A review by kolorful_kay_reads
An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination by Cecilia Kang, Sheera Frenkel

informative mysterious slow-paced

4.0

📊 This book, independent of the material referenced, is its own divisive discussion topic. Despite exploring topics of technology, data, and privacy within the walls of Facebook - topics which are often considered intimidating or niche to those who are unfamiliar - Frenkel and Kang write in the way of investigative journalists interested in narrative voice; any reader who has used a social network will be able to engage with the book.

📆 The book explores the general timeline of Facebook's decision making, with the majority of the focus leading-up to and during a Trump administration in US politics. Many of the news stories you've read about - Cambridge Analytica, Russian election interference, engineers utilizing user data to stalk people they date, and more are covered in this book and won't necessarily be "new" information to the reader; however, through extensive research and interviews, Frenkel and Kang seemingly aim to prove that Facebook had the knowledge that these events were occurring and intentionally mislead the public on Facebook's culpability.

👻 Before going further, it should be noted that my vocation is in the technology sector. This DEFINITELY impacted my experience with this book.

📣 Imo, this book is an interesting and well-written and -organized collection of Facebook's choices. However, the conclusions made by the authors makes it seem as though they have never worked in technology; some of the inferences border on egregious or ignorant of industry norm -- and this is coming from somebody who deleted their Facebook years ago and consistently cites "ethical concerns" as a reason for denying their job interview requests. For example, the authors mention how engineers have access to too much user data with limited-to-no restriction, something that comes as a result of originally being a small start-up and never having put the resources into making the arguably necessary change. This is exceptionally true - at every company I've ever interacted with. Readers SHOULD be concerned about this because its NORMATIVE; instead, the authors look at this issue as a uniquely Facebook issue and 'shame on Zuckerberg.' There's lots to shame him for (in this book and for reasons outside of it), but the authors seemed more interested in blaming him for all decisions instead of just the ones he can and should control, which lead me to read the book as though I had unreliable narrators. I questioned everything and definitely didn't agree with many of the conclusions, but it was enjoyable to read, engage, and question nonetheless.

💭 “For the past year, the company’s data scientists had been quietly running experiments that tested how Facebook users responded when shown content that fell into one of two categories: good for the world or bad for the world. The experiments, which were posted on Facebook under the subject line “P (Bad for the World),” had reduced the visibility of posts that people considered “bad for the world.” But while they had successfully demoted them in the News Feed, therefore prompting users to see more posts that were “good for the world” when they logged into Facebook, the data scientists found that users opened Facebook far less after the changes were made.”