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 PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
Critic 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
- old geek
- 07-07-19
If you have a facebook account read this now.
This mainly covers Facebook but also the other apps that people use daily and gives a really informed appraisal of their destructive effect on society around the world. This should be required reading for politicians and decision makers and anyone with a social conscience.
I have never felt the urge to review a book before but the writer needs to be heard more widely for all our sakes.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
- Groucho
- 01-04-19
A bit of a struggle to complete
There is a worthwhile story to be told here. However, it could be told more effectively in a fraction of the time. There is endless repetition, so much so that each successive chapter contains the same information, more or less, as the last.
It's all very one sided as well, constantly bashing the social media platforms for manipulating attention but never discussing their users agency. Are we all so easily sucked in?
The discussion of the strength of the monopolies these companies have created was powerfully done though.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Ivan
- 25-03-19
Very good insight into how FB/Mark Z. works
Really enjoyed it. Feels a bit paranoid on Russia and pro Democrats vs. Trump, but good listen overall (i.e. the point is that anyone can use FB tools to influence opinions, democrats too and have in the last - Obama)
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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
- JoeHarrod
- 18-12-22
Strong insider critique of Meta’s headlong journey
Pretty fascinating, inevitably gets a bit repetitive but that reflects reality! Great anecdotes… and some good ideas.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Kvam
- 31-01-20
I might not be the right audience, but it felt informative on all the wrong points.
Just to get it out of the way; the book is quite repetitive. I get it, if it’s meant for people unfamiliar with the subject maybe it had to be. To me it felt off beat, but I pushed through for the few goodies in there. I think this book would have been brilliant if it was half the length.
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2 people 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
- Martin Koss
- 09-02-19
Everyone should read or listen to this book.
If by now you haven't become aware of how every snippet of data about you (and me) is and has been used to manipulate your emotions and to virtually predict your next move - and your next purchase - then you're still being misled by the silicon valley (and beyond) money making racket that is the Internet. This book really is one of the books that everyone should read (or listen to) and then make their own decision about whether to change their online activities or go on with allowing these giant organisations (manipulators) to play with their data. The way Roger McNamee discloses what he can in this book is masterful and perfectly structured to tell us what really goes on and his change of mindset about Facebook (as he tells in the book along with the word 'embarrassed') tells us he is on our side and no longer blowing Mark Zuckerberg's trumpet. This will tell you why there's a 'like' button, why 'Zuck' wants us all to 'tag' each other and why Facebook (and Google) code follows us around the web (even when we don't know it) and a whole lot more that we all need to know.
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Customer
- 13-10-21
Good content
A fascinating insight into all the seriously sketchy things that Facebook has done. A must read.
Perhaps a little too much namedropping and “I knew zuckerburg” scattered throughout but the content is interesting enough to look past it.
However the last third of the book I found a little dry. It seemed to be just a repeat of the first part. I struggled to get through it.
Absolutely worth the buy though, as the storytelling is 10/10. Well paced, and consistently interesting.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Goldfrapper
- 21-02-20
Could have been much better
It's an important story, the evolution of Facebook and the things social networks do with YOUR data. The middle sections of this book, while going into interminable detail, detail this very well. The first 4 chapters, which are a mix of autobio and explain the author's early enthusiasm which led him into advising Zuckerperson, are largely forgettable, while the last few proper chapters give useful advice what the ordinary citizen can and should do to protect their data (though nothing like at the technical and even more useful level of Kevin Mitnick's 'Art Of Invisibility').
The book tends towards the dry. The author speaks clearly and at a good pace, but sadly his tone is what you'd expect from a primary school teacher reading to his class, which grates right from the start.
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3 people 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
- Shorty
- 01-05-19
awsome
this book is probably one of the most powerful books that I have listened to on Audible. it is regarding social media and their collection of data to influence the population. Mark Zuckerberg well be the most powerful man in the world.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Fifee
- 04-05-21
Eye opener
The narrator is engaging as is the content. Several threads are pulled all the way through the book which are knitted together at the end with several helpful book recommendations for further reading.
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