Terms of Service
Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Social networking has grown into a staple of modern society, but its continued evolution is becoming increasingly detrimental to our lives. Shifts in communication and privacy are affecting us more than we realize or understand. Terms of Service crystalizes this current moment in technology and contemplates its implications: the identity-validating pleasures and perils of online visibility; our newly adopted view of daily life through the lens of what is share-worthy; and the surveillance state operated by social media platforms—Facebook, Google, Twitter, and others—to mine our personal data for advertising revenue, an invasion of our lives that is as pervasive as government spying.
Jacob Silverman calls for social media users to take back ownership of their digital selves from the Silicon Valley corporations who claim to know what's best for them. Integrating politics, sociology, national security, pop culture, and technology, he reveals the surprising conformity at the heart of Internet culture—explaining how social media companies engineer their products to encourage shallow engagement and discourage dissent. Reflecting on the collapsed barriers between our private and public lives, Silverman brings into focus the inner conflict we feel when deciding what to share and what to "like," and explains how we can take the steps we need to free ourselves from its grip.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As social media platforms and other technologies diffuse into our everyday lives, Silverman acts as a much-needed digital skeptic, drawing out the resulting ideological shifts and questioning what these changes mean for society. The book presents a state of affairs that simultaneously provokes outrage, incredulity, and despair: notions of authenticity and selfhood as affected by Facebook, the economic and social effects of the so-called "sharing economy," digital serfdom, and what Silverman terms "the informational appetite" for raw data. Silverman is an optimist, though, and he provides numerous policy changes for readers to advocate, such as a digital bill of rights, a universal basic income, and regulation of data brokers. But the book also makes clear that with continued citizen inaction and apathy, tech companies led by cyber-libertarians and techno-utopians will continue to build a world with interests that don't match our own. Silverman proves himself an astute cultural critic as he addresses the complexity of the current moment in technology.