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Republica digitală: Despre libertate și democrație în secolul al XXI-lea
Nu cu mult timp în urmă, companiile tehnologice erau văzute ca salvatori și speranțe pentru viitorul omenirii, site-urile și aplicațiile fiind un mijloc de a asigura un mai mare grad de libertate și democrație în întreaga lume. Acest lucru a luat sfârșit. Acum ne temem de puterea lor – ele ne influențează alegerile, răspândesc știri false și distrug viețile oamenilor. Statul nu are niciun mijloc de a le combate. Cum se poate ca astfel de companii să fie mai presus de lege? De ce nu le putem opri? Jamie Susskind arată ce influență au IA, Big Data și rețelele sociale asupra politicii și societății. Inspirându-se din eseurile politice ale marilor gânditori ai lumii, el creionează o nouă viziune, bazată pe noi standarde legale, organisme publice și instituții, obligații și platforme, drepturi și reglementări, și noi coduri de conduită pentru cei care lucrează în domeniu. Cartea sa este un manifest strălucit și un proiect revoluționar pentru o altfel de societate: o republică digitală, în care omul și tehnologia se dezvoltă împreună.
296 pages, Paperback
Published November 1, 2024
57 people are currently reading
1004 people want to read
About the author
Jamie Susskind
3 books29 followersJamie Susskind is an author and barrister. He studied history and politics at Oxford University. He later studied law and was appointed as a research fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Jamie practises law at Littleton Chambers.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
June 19, 2022
When the worldwide web was born, the American government saw a Silicon Valley filled with fragile and vulnerable startups. It came together to agree not to regulate them, but to let them grow as boldly and as big as they could. And they did. Today, they are household names globally, the biggest companies in the world. Several are the first to be valued at over a trillion dollars. Unfortunately, that has given them the power and the arrogance to solidify their positions, at the cost of injuring their customers/users and all potential competitors. Jamie Susskind, a barrister (litigation lawyer) in the UK, has pulled together a remarkable and enormously busy book called The Digital Republic, to deal with the inequities and the dangers.
The biggest threat Susskind sees is unaccountable power. This is power without restraint, without penalty, without constrictions of law, regulation or even decency. He says Derek Chauvin showed unaccountable power when he put his knee on George Floyd’s neck for nine minutes while rational humans could only plead with him from the sidewalk. That is the kind of power wielded by Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Apple, among far too many others. But Susskind says “I reject the notion, and you should too, that we can only enjoy the wonders of digital technology if we submit to the unaccountable power of those who design and control it.” At that point, readers absolutely must finish the book, because he does show how.
Their power means all of us are unfree. We must do as they say. We must sign away any rights we think we have in online “agreements” that no one has the time to read, let alone understand. If you’ve ever read one, you know they are purposely vague and filled with undefined jargon the companies can interpret however they want when necessary. It is immediately obvious there is no point in reading those documents. It’s not as if you could negotiate the deletion of a clause you don’t agree with. You either give up all your rights before entering, or you cannot enter. Normally, such onesided contracts don’t stand up in court.
Yet this astounding onesidedness is approved throughout the judicial system, which doesn’t look at unfairness in tech issues. It only looks to see if there is an “agreement”. Next case, please. Susskind says “the idea that ‘consent’ empowers the individual is nonsensical. It is hard to conceive of a system that would give ordinary people less power than they currently have.” “We are visitors in the ‘legal universe’ they have created.” No one should have that power.
But that’s just the beginning. In what he calls computational ideology, engineers have gone off the rails with their algorithms. People who type in their names without capital letters are far more likely to default on a loan. Job applicants are evaluated by their zip code. Companies cut credit if marriage counseling shows up as a charge. Renters are rejected by the spelling of their names. Chubbiness is a marker of corruption. All of it is offensive and needs to be regulated. Algorithms need to be examinable, and restricted in their excesses. Gigantic datasets do not represent individuals, but that’s how Big Tech swings.
