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A review by dalefu
Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation by Andrew Marantz
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.