecdotes (and there are many in the book) are consistent with the integrity-free culture that Zuck and Sandberg built at Meta. But they’re not the biggest issues raised by the book.
The book’s through-lines that deserve more attention have to do with Mark Zuckerberg’s obsessive focus on growth, with no cost or harm too big for him to accept. These include:
China: As mentioned above, Zuck’s overwhelming desire to unlock the Chinese market led him to lie to the Senate about his involvement with the Chinese Communist Party. The truth is that Facebook was working with the CCP to help squash the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, and to develop censorship tools for deployment on Chinese citizens.
Joel Kaplan: Wynn-Williams details a long series of incidents involving Joel Kaplan – her boss at the time, the VP of Global Public Policy at Facebook. Kaplan allegedly had a habit of sexually harassing Wynn-Williams and – much like Sheryl Sandberg – never faced any consequences for inappropriate behavior. (Kaplan was recently promoted to president of global affairs.)
Teenage girls: Facebook leadership was well aware of how harmful their algorithmic feeds were for teenage girls – and yet the company worked to continue, or even increase, those outcomes. Wynn-Williams writes:
In April 2017, a confidential document is leaked that reveals Facebook is offering advertisers the opportunity to target thirteen-to-seventeen-year-olds across its platforms, including Instagram, during moments of psychological vulnerability when they feel “worthless,” “insecure,” “stressed,” “defeated,” “anxious,” “stupid,” “useless,” and “like a failure.” Or to target them when they’re worried about their bodies and thinking of losing weight. Basically, when a teen is in a fragile emotional state. . . . [And] apparently Facebook’s proud of it.
Myanmar genocide: The introduction of Facebook’s “Free Basics” program into Myanmar enabled millions of people there to get online for the first time – but only through a Facebook-mediated experience. The result was that politics in the country, already unstable, suffered the effects of the Facebook algorithm – which amplified hate and calls to violence against the Muslim minority in the country. Ten thousand people were murdered, and seven hundred thousand became refugees, in what the U.N. called a genocide. Wynn-Williams quotes the U.N. report of what happened, and it’s some of the most disturbing material I’ve ever come across. I didn’t read it on-air and I won’t quote it here.
Wynn-Williams includes a brief conclusion to the Myanmar episode:
Myanmar would’ve been far better off if Facebook had never arrived there.
Finishing the book, I could only think that Wynn-Williams’ thought is applicable well beyond southeast Asia. The truth is that all of us would’ve been better off without Facebook.
Until the day when users have a viable way to leave Facebook for a less depraved alternative, we’re stuck with the house of horrors that Zuck built. Even if we’re not users ourselves – and I have no Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp account – we still have to live amidst the destruction. Mental health is worse. The spread of AI slop is worse. And politics are worse: as Wynn-Williams’ book explains, the current occupant of the White House won in 2016 due largely to Facebook, setting him on a course to be where he is today.
We live in an increasingly fractured and authoritarian world, thanks to Mark Zuckerberg. As Wynn-Williams writes:
Facebook is helping some of the worst people in the world do terrible things. . . . And monitor people . . . And manipulate them. It’s an incredibly valuable tool for the most autocratic, oppressive regimes, because it gives them exactly what those regimes need: direct access into what people are saying from the top to bottom of society.
Throughout it all, Zuck has achieved the growth, the cancerous growth, he’s always been after. The rest of us have suffered as a result.
Here’s hoping that Careless People will convince lawmakers to hold Zuckerberg to account for his actions.
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Mark Hurst, founder, Creative Good
Email: mark@creativegood.com
Podcast/radio show: techtonic.fm
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