Antisocial Media
How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy
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Narrated by:
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Jack Garrett
About this listen
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.
©2018 Siva Vaidhyanathan (P)2018 Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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In 10 chapters, composed of 10 "commands", Rushkoff provides cyber enthusiasts and technophobes alike with the guidelines to navigate the digital new universe. In this spirited, accessible poetics of new media, Rushkoff picks up where Marshall McLuhan left off, helping listeners to recognize programming as the new literacy of the digital age - and as a template through which to see beyond social conventions and power structures that have vexed us for centuries.
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Good book, but with some crazy ranting
- By Bjarne on 02-05-15
By: Douglas Rushkoff
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Algorithms of Oppression
- How Search Engines Reinforce Racism
- By: Safiya Umoja Noble
- Narrated by: Shayna Small
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Run a Google search for “black girls” - what will you find? “Big Booty” and other sexually explicit terms are likely to come up as top search terms. But, if you type in “white girls”, the results are radically different. The suggested porn sites and un-moderated discussions about “why black women are so sassy” or “why black women are so angry” presents a disturbing portrait of black womanhood in modern society. In Algorithms of Oppression, Safiya Umoja Noble challenges the idea that search engines like Google offer an equal playing field for all forms of ideas, identities, and activities.
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Read this book. Tell everyone you know about it.
- By Joshua Daniel-Wariya on 06-06-19
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The Death of Truth
- Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump
- By: Michiko Kakutani
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 3 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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We live in a time when the very idea of objective truth is mocked and discounted by the occupants of the White House. Discredited conspiracy theories and ideologies have resurfaced, proven science is once more up for debate, and Russian propaganda floods our screens. The wisdom of the crowd has usurped research and expertise, and we are each left clinging to the beliefs that best confirm our biases.
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Prescient Account of the Mechanics of Tyranny
- By Brian Price on 07-27-18
By: Michiko Kakutani
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The Master Switch
- The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
- By: Tim Wu
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Could history repeat itself, with one giant entity taking control of American information? Most consider the Internet Age to be a moment of unprecedented freedom in communications and culture. But as Tim Wu shows, each major new medium, from telephone to cable, arrived on a similar wave of idealistic optimism only to become, eventually, the object of industrial consolidation profoundly affecting how Americans communicate.
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Great Read
- By Roy on 11-12-10
By: Tim Wu
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Becoming Facebook
- The 10 Challenges That Defined the Company That's Disrupting the World
- By: Mike Hoefflinger
- Narrated by: Nicholas Techosky
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Facebook's founding is legend: In a Harvard dorm, wunderkind Mark Zuckerberg invented a new way to connect with friends...and the rest is history. But for the people who actually molded this great idea into a game-changing $300 billion company, the experience was far more tumultuous and uncertain than we might expect. Mike Hoefflinger was one of those Facebook insiders.
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mainly a tribute to the success of FB
- By Anonymous User on 10-07-18
By: Mike Hoefflinger
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The Hacked World Order
- How Nations Fight, Trade, Maneuver, and Manipulate in the Digital Age
- By: Adam Segal
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The Internet today connects roughly 2.7 billion people around the world, and booming interest in the "Internet of things" could result in 75 billion devices connected to the web by 2020. The myth of cyberspace as a digital utopia has long been put to rest. Governments are increasingly developing smarter ways of asserting their national authority in cyberspace in an effort to control the flow, organization, and ownership of information.
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Wrong narrator for material
- By Locnar on 02-21-17
By: Adam Segal
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Disruptive Marketing
- What Growth Hackers, Data Punks, and Other Hybrid Thinkers Can Teach Us About Navigating the New Normal
- By: Geoffrey Colon
- Narrated by: Geoffrey Colon
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Now that 75 percent of screen time is spent on connected devices, digital strategies have moved front and center of most marketing plans. But what if that's not enough? What if most people ignore company messages? What if consumer engagement never goes further than the "like" button? A sobering reality is hitting marketers. Technology hasn't just reshaped mass media, it's altering behavior as well. And getting through to customers will take some radical rethinking.
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Needed. Valuable. Welcome contribution.
- By Oliver Nielsen on 04-26-17
By: Geoffrey Colon
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Too Big To Know
- Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room
- By: David Weinberger
- Narrated by: Peter Johnson
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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We used to know how to know. We got our answers from books or experts. We'd nail down the facts and move on. But in the Internet age, knowledge has moved onto networks. There's more knowledge than ever, of course, but it's different. Topics have no boundaries, and nobody agrees on anything.Yet this is the greatest time in history to be a knowledge seeker - if you know how.
