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laurbretz's review against another edition
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.25
Took me a while to read. While it wasn’t a book that’s engrossing enough for me to finish in a short period of time rather than reading 30 pages here, 50 here for a few months, it was well written, informative, and I enjoyed reading it.
dalefu's review against another edition
5.0
This book was hard to put down. The author spent years embedding himself in two groups, the "Techno-Utopians" that created social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Reddit with an idealistic commitment to free speech and the democratization of information, and the alt-right, a political movement that would have been considered too extreme to take seriously merely a decade ago. It becomes apparent very quickly that the latter could not have come to prominence without the former.
The author, a writer for the New Yorker, is painfully aware that he is part of the old guard. The old media which acted as the gatekeepers of information. They were the target of the social-media revolution, as well as their ability to decide what information was given legitimacy and what was ignored. They have clearly lost the battle. Print is all but dead, and trust in news organizations is at an all-time low.
These days information doesn't come down from the gatekeepers above, information is spread horizontally. You get your news from your friends or family, whoever makes up your immediate social circle. They are the fact checkers now. This can lead to information bubbles, and the ever-maturing algorithms these sites use to drive up engagement have only made this issue exponentially worse.
The contrarians and extremists figured out early how to excel in this new media landscape by exploiting the algorithms and appealing to the virtue of free speech, something the young CEOs of the social media revolution couldn't help but allow, if not encourage. Fringe groups used this new media to expand their reach, connect with each other and organize, and give their extreme views a new sense of legitimacy.
I found this book extremely enlightening. It's a book that preaches to the choir, mind you. The author takes it for granted the reader is left-leaning and not a Trump supporter. He won't be changing any minds. But for someone like me, left leaning and definitely not a Trump supporter, if was extremely informative, and downright terrifying. It really helped me see the big picture of how things got so crazy so fast, and makes a compelling argument that society needs information gatekeepers, not a blind commitment to a sweeping ideal like free speech.
The argument is so compelling we're starting to see those (aging) idealistic techno-utopians come around. Reddit has gotten comfortable banning sub-reddits that promote violence and hatred, Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube have all stopped allowing blatant misinformation to be hosted and/or monetized on their sites, forcing people like Alex Jones to retreat to fringe sites, where they belong.
It will be interesting to see what comes next.
The author, a writer for the New Yorker, is painfully aware that he is part of the old guard. The old media which acted as the gatekeepers of information. They were the target of the social-media revolution, as well as their ability to decide what information was given legitimacy and what was ignored. They have clearly lost the battle. Print is all but dead, and trust in news organizations is at an all-time low.
These days information doesn't come down from the gatekeepers above, information is spread horizontally. You get your news from your friends or family, whoever makes up your immediate social circle. They are the fact checkers now. This can lead to information bubbles, and the ever-maturing algorithms these sites use to drive up engagement have only made this issue exponentially worse.
The contrarians and extremists figured out early how to excel in this new media landscape by exploiting the algorithms and appealing to the virtue of free speech, something the young CEOs of the social media revolution couldn't help but allow, if not encourage. Fringe groups used this new media to expand their reach, connect with each other and organize, and give their extreme views a new sense of legitimacy.
I found this book extremely enlightening. It's a book that preaches to the choir, mind you. The author takes it for granted the reader is left-leaning and not a Trump supporter. He won't be changing any minds. But for someone like me, left leaning and definitely not a Trump supporter, if was extremely informative, and downright terrifying. It really helped me see the big picture of how things got so crazy so fast, and makes a compelling argument that society needs information gatekeepers, not a blind commitment to a sweeping ideal like free speech.
The argument is so compelling we're starting to see those (aging) idealistic techno-utopians come around. Reddit has gotten comfortable banning sub-reddits that promote violence and hatred, Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube have all stopped allowing blatant misinformation to be hosted and/or monetized on their sites, forcing people like Alex Jones to retreat to fringe sites, where they belong.
