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June 25, 2018: Siva Vaidhyanathan, author "Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy"

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This week: Siva Vaidhyanathan, UVA professor and author of "Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy."

Pointers to Siva's work:

• @sivavaid on Twitter

• Siva's Wikipedia entry

• Antisocial Media on Indiebound

Recent tech news:

• Facebook Is Patenting Technology to Spy on You Through Your Smartphone Camera and Microphone: "Not to worry," says Facebook VP Allen Lo, head of intellectual property. "Most of the technology outlined in these patents has not been included in any of our products, and never will be," he told the Times in an email. These are patents for (a) using your device's front facing camera to read your facial expressions and determine how you feel about what you see on the screen, (b) using your phone's microphone to eavesdrop on you, determining what television programs you're watching and whether the ads are muted, (c) using your phone's location in the middle of the night to try to determine where you live (or at least sleep), and (d) using your posts and messages--and credit card transactions--to predict your major life events, such as a birth, marriage, graduation or death.

• Below, from The Onion on June 14: “I know I screwed up, and I understand why you’re all upset, but if you were a morally corrupt megalomaniac hell-bent on manipulating society to your twisted whims, you would have done the exact same thing,” said Zuckerberg.



• Daily Show video, imagining Facebook as a bar

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