Honest Book Review: Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe | ParnikaReviews
Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe by Roger McNamee
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 352
Publisher: HarperCollins
Language: English
It's quite unsettling to realise the fact that how easily our mind is influenced. It takes inputs from the left and the right and from the social media we keep sliding and swiping on. It is more frightening when we look at it in a broader spectrum.
Social media is more than just memes or sharing dog and cat videos it's deep and at times dark if not in the right hands.
Zucked gives amazing insight on this growing issue that is openly prevailing in what we call our "social media presence". How much is too much?
My Review
Zucked as the name suggests goes in depth about how Facebook became a part of all of the chaos. Zucked highly talks about the bad actors who take over the Facebook platform to push negative agendas. Though Zucked seems to give undivided attention to Facebook being a central being in social media influencing it still manages to give insights on other social media websites and their evolution with time. The dependency that we have on social media as the generations are passing by, social media is evolving to include more and more people and that too on an early stage.
How Facebook has intentionally or unintentionally involved itself in a social media catastrophe remains the centre of discussion in the book. Discussing how people share interests, and join groups that seem to relate with them and how these FB groups have an impact on the brains of the people and their way of thinking and psychology.
While reading the book I felt like a third person looking inside a window and witnessing everything happening. A lot of things have been talked about from FB being a major influence in elections, Russian interference, unethical influences on society and what not.
There is a lot to take from the book. Roger knew his work and the environment. The book provides great information on really big companies. Responsible use of technology is important with technology taking the centre stage. With more targeted advertising and boosting posts based on social media engagement, it is a growing concern for everyone. We can hardly tell what is private and personal anymore. With Facebook acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp, it gets more detailed information of the user and it all adds up in the end.
Conclusion
After the book ended, I felt informed and alerted, I feel it's high time we wake up or else we might have to wake up to the alarm of a catastrophe. There is a whole load of talks of what he calls " Filter Bubbles", you need to check this book out to know know what the heck I am talking about. It's a reality check.
It's quite unsettling to realise the fact that how easily our mind is influenced. It takes inputs from the left and the right and from the social media we keep sliding and swiping on. It is more frightening when we look at it in a broader spectrum.
Social media is more than just memes or sharing dog and cat videos it's deep and at times dark if not in the right hands.
Zucked gives amazing insight on this growing issue that is openly prevailing in what we call our "social media presence". How much is too much?
My Review
Zucked as the name suggests goes in depth about how Facebook became a part of all of the chaos. Zucked highly talks about the bad actors who take over the Facebook platform to push negative agendas. Though Zucked seems to give undivided attention to Facebook being a central being in social media influencing it still manages to give insights on other social media websites and their evolution with time. The dependency that we have on social media as the generations are passing by, social media is evolving to include more and more people and that too on an early stage.
How Facebook has intentionally or unintentionally involved itself in a social media catastrophe remains the centre of discussion in the book. Discussing how people share interests, and join groups that seem to relate with them and how these FB groups have an impact on the brains of the people and their way of thinking and psychology.
While reading the book I felt like a third person looking inside a window and witnessing everything happening. A lot of things have been talked about from FB being a major influence in elections, Russian interference, unethical influences on society and what not.
There is a lot to take from the book. Roger knew his work and the environment. The book provides great information on really big companies. Responsible use of technology is important with technology taking the centre stage. With more targeted advertising and boosting posts based on social media engagement, it is a growing concern for everyone. We can hardly tell what is private and personal anymore. With Facebook acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp, it gets more detailed information of the user and it all adds up in the end.
Conclusion
After the book ended, I felt informed and alerted, I feel it's high time we wake up or else we might have to wake up to the alarm of a catastrophe. There is a whole load of talks of what he calls " Filter Bubbles", you need to check this book out to know know what the heck I am talking about. It's a reality check.
The only set back was that the book is slow and is like reading and learning from a course book. But I think that's how it is and it will be a great read for people who are pursuing related courses in colleges or school.
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