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3.96 AVERAGE
3.96 AVERAGE
There’s not a lot that’s surprising or particularly new in this book, but the way it’s written you get a better sense of how bad the problems with Facebook are.
informative
fast-paced
informative
medium-paced
To see a crass idea of rating girls in an university develop into the juggernaut that roils world politics today, shepherded by a horny teenage nerd growing up to an idealistic "wartime leader" as the authors put it, is quite an humbling experience considering you are his contemporary. It is easy to demonize successful individuals digging into their errors in judgement but I doubt any of us would be able to walk in their shoes and make the right decisions at every hour of the day. Much has been said in the news and on streaming platforms in a sensational manner, but the book tries to portray each person in Facebook's journey of 15 years as a human first. Having read the Theranos story right before this, it definitely shows Mark, Sheryl, Joel and others in a much positive light in spite of the scandals they seemingly mismanaged one after the other. All that remains is to feed lessons from this reportage into memes, tiktoks and those good morning messages & forwards and promote them on the top of newsfeeds / IG stories.
This was really interesting, I knew nothing about this, especially as someone not from America. And I was surprised to hear the name "Nick Clegg". That was a throwback from Politics class and I had no idea he has worked with facebook. I suppose growth in the UK was damaged when he didn't deliver any of his promises e.g. He said he would either low uni fees/not change them. They tripled. Though I know with a coalition government, everything is a battle and sometimes, you have to give in and let the otherside win some battles so you have some wiggle room for the big battles.
Facebook is such a big platform where you won't really know what is going on behind the scenes. So it was good to get behind that curtain.
Facebook is such a big platform where you won't really know what is going on behind the scenes. So it was good to get behind that curtain.
informative
medium-paced
This might lean towards 4 starts but it was definitely written through a biased lens. Had it been able to explain why some decisions were made from Mark's or Sheryl's POV, it would have been a better read for me. That being said, that info was likely never going to be obtained so this stands alone. It was a good timeline of what happened and how people did try to speak up but it mostly fell on deaf ears. This just further solidified my desire to never have a Facebook account.
dark
informative
tense
medium-paced
This was pretty scathing ngl. Nobody ever said having the ultimate and final say in all decisions regarding a politically relevant international monopoly was gonna be easy!
“If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold.”
We pay for FB by having our personal information sold to whomever wants to target us. For a small sum, you can target your post or ad, to a certain demographic audience, in a certain area. It's effective for finding crooks, making targeted commercials and milking the users, who should spend as much time as possible on the site.
I was at a real estate agent the other day and he said "I don't think we need to advertise in the paper, targeting the right audience on FB works really well". In this case of course, I hope it will be for my benefit. At the instance I was a little bit surprised, I had forgotten.
Even if there isn't much new material in this book, if you have followed Facebook's issues the past few years, I found it comprehensive and insightful. Of course, it made me promptly want to delete the app permanently - but how would I otherwise keep track of family and friends strewn across the globe? So I won't. I am however, very mindful of what I post and have restricted Facebook's access to tracking me across websites. However, I suppose they collect it anyway.
One thing I keep finding disturbing, but which isn't really discussed in the book, is how things I have only discussed keep coming up as ads on FB. That is, things I have not googled or searched for anywhere, but talked about within "earshot" of my mobile and its ever present algorithms. The main problem with our current life style is that machine learning knows more about us than we do about ourselves.
There is also a real danger of being the weaker party. For years, FB would refuse to fact check anything, or even attempt curtail outright lies. If you can make lies viral, well, you're just using your right to free speech according to Zuck. This has changed recently, but how well it holds up will depend on who is sitting the oval office. Facebook's main purpose is their bottom line and that is all.
We pay for FB by having our personal information sold to whomever wants to target us. For a small sum, you can target your post or ad, to a certain demographic audience, in a certain area. It's effective for finding crooks, making targeted commercials and milking the users, who should spend as much time as possible on the site.
I was at a real estate agent the other day and he said "I don't think we need to advertise in the paper, targeting the right audience on FB works really well". In this case of course, I hope it will be for my benefit. At the instance I was a little bit surprised, I had forgotten.
Even if there isn't much new material in this book, if you have followed Facebook's issues the past few years, I found it comprehensive and insightful. Of course, it made me promptly want to delete the app permanently - but how would I otherwise keep track of family and friends strewn across the globe? So I won't. I am however, very mindful of what I post and have restricted Facebook's access to tracking me across websites. However, I suppose they collect it anyway.
One thing I keep finding disturbing, but which isn't really discussed in the book, is how things I have only discussed keep coming up as ads on FB. That is, things I have not googled or searched for anywhere, but talked about within "earshot" of my mobile and its ever present algorithms. The main problem with our current life style is that machine learning knows more about us than we do about ourselves.
There is also a real danger of being the weaker party. For years, FB would refuse to fact check anything, or even attempt curtail outright lies. If you can make lies viral, well, you're just using your right to free speech according to Zuck. This has changed recently, but how well it holds up will depend on who is sitting the oval office. Facebook's main purpose is their bottom line and that is all.