Roger McNamee - Zucked

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in the US by Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 2019

This UK edition published by HarperCollins Publishers 2020

REVISED EDITION

© Roger McNamee 2019

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers 2019

Cover photograph © Mack15/Getty Images (thumb icon), Shutterstock.com (globe)

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Roger McNamee asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

“The Current Moment in History,” remarks by George Soros delivered at the World Economic Forum meeting, Davos, Switzerland, January 25, 2018. Reprinted by permission of George Soros.

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Source ISBN: 9780008319014

Ebook Edition © February 2020 ISBN: 9780008319021

Version 2020-02-03

One of the Financial Times’ Best Business Books of 2019

“Very readable and hugely damaging . . . This is a dangerous book for Facebook because it will be widely read—apart from Jaron Lanier’s work, it is the best anti-Big Tech book I’ve come across. Its real strength is that McNamee knows how these attention- and information-stealing systems work.”

— The Sunday Times

“A candid and highly entertaining explanation of how and why a man who spent decades picking tech winners and cheering his industry on has been carried to the shore of social activism.”

— The New York Times Book Review

“A timely reckoning with Facebook’s growth and data-obsessed culture . . . [Zucked] is the first narrative tale of Facebook’s unravelling over the past two years. . . . McNamee excels at grounding Facebook in the historical context of the technology industry.”

— Financial Times

“[An] excellent new book . . . [McNamee] is one of the social network’s biggest critics. He’s a canny and persuasive one too. In Zucked , McNamee lays out an argument why it and other tech giants have grown into a monstrous threat to democracy. Better still he offers tangible solutions. . . . What makes McNamee so credible is his status as a Silicon Valley insider. He also has a knack for distilling often complex or meandering TED Talks and Medium posts about the ills of social media into something comprehensible, not least for those inside the D.C. Beltway. . . . McNamee doesn’t just scream fire, though. He also provides a reasonable framework for solving some of the issues. . . . For anyone looking for a primer on what’s wrong with social media and what to do about it, the book is well worth the read.”

—Reuters

“Think of Zucked as the story after Social Network ’s credits roll. McNamee, an early Facebook investor and Zuckerberg mentor, weaves together a story of failed leadership, bad actors, and algorithms against the backdrop of the 2016 presidential election.”

— Hollywood Reporter

“McNamee’s work is both a first-rate history of social media and a cautionary manifesto protesting their often overlooked and still growing dangers to human society.”

— Booklist

“Regardless of where you stand on the issue, you’ll want to see why one of Facebook’s biggest champions became one of its fiercest critics.”

— Business Insider

“A comprehensible primer on the political pitfalls of big tech.”

— Publishers Weekly

“Part memoir, part indictment, Zucked chronicles Facebook’s history to demonstrate that its practices of ‘invasive surveillance, careless sharing of private data, and behavior modification in pursuit of unprecedented scale and influence,’ far from being a series of accidental oversights, were in fact foundational to the company’s astronomical success. This historical approach allows McNamee to draw valuable connections between present-day troubles and the company’s philosophical source code.”

— Bookforum

“Roger McNamee’s Zucked fully captures the disastrous consequences that occur when people running companies wielding enormous power don’t listen deeply to their stakeholders, fail to exercise their ethical responsibilities, and don’t make trust their number one value.”

—Marc Benioff, chariman and co-CEO of Salesforce

“McNamee puts his finger on serious problems in online environments, especially social networking platforms. I consider this book to be a must-read for anyone wanting to understand the societal impact of cyberspace.”

—Vint Cerf, internet pioneer

“Roger McNamee is an investor with the nose of an investigator. This unafraid and unapologetic critique is enhanced by McNamee’s personal association with Facebook’s leaders and his long career in the industry. Whether you believe technology is the problem or the solution, one has no choice but to listen. It’s only democracy at stake.”

—Emily Chang, author of Brotopia