Repetitive and arid, but with points of interest for policymakers.
A scholarly analysis of the ways that social media platforms can—and cannot—moderate extremism and misinformation.
Writing in often labored academic prose, Mitts observes, repeatedly, that because social media lack any consistent cross-platform moderation policies, extremist groups such as QAnon and the Islamic State set up shop on one, such as Facebook, and then when charged with policy violations simply migrate to more lenient platforms such as Telegram. By the time they do, the harm is often done: As Mitts calculates, by the time Facebook began to take down Proud Boys pages in 2018, the group had attracted some 50,000 followers. Censorship can be a double-edged sword, Mitts notes: Setting firm policies against, say, hate speech and threats of violence can sometimes steer users away from extremist outlets, but just as often “being subject to content moderation motivates individuals to further seek out the banned information, either on the moderating platform or in less-regulated spaces.” Moreover, any suggestion of censorship can radicalize users, as a case study of a Twitter user who “experienced moderation” and later turned up at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, indicates, if in a roundabout way. Mitts suggests that heightened diligence is called for: The shooter in Christchurch, New Zealand, who targeted Muslims there managed to post video that, though deplatformed by Facebook, was up long enough to be replicated on many other sites, so that moderators on sites such as YouTube now have to play whack-a-mole to keep up with taking it down. Allowing that the landscape has changed now that Elon Musk’s X, one of the largest of the platforms, has welcomed previously banned hate groups, Mitts closes with the hopeful if unlikely thought that getting social media users to accept that moderation is a socially good thing will make them “less vulnerable to extremism.”
Repetitive and arid, but with points of interest for policymakers.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780691258522
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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