We would have no book if the author was a hero: they would say "I'm not doing this," quit, and that would be the end of it. By this definition, only an unheroic person could've written it. By the same definition, an firsthand expose of Meta could never be written by a trustworthy person.

This obviously protects the company: you are ceding this ground to them, "No trustworthy person could work at your company and write an expose." I don't think we should cede that to them.

The fact that she did end up setting herself apart is what's remarkable. For every one of her who was able to self-reflect, become horrified of the ethics of what she was doing, and took the hard steps of stopping and breaking away, how many current and former Meta employees don't do this reflection and remain contributors to the problem? 1:100? 1:1,000? 1:10,000?

If we require every whistleblower to be a saint, then we’ll never hear a whistle. If you have a serious criticism of their credibility, that’s potentially different, but arbitrary criticisms of someone’s moral worth is mostly irrelevant.

A strange response.

Rather than address the comment you change the subject, “whaddabout the author!”

Why do the dark work of deflecting on behalf of “Meta”?

(lol, that name gets me every time. Might as well have renamed themselves NoIdeaWhatToDoNow)

To all future whistle-blowers: Please ignore comments like this one! What you are doing is a valuable service to society.

Yeah, the fact that she realized what's going on and still worked tirelessly to give Mark / Facebook more negotiating power speaks volumes. I also can't buy the whole "I have financial woes and can't escape" spin that she puts on her situation.

Otherwise, great book.

I don't know if anyone is holding the author up as a hero, least of all herself. The book reads as a masterclass in grooming, manipulation and abuse.

If anything, the title "Careless People" does a disservice to its message: the people above and around her clearly knew exactly what they were doing, and took great care to evade any and all responsibility for anything.

So in this way we should dismiss all whistleblowers?

I haven't read the book, but I don't think there's anything dishonest about needing distance to see the context of what she was a part of. Now, if she is trying to paint herself as completely outside of that even while she was knee-deep in it, that's a different matter but hindsight isn't something to be dismissed.

There is nuance here though. Taking a step back and learning from an experience is something to be celebrated.

> In a situation like this it's possible for everyone to be untrustworthy narrators.

Even if you take her as trustworthy narrator (which I mostly did) she's stil evil in this story up until the publishing book.

You read the book. Did she have the receipts or not?

Sometimes you can still learn from a story.

Humans are about making mistakes and learning from them, not hiding behind the disease of perfectionism.

If there's something the author needs to say, I'm sure they are capable of using their words.

The other side that could have happened so easily is so much silence that there was no book.

You are probably right that she was part of it all. There what money and power do to you. We need to limit it. The eat the rich stuff is the wrong messaging but the right goal. We need to reduce concentration of wealth and power.

> I think it's becoming a trap to hold the author up as a hero

Cool, then don’t do that.

Every single employee at Meta is still vile and making the world a worse place every single day, and anything exposing the depths of their shittiness, no matter the source, is a good thing.

Waking up from a cult doesn't make you a hero, but stopping the cult might.