Former Insiders Expose Facebook’s Dark Side

Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former employee who recently published a memoir of her time at Facebook titled “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism,” has been launched into the media’s focus following Meta’s attempts to silence her.

​”Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism” is a memoir by Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former Facebook executive, published on March 11, 2025. In this book, Wynn-Williams provides an insider’s account of her time at Facebook (now Meta), highlighting the company’s internal culture, ethical lapses, and its influence on global events.

Additionally, Wynn-Williams recounts personal experiences of alleged sexual harassment and a toxic work environment within Facebook. She describes being sent to high-risk areas while pregnant and receiving work-related communications during medical emergencies, highlighting a culture of disregard for employee well-being. She also critiques Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” philosophy, suggesting it overlooked the challenges faced by women in such demanding corporate environments.

Meta has rejected the content in “Careless People,” saying, it is “a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about [Meta] and false accusations about our executives,” and described Wynn-Williams as “an employee terminated eight years ago for poor performance.”

Well, Melissa Saleh, who was contracted to work at Facebook in a time that overlapped with Sarah Wynn-Williams, wants to weigh in on this.

“I was a contractor at Facebook from September 2016 through December 2017. My role was to assist in creating the narratives and storylines for the launch of the first-ever Facebook Social Good Forum and the Facebook Communities Summit – both live events featuring Mark Z and prominent Facebook users performing extraordinary feats on the site. These events involved the media, so they were covered extensively in the press – and the coverage was overwhelmingly positive, some of the most positive press Facebook had received in years (and has received since).”

Melissa Saleh is a force of nature—former lawyer and journalist turned serial entrepreneur, masterful storyteller, and advocate for survivors of trauma. With a career spanning technology, media, and brand strategy, she has shaped the narratives of Fortune 500 giants and startups alike, helping them carve out their place in a fast-moving world. As the co-founder of FairPlayAI, she works to promote equity and reduce bias in automated decision-making.

Saleh’s role? To bring humanity to a company that is not humane, but makes money off of it.

“My role was simple: create the systems and processes, including the selection criteria, for choosing which Facebook users (or “real people” as the Facebook employees would call them) to attend these events, writing their scripts, weaving them into the narrative of Mark Z’s speeches and then preparing and producing each person’s appearance at the event.” 

Melissa Saleh continues:

“The culture was clear: my “soft skills” were there on contract because they were not an organic part of the company or its culture. I was characterized as “the one who talks to the real people” and jokes were made that I was the company’s “outsourced empathy’.”

Zuckerberg and the Gang were recently making headlines after they paid for front row seats at the Trump inauguration. 

A lot of people were shocked to see large companies who seemed to be generally ok and even good were being led by technocratic wannabe dictators. 

However, anyone who worked at companies like Facebook or Amazon seemed to have seen the writing on the wall years ago.

“At one point, in discussing what vision the company had for the first ever Communities Summit, a high ranking comms exec (who is in Mark’s inner circle) remarked, ‘Just make it like a Trump rally.’ I was also suffering from PTSD following the sudden death of my first child at birth two years earlier, as well as going through a divorce, so the experience was extremely grueling and lonely. Once the contract ended, I got out of there as fast as I could,” Saleh concludes.