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 short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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