It will be interesting to see what comes next.
finalgirlfall's review against another edition
5.0
this book was very informative, and i'm choosing to take the scene with which marantz opted to end it as an optimistic thing.
alexisrt's review against another edition
4.0
It's a little shapeless in places, but if you want to be depressed about the people who run social media, the people who use and manipulate it, the state of our political conversation, and the prospects for 2020, this is the book for you.
matt_zimo's review against another edition
4.0
Don't read it on kindle. There are endnotes to passages that you only find out about at the end of the book. There's no links to them in the text. There are also footnotes marked by asterisks, that do link from the text.
kevinm56's review against another edition
5.0
This book was great. The reporting was thorough and well written.
About 10 years ago I was a true believer. With the advent of the Kindle, I thought the digital revolution would free writers from the tyranny of the gatekeepers. I also felt the same about blogging. Everyone could now publish their own magazine and we would be able to read a wider variety of viewpoints. In both cases, Kindle and blogs, the marketplace would cause the best to rise to the top.
I was wrong, very wrong. The best does not rise to the top. This book went a long way toward explaining why I got it wrong. I thought quality would naturally be recognized and become popular. But quality has nothing to do with it. Popularity is a function of just about everything but quality. The social media experiment that we've all involuntarily been a part of has shown that popularity is far too easy to manipulate -- and popularity is based on negative emotions. The number of likes, shares and retweets denote quality and the way to get likes, shares and retweets is to feature anger, hate and fear.
I now feel social media has made our lives worse. It has coarsened our discourse. The alt-right has won the battle of social media. I can't figure out if the alt-right players are truly committed to their beliefs or if they're only in it for the money, or just for kicks. It's like a video game to them, with likes, shares and retweets as the scores. I get the impression from the book that if they could score big trolling for liberals they would switch over in a New York minute. If that is true, it’s truly sad because they are responsible for so much damage to our society and democracy.
About 10 years ago I was a true believer. With the advent of the Kindle, I thought the digital revolution would free writers from the tyranny of the gatekeepers. I also felt the same about blogging. Everyone could now publish their own magazine and we would be able to read a wider variety of viewpoints. In both cases, Kindle and blogs, the marketplace would cause the best to rise to the top.
I was wrong, very wrong. The best does not rise to the top. This book went a long way toward explaining why I got it wrong. I thought quality would naturally be recognized and become popular. But quality has nothing to do with it. Popularity is a function of just about everything but quality. The social media experiment that we've all involuntarily been a part of has shown that popularity is far too easy to manipulate -- and popularity is based on negative emotions. The number of likes, shares and retweets denote quality and the way to get likes, shares and retweets is to feature anger, hate and fear.
I now feel social media has made our lives worse. It has coarsened our discourse. The alt-right has won the battle of social media. I can't figure out if the alt-right players are truly committed to their beliefs or if they're only in it for the money, or just for kicks. It's like a video game to them, with likes, shares and retweets as the scores. I get the impression from the book that if they could score big trolling for liberals they would switch over in a New York minute. If that is true, it’s truly sad because they are responsible for so much damage to our society and democracy.
