Zucked

When we were young there was some concern about the ‘boob tube’ – the living room TV that seemed to be sucking the family into a state of stupor. Not having a TV was a badge of cool in my college days, and I wonder if we will see that kind of wave of sentiment again.

That’s hard to imagine, looking at the populace today, bent like praying monks en masse over cell phones, poking about on social media. They lose their attention and trip, and some get run over by trolleys. Still worse, the Facebook has stepped into a void left by TV and newspaper news, and disrupted normal political communications.

A recent book by Roger McNamee uncovers some of the developments behind this situation. “Zucked” takes a close look at how social media can go bad. A long-time Silicon Valley insider, he was among early venture backers of Facebook, and that is the main topic of this story.

McNamee knew the company very well, and watched with particular concern, even while his personal coffers grew, as he saw Facebook’s unfolding role in large-scale behavior modification.
Rabble rousing and political disinformation rode roughshod on reality, using the new platform’s highly selective feed recommendation engine. This was especially highlighted in genocide in Myanmar in 2016, Ukrainian election interference in 2014 and since, and U.S. election interference in 2016 and since.

McNamee had a bird’s eye view on the way Facebook was being manipulated during the 2016 US presidential election, and took his concerns to the company’s leaders, who did not pay much real attention at the time.

In this book McNamee directly confronts Facebook management about their willful naivete concerning the uses of their combined social/technological platform. - Jack Vaughan