this is an important book in terms of describing the inner workings of Facebook and the abusive work environment and their rise in the geopolitical sphere. the short chapters give it a faster pacing than what I was expecting, and surprisingly easy to follow.

however, Wynn-Williams' overwhelming lack of self-awareness as to how complicit she is is noticeable from the start, and never gets better. at the start, it's somewhat understandable looking back at the relative optimism and wonder people had around tech in the late 00s/early 10s, but as the timeline progresses it gets harder and harder to defend. Wynn-Williams tries to paint herself as naive and optimistic about her role, but her passivity to everything feels increasingly staggering and such a blatant contrast to how she framed herself earlier when she literally talked Facebook into wading into geopolitics. her whole "I was naive and thought I could make Facebook do Good Things" justification while consistently saying she was being told the opposite (that Bad Things were happening) gets old quickly and doesn't acknowledge her role in all of this.

even when she does reflect on certain situations and says she's ashamed, her only justifications boil down to statements such as "I didn't feel like I had a choice" and "I've always been driven" or "it's a thing of being the eldest daughter" which is just bullshit. she downplays her actions at every move, trying to make herself seem like a helpless victim and separate herself from the competitive environment when she plays into it just like the others. her reflections only ever touch the surface of going "I'm ashamed for this" or "I didn't think it would end up like this" repeatedly in such a way it comes across as fake and insincere. because of this, it's hard to believe her when she then describes a scene where she gives a morally superior talk to Zuckerberg on a fucking private jet.

I won't deny the things she's been through are horrific, but Wynn-Williams is such an unreliable narrator and refuses to ever face up to her own complicity. she pretends that she is the only one with a conscience or feels bad in certain situations, acting like she has no say and has to go along while she shows how she's able to convince her superiors of certain points and clearly holds a position of power herself. she talks about being able to convince Zuckerberg into meetings with world leaders, flies on his private jet multiple times with him, goes to multiple summits with him as a high-ranking employee (again, director of global policy), but she has no power in the company to do anything? it's disappointing because I do believe her when she says she thought Facebook could be used for good at the start, but her solution to being opposed to Facebook's expansion in China is to simply stick her head in the sand and refuse to have anything to do with it, and then she's shocked when she discovers what's happening despite being fully aware of how little Facebook cares for regulations and checks notes demonises China for their demands (which we all know would be demands the USA would also make)? surely if she wanted to "make a change" from the inside like she says she did she would want to get involved to have some sort of sway over it? instead, she turns a blind eye to it all until she can ignore it no longer, and blames everyone involved.

I can empathise with her situation being stuck in a tough situation in regards to her personal life which makes it harder to quit, but she consistently uses it to justify her continuous role in all of this. I'm aware of the "no perfect victim" argument and I agree – but it never feels like Wynn-Williams is being fully honest with the readers in terms of her role in all of this. she says at the end that she "carries it [Facebook's actions] with her" but the lack of reflection of her own actions and how they contributed to it all give the opposite impression as she constantly blames her superiors and others around her.

by the end of it, I simply got the impression that she wants to paint herself as some sort of saviour now Facebook/Meta is getting increasingly negative press and she wants to distance herself from it all. I appreciate Wynn-Williams' desire to expose the inner workings of Facebook with her own experiences, but when she refuses to acknowledge her own part in this – she was not a mere employee who got swept up in all of this, she forced her way into a job at Facebook and facilitated these abuses for years – it makes me question how much of her own activity she downplayed and the reliability of the stories she tells. the constant "I was just following orders from my superiors" excuses are made even more ironic when she even references the Nuremberg trials herself in the book in telling Zuckerberg it's not an appropriate defence for Facebook's illegal activities in relation to international governments, and it's hard to ignore how she constantly uses this same excuse to justify her own misdeeds. I would have had a lot more respect for her and this book if it wasn't so blatantly self-serving in this aspect. she was there for 6 years, repeatedly saying she wanted to leave but never did for one reason or another, and I wonder how long she would have continued to stay at Meta, justifying to herself why she couldn't leave ("doesn't want to go back to renting"? talk about fucking financial privilege) if she hadn't been fired.