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Good to know ...
- By John B. Fisher on 01-24-12
By: David Weinberger
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Bad News
- How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy
- By: Batya Ungar-Sargon
- Narrated by: Batya Ungar-Sargon
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Today’s newsrooms are propagating radical ideas that were fringe as recently as a decade ago, including “antiracism,” intersectionality, open borders, and critical race theory. How did this come to be? It all has to do with who our news media is written by—and who it is written for. In Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy, Batya Ungar-Sargon reveals how American journalism underwent a status revolution over the twentieth century—from a blue-collar trade to an elite profession.
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Balanced, informative, and insightful
- By J. B. Eibel on 06-06-22
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The Manipulators
- Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Big Tech's War on Conservatives
- By: Peter Hasson
- Narrated by: Andrew Eiden
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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For better or for worse, Google and social media - “Big Tech”, collectively - have become the new public square. Unfortunately, this public square has a watchful referee standing behind them, ready and waiting to blow the whistle if they veer too far from the preferred narrative. Americans have given these companies enormous power to select the information they read, share and discuss with their neighbors and friends.
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Good Content....Run 1.2x Speed or You'll Go Crazy
- By Peter on 05-17-20
By: Peter Hasson
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Technically Wrong
- Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech
- By: Sara Wachter-Boettcher
- Narrated by: Andrea Emmes
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Buying groceries, tracking our health, finding a date: whatever we want to do, odds are that we can now do it online. But few of us ask how all these digital products are designed, or why. It's time we change that. Many of the services we rely on are full of oversights, biases, and downright ethical nightmares. Chatbots that harass women. Signup forms that fail anyone who's not straight. Social media sites that send peppy messages about dead relatives. Algorithms that put more black people behind bars.
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Pretty good but not complete
- By Casey on 10-29-17
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What Would Google Do?
- By: Jeff Jarvis
- Narrated by: Jeff Jarvis
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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In a book that's one part prophecy, one part thought experiment, one part manifesto, and one part survival manual, internet impresario and blogging pioneer Jeff Jarvis reverse-engineers Google, the fastest-growing company in history, to discover 40 clear and straightforward rules to manage and live by.
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Shallow and one-sided
- By JimmiJ on 02-04-09
By: Jeff Jarvis
What listeners say about Antisocial Media
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jose L Berrios Lopez
- 05-03-23
I am not a Facebook fan, but even though I am not a facebook fan, I have to say that these books seem to be exagerating some asp
I am not a Facebook fan, but even though I am not a facebook fan, I have to say that these books seem to be exagerating some aspects.
I have to say that YES, there are evident problems with the reach of social media platforms (like Facebook, but not only limited to Facebook...However, I feel that the root problem is "us" the users and the developers. In other words, the problem is us, humans. It makes arguments like "guns don't kill people; People kill people..." valid arguments.
I've been in a listening binge (for lack of a better word) of books related to social media reach and it effects to "the fabric of existence" . And It feels that we are not well prepared to study the topic with certainty. At times it feels like the authors are promoting the social media's benefits instead of critisizing them, (while the author seem to be trying to convey the contrary)..
Finally, I recommend the listen, but listen with a grain of salt, pepper, and analizis.
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- ilovelamp
- 11-06-19
A must for social media literacy!
How Facebook is changing the fabric of our lives and effects on society at large
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- Elkobri
- 01-19-21
a modest look at what Facebook can repair
In the wake of the capital insurrection, this book needs to be part of the conversation concerning the contributing factors which fuel extremism in the world. The author explains why Facebook plays an outsized role in building bridges among like minded family members and burning bridges among different groups. Individual users of Facebook might have the notion that it truly brings people together. That may well be their experience... but this is why Antisocial Media is important to read or listen to. If you live in a benevolent bubble towards Facebook, be prepared to have your bubble broken.
The only criticism I have of the book is the lack of extremist examples from the left. You could be led by the book into assuming that only fringe groups on the violent right are misusing Facebook. I don't believe this is a good way to build alliances to counter the overwhelming power of Facebook. There is ample proof of misinformation and disinformation on the right. Isn't it naive and a simplistic reduction to state the danger only in terms of the alt-right? 70 million people voted for President Trump. They were not dunces whom he could lead blindly by his charism. Many of those millions voted for him because they saw violence on the left of the spectrum. This group has a negative story about Facebook that also needs to be told or better yet: included in the thoughtful work here presented.
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1 person found this helpful