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An Ugly Truth

Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
The award-winning insiders' account of the scandals and toxic culture at Facebook—"thorough, high-caliber investigative reporting" (Kirkus, starred review).
In An Ugly Truth, New York Times reporters Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang present a behind-the-scenes exposé of Facebook's fall from grace. They reveal explosive details about how the tech giant set out to connect the world—while 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. Facebook's engineers were instructed to create tools that encouraged people to spend as much time on the platform as possible, even if that meant promoting inflammatory rhetoric, conspiracy theories, and partisan filter bubbles. And while consumers and lawmakers were outraged by 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, Frenkel and Kang take readers inside the alliances and rivalries within the company to demonstrate that the company's "missteps" were no such thing—this is how Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg built Facebook to perform. In An Ugly Truth, they are at last held accountable. 
A Book of the Year: FortuneForeign AffairsThe Times (London), Cosmopolitan, TechCrunch, WIRED
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from August 2, 2021
      New York Times reporters Frenkel and Kang debut with a paragon of investigative journalism in this insiders’ account of the scandals and toxic culture at social media giant Facebook. Compiling interviews with former and current employees as well as investors, regulators, and lawmakers, the authors offer an unvarnished view of the company’s callous business practices, most notably the exploitation of users’ data, their “merciless” overthrows of competitors, and the “powerful monopoly” that resulted. They recap headline-grabbing events such as the discovery of Russian hackers’ use of the platform and the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Less familiar (and more riveting) anecdotes include a contract employee leaking a memo to the press, who was then caught by Facebook’s “rat catcher,” Sonya Ahuja, and fired, and former vice president of global communications Elliot Schrage threatening a representative from Common Sense Media who was concerned about protecting children from the potential harms of social media. And though CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg refused to be interviewed, both come vividly to life, the latter a “master manager” and advertising guru, the former an operator who’s affable in public and ruthless behind the scenes. The result is a work of impeccable research and relentless reporting.

    • Kirkus

      An expos� on the many troubling aspects of the social media titan's rise to prominence. Frenkel and Kang, prizewinning New York Times journalists, chronicle the results of more than 1,000 hours of interviews with more than 400 people involved in this sordid story, including corporate executives, employees, investors, lawmakers, academics, and cultural observers, as well as "never-reported emails, memos, and white papers involving or approved by top executives." The authors focus primarily on the time between the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, delivering a damning, often shocking portrait of finger-pointing and PR turmoil. Underpinning the narrative are a variety of global scandals involving Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, including the Cambridge Analytica debacle, the Russian cyber-meddling ordeal, and the use of Facebook and other social media to livestream the January Capitol insurrection. Ultimately, the authors assert that many Facebook executives had knowledge of the company's sketchy ethics but were powerless to create changes to circumvent problems or, as Frenkel and Kang exhaustively attest, to even redirect Zuckerberg's attention. The authors probe the business relationship between Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, a former Google exec with ruthless advertising instincts and data mining experience. The profile of Sandberg reveals fascinating details about how she employed the most controversial methodologies to surveil and capture "connected" Facebook user data and behavior patterns on the internet in order to maximize ad revenue. Also startling is the meticulous hunting abilities of Sonya Ahuja, the company's "rat catcher," who mercilessly rooted out internal harassment complaints and whistleblowers. This sharp study serves as a convincing, effectively researched and sourced report of how Zuckerberg and Sandberg erected their social media empire with controversial tactics and questionable management styles, all while avoiding a minefield of incriminating investigations and lawsuits. Though Zuckerberg and Sandberg initially agreed to participate in the authors' interviews (if just to deliver their perspective to readers), eventually they expressed "no interest in participating." Thorough, high-caliber investigative reporting every social media user should read.

      COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (Online Review)

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