At least ten books by women about the evils of social media
The Influencer Industry | Emily Hund | 2023 | Academic
While individual participants looked for a route to autonomy, stability, and professional fulfillment that seemed impossible elsewhere, they ended up creating a value system that advanced the erosion of boundaries between individuals' inner lives and commercialism, asking us to view ourselves as products perpetually ready for market, our relationships as monetizable, and our daily activities as potential shopping experiences.
Cybersexism | Laurie Penny | 2013 | Casual
To claim that there's some sort of equivalence between the coordinated attack on Net neutrality and digital freedom going on across the world and the uninterrupted misogyny of comment-thread mouth-breathers doesn't just take the biscuit, it pinches the packet and dribbles ugly, bile-flecked crumbs into the keyboard. It is deeply offensive to the many, many activists, hackers and developers who have given their time, imperilled their jobs and sometimes risked their lives to keep governments like the United States' from clamping down on free Internet usage to describe women speaking about feminism online as a threat to 'Freedom of Speech'.
The Internet Of Garbage | Sarah Jeong | 2015 | Casual
For persecuted individuals, there is no eternal frontier to flee to. Certainly one could retreat by deleting one's entire online presence, but this is not the promise of a boundlessly big internet. For targets of sustained online harassment, the internet is a one-room house full of speakers blaring obscenities at them.<br>Anti-harassment can take the form of smashing the speakers or turning off the electricity. Or it could take the form of turning down the volume, throwing a blanket over the speakers, giving people noise-canceling headphones, or even building new rooms in the house. Anti-harassment is about giving the harassed space on the internet, and keeping the electronic frontier open for them.
Haters | Bailey Poland | 2016 | Academic
Reshaping a woman's argument to make it seem as though she said or implied something damaging to freedom of speech is one of the fastest ways to gain support for harassing her, as cybersexists frequently use their own interpretation of free speech as a way to demand that women refrain from criticizing their sexist statements. That is, sexists assume that free speech also includes the ability to be free from criticism or social repercussions. This line of reasoning ignores the reality that, in the United States, the First Amendment is related to government censorship and has nothing to do with whether women approve or disapprove of sexist statements.
Don't Be Evil | Rana Foroohar | 2019 | Casual
...creating a loop in which we are constantly competing with greater numbers of people, in shorter amounts of time, for more and more consumer goods that may be cheaper thanks in part to the deflationary effects of both outsourcing and tech-based disruption, but that can't compensate for our stagnant incomes and stressed-out lives.
Facehooked | Suzana E. Flores | 2014 | Casual
While it's true that some users are predisposed to narcissistic and addictive tendencies, or can be categorized as one of the "manipulators" that we've studied in the book, for the majority of us, <i>there is no hook</i>. That's right. <i>There is no hook</i>. No one is forcing us to engage with one another through brief digital exchanges. We <i>do</i> have a choice.
Shame Nation | Sue Scheff | 2017 | Casual
Did these cruel moms back down in shame? Not one bit. Instead, these "free-speech advocates" cited the First Amendment and continued right on with their taunting: "This is Facebook, not the Salem witch hunt... This is a free country and I was laughing because it was funny... Don't attack me because I laugh at something! You don't get to control that. Thanks for your comments. Next!"
American Girls | Nancy Jo Sales | 2016 | Casual
And so many children growing up today experience the world as a never-ending series of photo shoots, for public consumption. "We're raising our kids to be performers," says the author and journalist Donna Freitas, who writes about campus culture. "Kids know their parents want them to make them look good on social media. So they work really hard at becoming good performers..."
The End of Forgetting | Kate Eichhorn | 2019 | Academic
But what happens when the ability to magically turn our youth into legends and myths is usurped? What happens when we can no longer find a way to become the heroes of these self-made tales? What happens when our memories of childhood are no longer primarily based on stories that have the appearance of reality but rather on documentary evidence, such as photographs and videos of our childhood in circulation online?
We Had to Remove This Post | Hanna Bervoets | 2021 | Casual
...but I still felt responsible somehow. Yena's insecurities were soap bubbles that I had to keep popping, like in that game you play on your phone, but new ones kept appearing and I didn't want to lose, I didn't want to lose her, because she laughed at my jokes and told me I was beautiful... and at night, when she was lying with her head against my chest, which fit exactly because she was so petite, she made my heart beat slower - yes, slower, and that was exactly what I needed.
An Ugly Truth | Sheera Frenkel & Cecilia Kang | 2021 | Casual
The public fury over Beacon was missing the point, Chester thought. Sure, it was embarrassing and invasive to have your shopping activity exposed to acquaintances and family members. But that was a distraction from the real threat: the fact that they were being tracked and monitored by an entirely new entity. Everyone knew to be wary of the government's reach, but in Chester's estimation the danger wasn't what the public or law enforcement knew about you. It was what commercial enterprises and advertisers did. It was what Facebook knew.
Careless People | Sarah Wynn-Williams | 2025 | Casual
In the most benign reading of this, Facebook is saying: millions of your citizens will post information about themselves publicly that you can view and collect if you want. In the least benign reading - the way I read this - Facebook is dangling the possibility that it'll give China special access to users' data. Authoritarian states need information on everyone at every level of society, and Facebook can provide a treasure trove.