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Title details for Anti-Social Media by Siva Vaidhyanathan - Available

Anti-Social Media

How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy

by Siva Vaidhyanathan
Jack Garrett
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
If you wanted to build a machine that would distribute propaganda to millions of people, distract them from important issues, energize hatred and bigotry, erode social trust, undermine respectable journalism, foster doubts about science, and engage in massive surveillance all at once, you would make something a lot like Facebook. Of course, none of that was part of the plan. In Antisocial Media, Siva Vaidhyanathan explains how Facebook devolved from an innocent social site hacked together by Harvard students into a force that, while it may make personal life just a little more pleasurable, makes democracy a lot more challenging. It's an account of the hubris of good intentions, a missionary spirit, and an ideology that sees computer code as the universal solvent for all human problems. And it's an indictment of how "social media" has fostered the deterioration of democratic culture around the world, from facilitating Russian meddling in support of Trump's election to the exploitation of the platform by murderous authoritarians in Burma and the Philippines. Facebook grew out of an ideological commitment to data-driven decision making and logical thinking. Its culture is explicitly tolerant of difference and dissent. Both its market orientation and its labor force are global. It preaches the power of connectivity to change lives for the better. Indeed, no company better represents the dream of a fully connected planet "sharing" words, ideas, and images, and no company has better leveraged those ideas into wealth and influence. Yet no company has contributed more to the global collapse of basic tenets of deliberation and democracy. Both authoritative and trenchant, Antisocial Media shows how Facebook's mission went so wrong.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    July 22, 2018

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781980014386
      • File size: 298070 KB
      • Duration: 10:20:58

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Jack Garrett gives a even, affable narration of Vaidhyanathan's overview of the influence of social media. This isn't a screed against tech; it's a thoughtful, well-researched history of how the Internet has evolved into a phenomenon in which emotions rule over thought. The author is critical of how Facebook is run as a business on autopilot, literally too big to govern and allowing users to promote unfounded information. This is a thoughtful critique of the na�vet� of seeing the Internet as a great democratizer, when, in actuality, such movements can be strategically manipulated by governments that have little interest in democracy. Garrett's voice exudes the kind of neutral evenhandedness that characterizes Vaidhyanathan's research. S.P.C. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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