Disclaimer: I read through this book in one instance using academic reading techniques that are designed to get the most out of the book for me in a short amount of time while skipping over bits that did not interest me, so naturally that will affect the depth of the review.
This is a great book and should be read by many more people than it currently has been.
It describes the ‘problem’ with the modern day internet in several very interesting and relevant detailed case studies, revealing the business plans and tricks that the big tech companies have used to cheat us out of an open, fair and ’non-shit’ internet.
Particularly useful for me was finding out how exactly Facebook and Amazon were making the internet ‘shitter’ as I rely on them heavily personally.
I then read the section on ’the cure’ which unlike a review I saw on here stated, is definitely over 5 pages long.
Although most of the book goes into complex regulatory, legal and technical arguments around antitrust, and these need to be implemented at the top-down level by politicians, there are things that every person can do, apart from voting for the right politicians! I came away from this book with two definite solutions for making MY PERSONAL internet less ‘shit’.
To move to Mastodon while keeping in contact with people on Facebook and other social networks like Instagram and Threads through setting up an automated system of cross-posting to those platforms, just like Facebook once offered to users switching from MySpace.
To use freely available plugins to expose false reviews and order Amazon search results in a more useful and less insidious way so I can get better deals and buy products which will actually result in good value for me, despite Amazons intentions.
So yes - a useful book that should transform my personal window onto the internet, for the better.