Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe

The author is a reformed Silicon Valley investor who realized that Facebook and the rest of the internet juggernauts are fundamentally opposed to making the world a better place. They're actually making things worse.

A really interesting discussion of the immense power that social media firms wield, the danger that comes from it and what to do about it. McNamee makes a strong case for building a muscular regulatory regime around technology that 2.2 billion people use without being made properly aware of the risks to their health and attention.

Sometimes McNamee (who was an early investor in and advisor to Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg) seems to try to complicate his own culpability in creating Facebook, claiming repeatedly that he didn't understand how the culture of the firm had crystallized into something that made the firm's self-reflection and self-correction impossible. He also drops a lot of names in an irritating way: Bono and Nancy Pelosi both make appearances.

McNamee is also wrong about a few elements of Facebook's explosive growth, presenting his opinions about their real name policy as fact. And i think he is naive to believe that the general public would prefer networks and services that explicitly protect their privacy. I hope I am wrong about that, but privacy and security seems to be relegated to the world of “nerd stuff” now.

Despite its shortcomings, the book is worthwhile: it presents the problems with globe-spanning social media, clearly exposes and explains problems in facebook's culture and presents solutions.