Restoring Our Sanity Online, Reviewed

Restoring Our Sanity Online, by Mark Weinstein, is for release on September 24th of this year. Mark Weinstein is one of social media’s original founders from the 1990s. I expected it to be a hefty publication, given he would have much to say about the crises that is social media today.

Restoring Our Sanity Online, Reviewed

What I got was a book with twenty-one chapters over 157 pages and found myself in deep thought about every well crafted subsection. It is a quality, thought-provoking read, which could easily fit into a thousand page publication. Appendices A to D are from pages 157 to 179. They are a continuance of the book, and a call to action by the author on how to implement his version of Web4.0.

These appendices, these along with the latter chapters, are all about how to restore sanity (literally) to social media. I recommend everybody that uses social media checks them out. The author includes some thought-provoking information in the introduction, despite its short length. This out-of-the-gates loading of information is a feature of his writing style, which is clear, concise, and consistent to the book’s end.

As one of the founding community members of social media; the author cites the good intent behind social media’s creation. He also cited how it’s supposed to be adopted, and how it went so horribly wrong. In addition, he also took the opportunity to promote his new social media platform, MeWe. Honestly, I found this to be a little cheesey, when you think of the importance of the topic discussed.

The exploration moves onto how “Big Tech” took over social media, and drove it in a new direction via its no rules for-profit approach. The author then compares what happened to the unethical evolution of “Big Ag” (Agriculture), and “Big Energy”. He then positively frames this backdrop into chapter one on how we can do a reboot of social media.

The following chapters explore Web1.0, user centric marketing strategies around revenue and conversations, and how that all changed for Web2.0. Loaded with some fiercely relevant points for why change is required, the exploration continues into Web2.0 and the addition of data harvesting.

The journey continues to the history of change makers like Mark Zuckerberg, and the birth of “Surveillance Capitalism”. The message is around the user been the product, and a key money maker in packaged datasets for consuming data companies. As the old saying goes, ‘If your digital product is free, then chances are, you are the product.’

The exploration of unacceptable behavior by social media companies continues as chapters progress. This includes data harvesting on minors, and the exploitation of children, onwards to the subversion of election outcomes. He quoted one scary statistic in his book, where a minor by the age of thirteen years old has, on average, 72 million data components. Malicious manipulation of the individual via social media was inevitable.

His international coverage of social media abuses is also articulate, where is cites China’s use of tracked social media behavior to punish its citizens for minor infractions. Too much gaming may deny you a good job in China, because of the tracking of your data on social media.

The chapter progression and coverage of Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and now Web 3.0, effectively show some of the most ghastly abuses of social media. A theme in his book is the centralised concept, as an enabler of where things went wrong. This central axis of control allowed big business to overrun the old social media mantra of serving the user, in favor of the facilitating the manipulation of users at scale.

The author’s domain expertise comes through clearly in these chapters and also appendices A to D. He lays out a base set of objectives with supporting points to stem the damage done through constructive change. I found myself weirdly intrigued by how the author’s master word-smithing fitted so much information into such a small book relative to its peer publications. Well, it did, and if you are at all concerned about the state of social media today (and you should), then this book is a must have for your collection.

By John Mulhall @soldersee | john@authormulhall.com is a writer with Irish Tech News for over 7 years and also a Cloud Engineer, Writer, and Novelist. You can learn more about John, and his debut novel “From Terror to Valor: Echoes and Shadows” on his author site at https://authormulhall.com

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