Susskind longs for human “naughtiness” – the tendency for everyone to avoid and bend the rules. Humans will exceed the speed limit, skip paying a metro fare, try to see two films while at the cinema, not signal a turn when no one is in sight and so on. But Big Tech has a lock on users’ behavior. Fees are deducted before delivery. Self-driving cars obey every requirement of the road. In Smart stores, soda dispensers will remember your face and refuse a refill, and verify your child’s age with an eye scan. And already, reputations are being be ruined by others rating their every movement and interaction. The world run by Big Tech is an ugly one.
He examines a blizzard of these examples in crisp short chapters – nearly 40 of them. He lays out the problem in simple language, clear for everyone. He tells you how it fits into the scheme of things, and what’s coming up next in the seemingly neverending condemnation of this new world. It is a rapid-fire education for those who don’t live it all day every day. And even for those who do, it is awe-inspiring to see it all in one eloquent place.
Susskind revives the concept of republic, nothing to do with American Republicans, but rather with the Ancient Greeks, whose republics required combined efforts and mutual respect to manage properly. He calls for mini-publics, ad hoc committees pulled together to deal with single issues. They would have the power to require a new law, or call a referendum, or ban some practice. And then disband and go about their lives again. This, which also goes by the name democracy, is a way to keep lobbyists and special interests out of the process. There are no parties, no re-election campaigns, no fundraising. It is a matter of members of the republic judging the state of their situation and dealing with it. I have written of this far too often over the years, but Susskind actually sees evidence of it popping up all over the world, successfully changing bad situations for the better. I am delighted with that news. I’m with him all the way on this, as with most everything in the book.
In terms of Big Tech, mini-publics could require certified complaint procedures, enabling class actions, and banning blanket data resale. In hardware, the right to repair could be made mandatory, forcing design changes to pretty much everything. And delightfully, smart contracts could see Big Tech paying microfines of say a dollar a minute if they didn’t answer the complaint within the hour, or didn’t implement the solution in a timely manner. The money would be deducted immediately, just as it would on a consumer credit card.
He classifies the overall problem into five main points over the first half of the book. Everything falls into these buckets:
-Big Tech wields real power that it should not have unregulated.
-Technology is not neutral, objective or apolitical.
-Digital technology is framed entirely in terms of the market economy, encouraging its worst instincts.
-There is nothing natural or inevitable about Big Tech, any more than there is about Big Tobacco, Big Oil, Big Ag, or Big Pharma.
-We have catered to Big Tech companies in terms of market individualism instead of regulating them as service corporations.
A lot of his criticism is aimed at Facebook, for its lies and hypocrisy (Zuckerberg took his name off one policy after it failed, and put someone else’s on it). Facebook’s privacy policy “is almost as difficult to understand as Immanuel Kant’s 1781 treatise Critique of Pure Reason, a book so impenetrably dense that philosophy students tremble at the very thought of it.” He also points out the farcical performance of its content management, despite all its commitments and promises: “Facebook likes, comments and shares from outlets that regularly publish falsehoods have roughly tripled … The top-performing link on Facebook in the first three month of 2021 was a bogus article about the fatal effects of the coronavirus vaccine.” It has also applied for a patent to measure the creditworthiness of people in a member’s network, reflecting their ratings on the member’s.
But there is also some unfortunate truth: “Social life and social media became inseparable” with the coming of Facebook.
He tackles the content moderation issues from a number of angles, because they merit it and he must. He says “Neutrality towards abuse, harassment and extremism means supremacy for abusers, harassers and extremists. Neutrality and justice are not the same thing.”
Another topic I have written about numerous times is the all but complete lack of government presence. Laws on antitrust and agencies like the Federal Trade Commission have been sidelined since the Reagan era. By repeatedly cutting their budgets, administrations have forced agencies to abandon their mandated responsibilities. They are no longer able to spend precious resources on prosecutions. Instead, American citizens have had to step up themselves. Susskind says from 2000-2010, 97% of lawsuits to enforce federal statutes were filed by private claimants. That is just wrong. Government needs to reassert itself and carry out its own legal responsibilities. It can’t simply leave everything to the rich.
