Terms of Service

Jacob Silverman

• Publisher: Harper
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780062282514
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Scienze della comunicazione

Social networking has grown into a staple of modern society, but its continued evolution is becoming increasingly detrimental to our lives. Shifts in communication and privacy are affecting us more than we realize or understand. Terms of Service crystalizes this current moment in technology and contemplates its implications: the identity-validating pleasures and perils of online visibility; our newly adopted view of daily life through the lens of what is share-worthy; and the surveillance state operated by social media platforms—Facebook, Google, Twitter, and others—to mine our personal data for advertising revenue, an invasion of our lives that is as pervasive as government spying.

Jacob Silverman calls for social media users to take back ownership of their digital selves from the Silicon Valley corporations who claim to know what's best for them. Integrating politics, sociology, national security, pop culture, and technology, he reveals the surprising conformity at the heart of Internet culture—explaining how social media companies engineer their products to encourage shallow engagement and discourage dissent. Reflecting on the collapsed barriers between our private and public lives, Silverman brings into focus the inner conflict we feel when deciding what to share and what to "like, " and explains how we can take the steps we need to free ourselves from its grip.

Index

The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use your e-book reader’s search tools.

Abbey, Edward, 327

Abelson, Brian, 98

About The Data Web site, Acxiom, 307–8

ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), 365–68

acquihiring, 17

Acquisti, Alessandro, 302

activists

Electronic Frontier Foundation, 311

methods of protection, 356–64

Occupy movement, 136–37

open source activism, 359–62

vs. abuse, injustice, and racism, 169–73

Acxiom, 307–8, 316–17

ad critic at BuzzFeed, 117

addiction to the Internet, 337–38, 341–42

Adium app, 369

advertisers

overview, ix, 297–98

and Do Not Track signals, 296–97, 306

Facebook’s data for, vii, 12, 41–42, 293–94, 300, 305–6, 316–18

and Facebook’s News Feed algorithm, 203

and Google, 16

and Like, +1, or heart buttons, 10–11

producing optimal conditions for, 265–66, 266n

and sentiment analysis, 39

use of social graph to push your friends, 157

advertising

advertorials, 116–17

appropriation of memes, 60

authentic identity as basis for, 10

creating dissatisfaction with, 24

and endorsements, 31–35, 85, 191

fraudulent companies, 97–98

and Google, 14

and hashtags, 94–95

metrics, 97–99

Old Spice campaign, 93–94

online vs. physical world, 298

opting out of advertising-based social networks, 275–77

roots of, 23–24

Ruckus Network email gleaning ploy, 92

and social media, 23–24, 31–35, 148

sponsored content, 28, 31–32, 116–18

targeting individuals, 298–300, 301, 302, 316–17

and television, 249

tradition of deception, 59, 94–95

on Tumblr, 27, 28–30

See also marketing; targeting individuals

Advertising Age journal, 358

Afghanistan, 362

African Americans, 70–71, 170–73, 210

aggregators

overview, 122–23, 214, 235–36

Bleacher Report, 125–28

Gawker, 75, 96, 111

Huffington Post, 115, 179

Klout, 194–96, 200

and mugshot photographs, 207–9, 210–11, 213–14, 217

Stellar, 32

story reworking process, 106–7

Upworthy, 102, 121–22, 125

See also BuzzFeed

Airbnb

overview, 181–82

CEO’s “people as businesses” attitude, 234

costs, 237–38, 243

hosts and regulations, 242–43

and Peers, 238–39

racial discrimination on, 182–84

on social and economic benefits, 244

terms, 240

Alang, Navneet, 274...