Zucked
Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe
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Zucked
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Narrated by:
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Roger McNamee
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By:
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Roger McNamee
About this listen
This is the dramatic story of how a noted tech venture capitalist, an early mentor to Mark Zuckerberg and investor in his company, woke up to the serious damage Facebook was doing to our society and set out to try to stop it.
If you had told Roger McNamee three years ago that he would soon be devoting himself to stopping Facebook from destroying democracy, he would have howled with laughter. He had mentored many tech leaders in his illustrious career as an investor, but few things had made him prouder, or been better for his fund's bottom line, than his early service to Mark Zuckerberg. Still a large shareholder in Facebook, he had every good reason to stay on the bright side. Until he simply couldn't.
Zucked is McNamee's intimate reckoning with the catastrophic failure of the head of one of the world's most powerful companies to face up to the damage he is doing. It's a story that begins with a series of rude awakenings. First there is the author's dawning realization that the platform is being manipulated by some very bad actors. Then there is the even more unsettling realization that Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are unable or unwilling to share his concerns, polite as they may be to his face.
And then comes Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, and the emergence of one horrific piece of news after another about the malign ends to which the Facebook platform has been put. To McNamee's shock, Facebook's leaders still duck and dissemble, viewing the matter as a public relations problem. Now thoroughly alienated, McNamee digs into the issue, and fortuitously meets up with some fellow travellers who share his concerns, and help him sharpen its focus. Soon he and a dream team of Silicon Valley technologists are charging into the fray, to raise consciousness about the existential threat of Facebook, and the persuasion architecture of the attention economy more broadly – to our public health and to our political order.
Zucked is both an enthralling personal narrative and a masterful explication of the forces that have conspired to place us all on the horns of this dilemma. This is the story of a company and its leadership, but it's also a larger tale of a business sector unmoored from normal constraints, at a moment of political and cultural crisis, the worst possible time to be given new tools for summoning the darker angels of our nature and whipping them into a frenzy. This is a wise, hard-hitting, and urgently necessary account that crystallizes the issue definitively for the rest of us.
©2019 Roger McNamee (P)2019 HarperCollins PublishersCritic Reviews
‘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
‘[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
‘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
‘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
What listeners say about Zucked
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Ben Schmiga
- 28-07-2023
Very accessible and interesting.
Some chapters he begins with a hushed voice like being read to before bed.
Facebook here is mostly an example case, not the whole thing. The book covers a variety of topics and ideas over recent years like investing, mental health, global and US domestic politics, and his band.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Jason
- 09-04-2019
Changed my life.
This book has changed the way I use and interact with all internet connected devices.
And I always love when a book is read by the author.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Brenton cullen
- 24-07-2019
Eye opening
It was hard to get into at first. But persevere the insights and revelations are astounding
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 03-10-2019
gently damning
I can see clearly now how filtered we are. let's get offline. bye Facebook. coffee, anyone?
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Damian Hardy
- 24-10-2019
Too repetitive
It was very interesting but I felt it went on and on about the same thing chapter after chapter.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 03-01-2023
Excellent deep dive into Silicon Valley
Really enjoyed listening to Roger explain the impact of FB and other social media companies on politics and public health. It is long and perhaps repetitive here and there but overall a very enjoyable, informative listen.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Darcy Conroy
- 12-08-2020
Author a bad choice to read. Will get the eBook, instead.
This audiobook is read by the author whose intonation is the same for every sentence regardless of meaning. I gave it an hour but just couldn’t listen for longer. Will return the audiobook and get the eBook.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 27-12-2019
Drab
I was excited when reading the book description, but unfortunately the narrator and the looong and often technical sounding first chapters are such a bore. Narrators voice is so drab and I couldn’t listen anymore.
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