Bizarrely, Susskind has decided this lack of enforcement is due to fear that the other political party will do damage with these powers, these civil service regulators. Giving no references or evidence whatsoever, he maintains this is the real reason for no regulatory action, and not that almost every president since Reagan has cut back their budgets, preventing them from doing their jobs, and eventually making them look like a total waste of time and money, in order to close them down completely. From the IRS to the EPA to the post office, this has been the strategy. It is the small government ideal. That is the reality of it, and it appears to be quite bipartisan in nature. Where he got that other idea about party fear of others controlling regulators is not explained, or true. It is the only place I totally disagree with Susskind.
On the solutions side (the second half of the book), Susskind would like to see privacy designed in from the beginning, not a patch or afterthought. “’Notice’ and ‘choice’ are both illusions. Meaningful consent is impossible when individuals cannot know what their data will reveal in different contexts, or combined with other data; for example, older data or that of other people.” Let Big Tech work around designed-in privacy. Make upfront assumptions in favor of users/customers, rather than making it difficult or impossible for them to opt out (of ultra-complex cookie policies, for example). “Beneath the surface, many consumer technologies are a seething mass of biases and ideologies,” he says. From systems that reject job seekers to those that reject loan applicants, built in prejudices are everywhere. No taxation without representation updates to no automation without legislation. It’s a revolutionary wake-up call from Jamie Susskind. And it’s very doable.
Susskind wants to turn everything in Big Tech into a profession. Accountants and lawyers need degrees and licenses; they display them prominently. Why not require software engineers to do the same? Also user experience professionals, privacy professionals, platform professionals, ecommerce professionals and so on down the line. If they could lose their right to work or be fined or publicly humiliated, the internet would look very different.
The internet is so important to society, it is scarcely believable that no one needs any kind of certification to build or run it. There are no educational requirements to gather and sell everyone’s personal data to advertisers for whatever they want to do with it. There is no certification to offer a totally onesided contract that everyone must agree to at the gate. Certification and the threat of decertification could fix that.
Then, at the top, regulators should check those credentials, measure what is out there against published regulations, and discipline those who transgress. It is how the modern world works – except in Big Tech. So this is not some unprecedented misadventure in fantasy governance. It is widely implemented and replicable in Big Tech.
In the end, The Digital Republic shows a couple of things. One, the problems are many and gigantic. And two, they are, for the most part, manageable with a large dollop of logic mixed with common sense. Admittedly, administering this medicine is even harder than COVID vaccinations, but thanks to Jamie Susskind, it is at least scoped out and available.
David Wineberg
If you liked this review, I invite you to read more in my book The Straight Dope. It’s an essay collection based on my first thousand reviews and what I learned. Right now it’s FREE for Prime members, otherwise — cheap! Reputed to be fascinating and a superfast read. And you already know it is well-written. https://www.amazon.com/Straight-Dope-...
The biggest threat Susskind sees is unaccountable power. This is power without restraint, without penalty, without constrictions of law, regulation or even decency. He says Derek Chauvin showed unaccountable power when he put his knee on George Floyd’s neck for nine minutes while rational humans could only plead with him from the sidewalk. That is the kind of power wielded by Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Apple, among far too many others. But Susskind says “I reject the notion, and you should too, that we can only enjoy the wonders of digital technology if we submit to the unaccountable power of those who design and control it.” At that point, readers absolutely must finish the book, because he does show how.
Their power means all of us are unfree. We must do as they say. We must sign away any rights we think we have in online “agreements” that no one has the time to read, let alone understand. If you’ve ever read one, you know they are purposely vague and filled with undefined jargon the companies can interpret however they want when necessary. It is immediately obvious there is no point in reading those documents. It’s not as if you could negotiate the deletion of a clause you don’t agree with. You either give up all your rights before entering, or you cannot enter. Normally, such onesided contracts don’t stand up in court.
