Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

This book was certainly well-researched and i found it to be interesting yet frightening to see how a small number of people have ways of manipulating outcomes for entire populations.

Definitely an enlightening read!

Interesting and insightful study of "lie machines" - the mechanisms of manipulation created by different power brokers, using social media. Author, an expert on new technologies and their impact on political life from Oxford, describes in details this murky world and gives many fascinating examples from all over the world, not only famous ones, like Russia or Myanmar, but also Poland, Brazil or Hungary. Recommended for everyone who is interested in the future of democracy and free speech.

Thanks to the publisher, Yale University Press, and NetGalley for the advance copy of this book.

I first became aware of the work Philip N. Howard and the Oxford Internet Institute does through a report they put together for the US Congress on Russian interference in the 2016 election. This book expands on that research and comprehensively looks at how social media platforms are used for political persuasion (including spreading fear and disinformation). It does an excellent job of detailing the mechanisms that enable these anti-democratic moves. It's not as strong when addressing the socio-side of our technosocial conundrum, which is not what the book is about but which suffers a bit by not acknowledging the scope of anti-democratic movements and impulses that predate the internet, such as the development of a right-wing media sphere in the US and the ways the GOP harnessed nationalism and racism to overturn democratic institutions such as science, public education, and the traditional media. The idea that "more social media" would be a solution, so long as it is regulated to reduce the power of the "lie machine," sounds unfortunately like "the cure for hate speech is more speech." These platforms cannot be reformed to become more like journalism - they were build on a completely different set of values and those values are deeply embedded in their design and function.

That said, it's a valuable tour of what exactly is going on in the world and is especially valuable in widening the lens for Americans who tend to have a fairly parochial view of the harms of our current social media environment.

This is a sobering exploration of the malicious ability of nation states and private companies to microtarget, monitor, and manipulate people through misinformation on social media. I really liked the author's focus on the production, dissemination, and marketing of political falsehoods, all of which entail different types of people and processes.

The book was full of sobering anecdata, like:

**It is estimated that half of all twitter conversations in Russian are conducted by bots.
**These efforts are not limited to Facebook and Twitter: A group of Labour Party activists in the UK created a Tinder bot and deployed it to areas where Labour candidates needed help. The bot would start out with flirty conversations but would soon talk about politics.
**It's not just state actors (although Russia, China, India, Vietnam, and Venezuela had large confirmed government lie groups and most democracies do some version of this as well). There are private companies that will run bots or have even invested to create thousands of fake people with profiles across platforms that are designed to friend and interact like an actual person, which may make persuasion more effective.

There are some great analyses of both the reach of fake news during the 2016 US Presidential Elections and a really interesting analysis of the UK Brexit vote that attempts to quantify how much of an impact the Leave lies had.

The most dismaying part of this book is what *isn't* in it; quality ways to solve the problem. Only about the last 8% of the book looks at potential solutions and most of them are incredibly impractical (I can't imagine social media companies are going to easily agree to or allow legislation to pass that totally destroys or even slightly hinders their business model).

So I was left with the knowledge that this is a huge and important problem and the overwhelming fear that there is nothing clear we can do about it. I hate feeling like democracy is screwed, so I'll keep looking for and supporting solutions, but I'm not sure what they are yet.

I rate this book at 3.5 stars. Remember in the George Orwell's book they talk about big brother watching ? Not being a conspiracy theorist but with our fascination now days with social media and technology they are and big brother takes many forms. There is the government of course and places like google and facebook and various other avenues that are gathering information constantly about us. Things like what we buy and what moral and political beliefs we like, ones we forward to our friends and ones we comment on. Then are groups of live people, also computer bots and other forms of technology that format messages some truthful and some definitely not.

There are various examples in this book that are both good and bad about this system that is in our daily lifes now. Remember the Arab spring and how they used these formats to organize protest and gather demonstrations. Other examples of the bad side as when government's uses this to spread misinformation , spy on their own citizens or interfere in other countries politics.

The first ten to fifteen percent of this book seemed a little jumbled and repeated itself. It did tighten up and was informative. I received an ARC from Netgalley and Yale University Press for a fair and honest review.

This book is fantastically well-researched and is nothing short of a scathing expose on the systems that promote misinformation, disinformation, and deliberate political lies. Despite dealing with tense subject matter, it manages to be both engaging and supremely informative. Highly recommend!