wannabekingpin's review against another edition
4.0
all reviews in one place:
night mode reading ;
skaitom nakties rezimu
About the Book: We think, hope, wish some things to be impossible, for society, humanity, to prove itself better. To not listen to extremists, exclusionists, bigots, to not elect certain politicians, to protest evil regimes or at least understand said regime is evil, and other injustices. But a spoonful of tar ruins a barrel of honey, it’s said. Takes so very little to slip and end up lost, in absolute disbelief of how could this possibly be our reality, how can hate be so very prominent, and how can one want a type of a person gone while still claiming they’ve got no hate in their hearts? How do you attach your identity to such a miniscule thing, that a discourse of the type having done bad – offends you, personally? Author does a great job showing it all, from the spark that ignites, to how it’s done, and to why it, sadly, works…
My Opinion: This is a great true horror book that everyone, not just Americans, should read. We too often think ourselves immune to hijacked conversations, discourse. Some even end up playing into the alt-right shit, all while claiming they just want this, or they just want that, freely standing alongside the worst scum humanity ever seen, just because… As you keep reading, you can feel the emotional exhaustion author descends into, and it’s so familiar. If we look around, where we stand, here and now, none of it is over. And if we’re not actively trying to help, provide better discourse, resources, then those fooled…
night mode reading ;
skaitom nakties rezimu
About the Book: We think, hope, wish some things to be impossible, for society, humanity, to prove itself better. To not listen to extremists, exclusionists, bigots, to not elect certain politicians, to protest evil regimes or at least understand said regime is evil, and other injustices. But a spoonful of tar ruins a barrel of honey, it’s said. Takes so very little to slip and end up lost, in absolute disbelief of how could this possibly be our reality, how can hate be so very prominent, and how can one want a type of a person gone while still claiming they’ve got no hate in their hearts? How do you attach your identity to such a miniscule thing, that a discourse of the type having done bad – offends you, personally? Author does a great job showing it all, from the spark that ignites, to how it’s done, and to why it, sadly, works…
My Opinion: This is a great true horror book that everyone, not just Americans, should read. We too often think ourselves immune to hijacked conversations, discourse. Some even end up playing into the alt-right shit, all while claiming they just want this, or they just want that, freely standing alongside the worst scum humanity ever seen, just because… As you keep reading, you can feel the emotional exhaustion author descends into, and it’s so familiar. If we look around, where we stand, here and now, none of it is over. And if we’re not actively trying to help, provide better discourse, resources, then those fooled…
abbsentminded's review against another edition
4.0
Here's a quote that I think summarizes Marantz's thesis: "To change how we talk is to change who we are. More and more every day, how we talk is a function of how we talk on the Internet" (p. 357)
And how we talk on the Internet, Marantz demonstrates through encounter after encounter, is increasingly characterized by misinformation, extremism, hate-speech, racism, sexism, etc. The internet is changing how we talk; what does that say about who we are? Ultimately though, we choose how we talk, and we choose who we are; Marantz sides conclusively with human agency in the big tech determinism discussion.
In support of this, Marantz spends a lot of time hanging out with alt-right, alt-light, white supremacists, and more generic internet shitposters, and just shares and reflects on his experiences. This is beneficial for you, the reader, because you can get the scoop without having to hang out with these people. In fact, I'd say most of the value of this book comes from those small candid personal experiences. Get to know people like Cassandra Fairbanks and Mike Cernovitch as people. . . what drives them?
For those reasons too, I thought this served as a good introduction to the alt-right movement in general. The movement isn't a monolith, and Marantz characterizes the various subgroups well. Not only that, but he also allows these subgroups to characterize themselves, while maintaining distance as a journalist.
And how we talk on the Internet, Marantz demonstrates through encounter after encounter, is increasingly characterized by misinformation, extremism, hate-speech, racism, sexism, etc. The internet is changing how we talk; what does that say about who we are? Ultimately though, we choose how we talk, and we choose who we are; Marantz sides conclusively with human agency in the big tech determinism discussion.
In support of this, Marantz spends a lot of time hanging out with alt-right, alt-light, white supremacists, and more generic internet shitposters, and just shares and reflects on his experiences. This is beneficial for you, the reader, because you can get the scoop without having to hang out with these people. In fact, I'd say most of the value of this book comes from those small candid personal experiences. Get to know people like Cassandra Fairbanks and Mike Cernovitch as people. . . what drives them?
For those reasons too, I thought this served as a good introduction to the alt-right movement in general. The movement isn't a monolith, and Marantz characterizes the various subgroups well. Not only that, but he also allows these subgroups to characterize themselves, while maintaining distance as a journalist.