Yet this astounding onesidedness is approved throughout the judicial system, which doesn’t look at unfairness in tech issues. It only looks to see if there is an “agreement”. Next case, please. Susskind says “the idea that ‘consent’ empowers the individual is nonsensical. It is hard to conceive of a system that would give ordinary people less power than they currently have.” “We are visitors in the ‘legal universe’ they have created.” No one should have that power.
But that’s just the beginning. In what he calls computational ideology, engineers have gone off the rails with their algorithms. People who type in their names without capital letters are far more likely to default on a loan. Job applicants are evaluated by their zip code. Companies cut credit if marriage counseling shows up as a charge. Renters are rejected by the spelling of their names. Chubbiness is a marker of corruption. All of it is offensive and needs to be regulated. Algorithms need to be examinable, and restricted in their excesses. Gigantic datasets do not represent individuals, but that’s how Big Tech swings.
Susskind longs for human “naughtiness” – the tendency for everyone to avoid and bend the rules. Humans will exceed the speed limit, skip paying a metro fare, try to see two films while at the cinema, not signal a turn when no one is in sight and so on. But Big Tech has a lock on users’ behavior. Fees are deducted before delivery. Self-driving cars obey every requirement of the road. In Smart stores, soda dispensers will remember your face and refuse a refill, and verify your child’s age with an eye scan. And already, reputations are being be ruined by others rating their every movement and interaction. The world run by Big Tech is an ugly one.
He examines a blizzard of these examples in crisp short chapters – nearly 40 of them. He lays out the problem in simple language, clear for everyone. He tells you how it fits into the scheme of things, and what’s coming up next in the seemingly neverending condemnation of this new world. It is a rapid-fire education for those who don’t live it all day every day. And even for those who do, it is awe-inspiring to see it all in one eloquent place.
Susskind revives the concept of republic, nothing to do with American Republicans, but rather with the Ancient Greeks, whose republics required combined efforts and mutual respect to manage properly. He calls for mini-publics, ad hoc committees pulled together to deal with single issues. They would have the power to require a new law, or call a referendum, or ban some practice. And then disband and go about their lives again. This, which also goes by the name democracy, is a way to keep lobbyists and special interests out of the process. There are no parties, no re-election campaigns, no fundraising. It is a matter of members of the republic judging the state of their situation and dealing with it. I have written of this far too often over the years, but Susskind actually sees evidence of it popping up all over the world, successfully changing bad situations for the better. I am delighted with that news. I’m with him all the way on this, as with most everything in the book.
In terms of Big Tech, mini-publics could require certified complaint procedures, enabling class actions, and banning blanket data resale. In hardware, the right to repair could be made mandatory, forcing design changes to pretty much everything. And delightfully, smart contracts could see Big Tech paying microfines of say a dollar a minute if they didn’t answer the complaint within the hour, or didn’t implement the solution in a timely manner. The money would be deducted immediately, just as it would on a consumer credit card.
He classifies the overall problem into five main points over the first half of the book. Everything falls into these buckets:
-Big Tech wields real power that it should not have unregulated.
-Technology is not neutral, objective or apolitical.
-Digital technology is framed entirely in terms of the market economy, encouraging its worst instincts.
-There is nothing natural or inevitable about Big Tech, any more than there is about Big Tobacco, Big Oil, Big Ag, or Big Pharma.
-We have catered to Big Tech companies in terms of market individualism instead of regulating them as service corporations.
A lot of his criticism is aimed at Facebook, for its lies and hypocrisy (Zuckerberg took his name off one policy after it failed, and put someone else’s on it). Facebook’s privacy policy “is almost as difficult to understand as Immanuel Kant’s 1781 treatise Critique of Pure Reason, a book so impenetrably dense that philosophy students tremble at the very thought of it.” He also points out the farcical performance of its content management, despite all its commitments and promises: “Facebook likes, comments and shares from outlets that regularly publish falsehoods have roughly tripled … The top-performing link on Facebook in the first three month of 2021 was a bogus article about the fatal effects of the coronavirus vaccine.” It has also applied for a patent to measure the creditworthiness of people in a member’s network, reflecting their ratings on the member’s.
