75. Small J.P., Wax Tablets of the Mind: Cognitive Studies of Memory and Literacy in Classical Antiquity (Routledge, 1997).
76. Lewis K. et al., ‘The Structure of Online Activism’, Sociological Science, 2014.
77. Gabielkov M. et al., ‘Social Clicks: What and Who Gets Read on Twitter?’, ACM SIGMETRICS, 2016.
78. Quotes from author interview with Dean Eckles, August 2017.
79. Widely attributed, but no clear primary source.
80. One common example of ad tracking is the Facebook Pixel. Source: ‘Conversion Tracking’, Facebook for Developers, 2019. https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-pixel
81. Timeline from: Lederer B., ‘200 Milliseconds: The Life of a Programmatic RTB Ad Impression’, Shelly Palmer, 9 June 2014.
82. Nsubuga J., ‘Conservative MP Gavin Barwell in “date Arab girls” Twitter gaffe’, Metro, 18 March 2013.
83. Albright J., ‘Who Hacked the Election? Ad Tech did. Through “Fake News,” Identify Resolution and Hyper-Personalization’, Medium, 30 July 2017.
84. Facebook ad revenue per user in the US and Canada was $30 in Q1 2019, which would suggest $120 per annum. If users are worth 60 per cent less without browser data, it implies average data value of (at least) $120 x 0.6 = $72. Estimates from: Facebook Q1 2019 Results, http://investor.fb.com; Johnson G.A. et al., ‘Consumer Privacy Choice in Online Advertising: Who Opts Out and at What Cost to Industry?’, Simon Business School Working paper, 2017; Leswing K., Apple makes billions from Google’s dominance in search – and it’s a bigger business than iCloud or Apple Music’, Business Insider, 29 September 2018; Bell K., ‘iPhone’s user base to surpass 1 billion units by 2019’, Cult of Mac, 8 February 2017.
85. Pandey E. and Parker S., ‘Facebook was designed to exploit human “vulnerability”’, Axios, 9 November 2017.
86. Kafka P., ‘Amazon? HBO? Netflix thinks its real competitor is… sleep’, Vox, 17 April 2017.
87. Background on design from: Harris T., ‘How Technology is Hijacking Your Mind – from a Magician and Google Design Ethicist’, Medium, 18 May 2016.
88. Bajarin B., ‘Apple’s Penchant for Consumer Security’, Tech.pinions, 18 April 2016.
89. Pandey E. and Parker S., ‘Facebook was designed to exploit human “vulnerability”’, Axios, 9 November 2017.
90. Although now a central feature of social media, the ‘like’ button originated in a very different online era. Source: Locke M., ‘How Likes Went Bad’, Medium, 25 April 2018.
91. Lewis P. ‘“Our minds can be hijacked”: the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia’, Guardian, 6 October 2017.
92. ‘Who can see the comments on my Moments posts?’, WeChat Help Center, October 2018.
93. Background on censorship from: King G. et al., ‘Reverse-engineering censorship in China: Randomized experimentation and participant observation’, Science, 2014; Tucker J., ‘This explains how social media can both weaken – and strengthen – democracy’, Washington Post, 6 December 2017.
94. Das S. and Kramer A., Self-Censorship on Facebook, AAAI, 2013.
95. Davidsen C., ‘You Are Not a Target’, 7 June 2015. Full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGiiQUMaShw&feature=youtu.be
96. Issenberg S., ‘How Obama’s Team Used Big Data to Rally Voters’, MIT Technology Review, 19 December 2012.
97. Background and quote from: Rodrigues Fowler Y. and Goodman C., ‘How Tinder Could Take Back the White House’, New York Times, 22 June 2017.
98. Solon O. and Siddiqui S., ‘Russia-backed Facebook posts “reached 126m Americans” during US election’, The Guardian, 31 October 2017; Statt N., ‘Twitter says it exposed nearly 700,000 people to Russian propaganda during US election’, The Verge, 19 January 2018.
99. Watts D.J. and Rothschild D.M., ‘Don’t blame the election on fake news. Blame it on the media’, Columbia Journalism Review, 2017. See also: Persily N. and Stamos A., ‘Regulating Online Political Advertising by Foreign Governments and Nationals’, in McFaul M. (ed.), ‘Securing American Elections’, Stanford University, June 2019.
100. Confessore N. and Yourish K., ‘$2 Billion Worth of Free Media for Donald Trump’, New York Times, 16 March 2016.
101. Sources: Guess A. et al., ‘Selective Exposure to Misinformation: Evidence from the consumption of fake news during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign’, 2018; Guess A. et al., ‘Fake news, Facebook ads, and misperceptions: Assessing information quality in the 2018 U.S. midterm election campaign’, 2019; Narayanan V. et al., ‘Russian Involvement and Junk News during Brexit’, Oxford Comprop Data Memo, 2017.
102. Pareene A., ‘How We Fooled Donald Trump Into Retweeting Benito Mussolini’, Gawker, 28 February 2016.
103. Hessdec A., ‘On Twitter, a Battle Among Political Bots’, New York Times, 14 December 2016.
104. Shao C. et al., ‘The spread of low-credibility content by social bots’, Nature Communications, 2018.
105. Musgrave S., ‘ABC, AP and others ran with false information on shooter’s ties to extremist groups’, Politico, 16 February 2018.
106. O’Sullivan D., ‘American media keeps falling for Russian trolls’, CNN, 21 June 2018.
107. Phillips W., ‘How journalists should not cover an online conspiracy theory’, The Guardian, 6 August 2018.
108. Background on media manipulation from: Phillips W., ‘The Oxygen of Amplification’, Data & Society Report, 2018.
109. Weiss M., ‘Revealed: The Secret KGB Manual for Recruiting Spies’, The Daily Beast, 27 December 2017.
110. DiResta R., ‘There are bots. Look around’, Ribbon Farm, 23 May 2017.
111. ‘Over 9000 Penises’, Know Your Meme, 2008.
112. Zannettou S. et al., ‘On the Origins of Memes by Means of Fringe Web Communities’, arXiv, 2018.
113. Feinberg A., ‘This is the Daily Stormer’s playbook’, Huffington Post, 13 December 2017.
114. Collins K. and Roose K., ‘Tracing a Meme From the Internet’s Fringe to a Republican Slogan’, New York Times, 4 November 2018.
115. Background on real-life spillover: O’Sullivan D., ‘Russian trolls created Facebook events seen by more than 300,000 users’, CNN, 26 January 2018; Taub A. and Fisher M., ‘Where Countries Are Tinderboxes and Facebook Is a Match’, New York Times, 21 April 2018. Analysis of the #BlackLivesMatter online movement also uncovered Russian accounts contributing to both sides of the debate: Stewart L.G. et al., ‘Examining Trolls and Polarization with a Retweet Network’, MIS2, 2018.
116. Broniatowski D.A. et al., ‘Weaponized Health Communication: Twitter Bots and Russian Trolls Amplify the Vaccine Debate’, American Journal of Public Health, 2018; Wellcome Global Monitor 2018, 19 June 2019.
117. Google Ngram.
118. Takayasu M. et al., ‘Rumor Diffusion and Convergence during the 3.11 Earthquake: A Twitter Case Study’, PLOS ONE, 2015.
119. Friggeri A. et al.,
