What a fun and helpful read! If you’ve paid attention to many of the social media and online search/buying scandals, you’ll be familiar with what Giansiracusa details in this book. If you’ve thought about better ways to spend time on (or avoid) social media apps, many of the recommendations will feel like common sense to you. But you will learn more about how to shop better, scroll better and be less anxious by what’s being “fed” to you because of some choices and actions you’ve made. Similarly, you’ll learn more about finances and how to interpret other people’s analyses—and do your own perhaps to calm some medical scares. Polling may make sense. Risk assessments will make more sense. And the author teaches you how to do a lot of this on your own if you want.

Very helpful suggestions in each chapter come after example stories and a breakdown of what’s happening “behind the scenes.” While the stories are illustrative, many are long—which you can skim if you want to accelerate to the gist of the chapters—and some concepts/points in the argument are repetitive. The repetition isn’t all bad as most of us need repetition for lessons to sink in.

While this book describes the state of the art “today,” tech-related scenarios will change as companies continue to adapt their algorithms to altered priorities and regulations. This book, however, will give you some ways to look for the changes, take stock of the changes and adapt your usages and decision-making as well.

I’m appreciative of the publisher providing an advanced copy.