Steven Levy chronicles the history of Facebook from Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room to its status as a global geopolitical force. Based on three years of internal access, the narrative details the company’s relentless focus on growth, the engineering of the News Feed, and the acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp. Levy examines the corporate philosophy of moving fast and how specific technical decisions led to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the spread of misinformation, and the platform’s role in influencing international democratic elections.
This book is for technologists, policy makers, and software engineers who want to understand the mechanics of scaling a social network. Readers learn how algorithmic optimization dictates user behavior and why centralized leadership can lead to systemic oversight regarding data privacy. It provides a technical and cultural autopsy of how a tool built for connection became an infrastructure for global surveillance and political polarization, giving readers a factual framework for evaluating the future of big tech regulation.
- Published
- 2020
- Language
- EN
