Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy

Vaidhyanathan's critique of Facebook is the most rigorous academic treatment of the platform's structural effects on democratic discourse, and it has aged well. Written before Cambridge Analytica, before the January 6 investigations, and before the Frances Haugen disclosures, the book's predictions about the systemic harms of Facebook's engagement-maximising architecture have been substantially borne out by subsequent evidence.

The core argument is about design, not intent: Facebook's harms — to political discourse, to social cohesion, to the epistemic conditions of democracy — are not accidental byproducts of a neutral platform but predictable consequences of an architecture built to maximise attention and engagement. For analysts and policy advisers examining the platform infrastructure of influence operations, this structural analysis remains essential context.