Special episode: Inside the murky world of Facebook
The News Agents
Global
4.2 • 4.3K Ratings
🗓️ 13 March 2025
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sarah Wynn-Williams was a senior Facebook executive for most of the last decade. She had a front row seat as Mark Zuckerberg rapidly expanded the company and he grew in power and prominence. And she became increasingly alarmed by both his and the company’s actions. Now, she is telling her story - her memoir, ‘Careless People’, is out today.
It has been described as “explosive”. Meta fiercely contest her account. And we’ve included their response too. Her allegations - on Facebook’s relationship with China, on its impact on elections, and on its decision making on content moderation and advertising, are striking. We thought you should listen for yourselves, to Sarah’s first ever broadcast interview.
Editor: Tom Hughes
Executive Producer: Louis Degenhardt
Producer: Natalie Indge
Digital Editor: Michaela Walters
Social Media Editor: Georgia Foxwell
Video Production: Rory Symon, Shane Fennelly & Arvind Badewal
Digital Journalist: Michael Baggs
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK commercial banking, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:10.8 | This is a global player original podcast. I want to take you back to Donald Trump's inauguration. |
| 0:17.2 | It's not what Donald Trump said, as he was sworn into office, that I want you to remember. |
| 0:21.3 | It's who was in the audience, sat in prime position, in front of the president's own cabinet, |
| 0:26.5 | symbolising perhaps a new age of power and influence, alongside the Trump family, Elon Musk, |
| 0:33.1 | Apple's Tim Cook, Google, Sunder Pinchai, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg. |
| 0:39.8 | It looked like Donald Trump was hailing in the age of engineers. |
| 0:44.1 | And it was a remarkable moment for Mark Zuckerberg, particularly. |
| 0:47.2 | The man who suspended Donald Trump from Facebook and Instagram for his attempts to undermine the peaceful transfer of power to Joe Biden. |
| 0:55.8 | Trump had accused of plotting against him. But there he was. There's little doubt that Mark Zuckerberg |
| 1:01.8 | is now one of the most powerful people on the planet. But what does he actually believe? What does he |
| 1:06.7 | value? And what if his pursuit of expansion, profit and power made us look at his platform |
| 1:12.1 | in a whole new light? Well, one woman who was influential in Facebook's ascendancy is now |
| 1:18.2 | blowing the whistle. Welcome to the newsagents. The news agents. It's Emily, and today we're going to bring you an interview with Sarah Wynne Williams. |
| 1:30.8 | You almost certainly won't recognise the name. |
| 1:33.5 | But between 2011 and 2017, she worked at Facebook managing the company's global public policy, |
| 1:40.1 | a sort of diplomat, if you like, for Mark Zuckerberg and his company. |
| 1:43.9 | She too had a front row seat |
| 1:45.5 | to Facebook's rise and Zuckerberg's evolution. And she's written a book, Careless People, |
| 1:51.9 | documenting her time there, some of its contents are staggering. The book's been described as |
| 1:57.6 | explosive. It has been fiercely disputed by META, and you're going to hear |
| 2:02.1 | some of their responses a little later. But it makes serious claims about the company, how it |
... |
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