Name: An Ugly Truth
ISBN: 9780063136748

Sheera Frenkel

Cecilia Kang

Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination

An Ugly Truth

Facebook on its mission to 'connect people'. Love the price that not Meta, but humans have to pay for that. 

sina (she/her) 

"That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs someone a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people. The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is de facto good."

Trump and the Russian hackers had separately come to the same conclusion: they could exploit Facebook's algorithms to work in their favor. Users could not resist the incendiary messages of populist politicians. Whether they agreed or disagreed, they engaged.

The root of the disinformation problem, of course, lay in the technology. Facebook was designed to throw gas on the fire of any speech that invoked an emotion, even if it was hateful speech - its algorithms favored sensationalism.

The company banned violence, pornography, and terrorism - in those cases, Al systems caught and removed more than 90 percent of the content on their own. But when it came to hate speech, Facebook's systems proved reliably unreliable. Hate speech wasn't easily defined; it was constantly changing and culturally specific. New terms, ideas, and slogans were emerging daily, and only human beings deeply enmeshed in the world of the extreme, far-right movements cultivating such speech could keep up with its nuances.

Award-winning New York Times reporters Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang unveil the tech story of our times in a riveting, behind-the-scenes exposé that offers the definitive account of Facebook's fall from grace. Once one of Silicon Valley's greatest success stories, for the past five years, Facebook has been under constant fire, roiled by controversies and crises. It turns out that while the tech giant was connecting the world, they were also mishandling users' data, allowing the spread of fake news, and the amplification of dangerous, polarising hate speech. Critics framed the narrative as the irreconcilable conflict between the platform's lofty mission to advance society by bringing people together while also profiting off of them. The company, many said, had simply lost its way. But the truth is far more complex. Drawing on their unrivalled sources, Frenkel and Kang take readers inside the complex court politics, alliances and rivalries within the company, its growing political influence as well as its skirmishes with privacy groups and the FTC, to shine a light on the fatal cracks in the architecture of the tech behemoth. Their explosive, exclusive reporting led them to a shocking conclusion: The missteps of the last five years were not an anomaly but an inevitability - this is how the platform was built to perform. In a period of great upheaval, growth has remained the one constant under the leadership of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. Each has stood by as their technology is co-opted by hate-mongers, criminals and corrupt political regimes across the globe, with devastating consequences. In An Ugly Truth, they are at last held accountable.

The authors tell the story of Facebook - not so much focusing on its first years, the book very much focuses on the company's struggles and failures. And while I knew how the story would end, I was still turning page after page; it is eye-opening to read just how much the platform and it's executive messed up. Over and over again. 

There are, of course, shortcomings, e.g. the book is written very much from a US perspective/ focused on the US, ignoring efforts in the EU to regulate platforms such as Facebook. Unfortunately, the story stops mid-2020, so no mentioning yet of Sandbergs resignation, the rebranding and also the Musk takeover of Twitter, which had effects on platforms and digital communication globally. 

Nonetheless, I think that it is a book worth reading. It is scary at times to see just how much this platform knows about us as users - and is using, for better or (much, much) worse. 

The authors tell the story of Facebook - not so much focusing on its first years, the book very much focuses on the company's struggles and failures. And while I knew how the story would end, I was still turning page after page; it is eye-opening to read just how much the platform and it's executive messed up. Over and over again. 

There are, of course, shortcomings, e.g. the book is written very much from a US perspective/ focused on the US, ignoring efforts in the EU to regulate platforms such as Facebook. Unfortunately, the story stops mid-2020, so no mentioning yet of Sandbergs resignation, the rebranding and also the Musk takeover of Twitter, which had effects on platforms and digital communication globally. 

Nonetheless, I think that it is a book worth reading. It is scary at times to see just how much this platform knows about us as users - and is using, for better or (much, much) worse. 

Two prize-winning New York Times investigative journalists reveal how the pressure to grow and a culture of hubris led to crisis within the tech giant Facebook, in this explosive, news-making book. In November 2018, the New York Times published a bombshell in-depth investigation that exposed, with disturbing insider detail, how leadership decisions at Facebook enabled, and then tried to cover up, massive privacy breaches and Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The story quickly shot to the top of the paper's most emailed list. It would earn the team of Times reporters a prestigious Loeb award, the George Polk award, and a spot on the Pulitzer short list. But it only skimmed the surface. The investigation's lead reporters, Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang, spent eighteen months piecing together the story of how one of the most powerful companies in the world tried to bury a damning truth--that Facebook has become a conduit for disinformation, hate speech, and political propaganda. The unrivaled sources of these two veteran journalists led them to perhaps the most recognizable names in the tech industry: Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. Both have long existed as archetypes of uniquely twenty-first century executives--he, the tech "boy genius" turned billionaire, she, the ultimate woman in business, an inspiration to millions through her books and speeches. At Any Cost is the definitive story of Facebook's fall from grace, following the embattled company from 2011, when its power and positive influence was undisputed, to 2020, when it will face its biggest test yet--the US presidential election. What are the ultimate ramifications when a few individuals are in charge of the technology used by half the world's population? Can they control the technology they've unleashed into the world? And if not, can we, as individuals and as a society, control them?

Garrett Jansen

A lot of the books about big tech are typically written by experts in one field or another, while this actually takes a moment to step back and provide an exhaustive view of the entirety of Facebook's history and its series of scandals. That gives you a top-down view to a tech company in which the leaders herald interaction above all else, stating that it "creates a better world" while at best, failing to understand the world beyond their bubble and at worst, cynically driving the worst interactions solely for the way in which it helps the bottom line.

The writing here is organized well, with each chapter providing a clear and well-written data point that can be independently worth another book unto itself. I'd say this is a great read for folks interested in learning a bit about the world we live in, the tools we use to facilitate it, and the people responsible for them. 

Related media:
- The Facebook Files at the Washington Journal (https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/face...)
- "Mindf*ck" by Christopher Wylie (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...)

Cindy Lieberman

This book evoked a mild form of PTSD for me, as it brings us back to the years preceding and through the presidency of #42 (He who must not be named). What an awful time that was, the results of which we still deal with today. More awful is how much FB could have done to tone things down…but didn’t. Both MZ and his CEO come off poorly in this well-researched accounting.

Harry Butcher

Very insightful. Really makes you think about the power Facebook (Meta) have over people.

Luca Conti

Behind the story with lots of insight. Are you still using Facebook? Seriously? 

Alexandru Badiu

Angelyn Francis

Marcy Pursell 

iamazoo

Michael Ernst

Mani Mohan

Katherine 

Isaac Butterworth

Keven Wang

Nitesh Donti

Matteo Cellini

Award-winning New York Times reporters Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang unveil the tech story of our times in a riveting, behind-the-scenes exposé that offers the definitive account of Facebook’s fall from grace. Once one of Silicon Valley’s greatest success stories, Facebook has been under constant fire for the past five years, roiled by controversies and crises. It turns out that while the tech giant was connecting the world, they were also mishandling users’ data, spreading fake news, and amplifying dangerous, polarizing hate speech. The company, many said, had simply lost its way. But the truth is far more complex. Leadership decisions enabled, and then attempted to deflect attention from, the crises. Time after time, Facebook’s engineers were instructed to create tools that encouraged people to spend as much time on the platform as possible, even as those same tools boosted inflammatory rhetoric, conspiracy theories, and partisan filter bubbles. And while consumers and lawmakers focused their outrage on privacy breaches and misinformation, Facebook solidified its role as the world’s most voracious data-mining machine, posting record profits, and shoring up its dominance via aggressive lobbying efforts. Drawing on their unrivaled sources, Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang take readers inside the complex court politics, alliances and rivalries within the company to shine a light on the fatal cracks in the architecture of the tech behemoth. Their explosive, exclusive reporting led them to a shocking conclusion: The missteps of the last five years were not an anomaly but an inevitability—this is how Facebook was built to perform. In a period of great upheaval, growth has remained the one constant under the leadership of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. Both have been held up as archetypes of uniquely 21st century executives—he the tech “boy genius” turned billionaire, she the ultimate woman in business, an inspiration to millions through her books and speeches. But sealed off in tight circles of advisers and hobbled by their own ambition and hubris, each has stood by as their technology is coopted by hate-mongers, criminals and corrupt political regimes across the globe, with devastating consequences. In An Ugly Truth, they are at last held accountable.

An Ugly Truth Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination

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