But there is also some unfortunate truth: “Social life and social media became inseparable” with the coming of Facebook.
He tackles the content moderation issues from a number of angles, because they merit it and he must. He says “Neutrality towards abuse, harassment and extremism means supremacy for abusers, harassers and extremists. Neutrality and justice are not the same thing.”
Another topic I have written about numerous times is the all but complete lack of government presence. Laws on antitrust and agencies like the Federal Trade Commission have been sidelined since the Reagan era. By repeatedly cutting their budgets, administrations have forced agencies to abandon their mandated responsibilities. They are no longer able to spend precious resources on prosecutions. Instead, American citizens have had to step up themselves. Susskind says from 2000-2010, 97% of lawsuits to enforce federal statutes were filed by private claimants. That is just wrong. Government needs to reassert itself and carry out its own legal responsibilities. It can’t simply leave everything to the rich.
Bizarrely, Susskind has decided this lack of enforcement is due to fear that the other political party will do damage with these powers, these civil service regulators. Giving no references or evidence whatsoever, he maintains this is the real reason for no regulatory action, and not that almost every president since Reagan has cut back their budgets, preventing them from doing their jobs, and eventually making them look like a total waste of time and money, in order to close them down completely. From the IRS to the EPA to the post office, this has been the strategy. It is the small government ideal. That is the reality of it, and it appears to be quite bipartisan in nature. Where he got that other idea about party fear of others controlling regulators is not explained, or true. It is the only place I totally disagree with Susskind.
On the solutions side (the second half of the book), Susskind would like to see privacy designed in from the beginning, not a patch or afterthought. “’Notice’ and ‘choice’ are both illusions. Meaningful consent is impossible when individuals cannot know what their data will reveal in different contexts, or combined with other data; for example, older data or that of other people.” Let Big Tech work around designed-in privacy. Make upfront assumptions in favor of users/customers, rather than making it difficult or impossible for them to opt out (of ultra-complex cookie policies, for example). “Beneath the surface, many consumer technologies are a seething mass of biases and ideologies,” he says. From systems that reject job seekers to those that reject loan applicants, built in prejudices are everywhere. No taxation without representation updates to no automation without legislation. It’s a revolutionary wake-up call from Jamie Susskind. And it’s very doable.
Susskind wants to turn everything in Big Tech into a profession. Accountants and lawyers need degrees and licenses; they display them prominently. Why not require software engineers to do the same? Also user experience professionals, privacy professionals, platform professionals, ecommerce professionals and so on down the line. If they could lose their right to work or be fined or publicly humiliated, the internet would look very different.
The internet is so important to society, it is scarcely believable that no one needs any kind of certification to build or run it. There are no educational requirements to gather and sell everyone’s personal data to advertisers for whatever they want to do with it. There is no certification to offer a totally onesided contract that everyone must agree to at the gate. Certification and the threat of decertification could fix that.
Then, at the top, regulators should check those credentials, measure what is out there against published regulations, and discipline those who transgress. It is how the modern world works – except in Big Tech. So this is not some unprecedented misadventure in fantasy governance. It is widely implemented and replicable in Big Tech.
In the end, The Digital Republic shows a couple of things. One, the problems are many and gigantic. And two, they are, for the most part, manageable with a large dollop of logic mixed with common sense. Admittedly, administering this medicine is even harder than COVID vaccinations, but thanks to Jamie Susskind, it is at least scoped out and available.
David Wineberg
If you liked this review, I invite you to read more in my book The Straight Dope. It’s an essay collection based on my first thousand reviews and what I learned. Right now it’s FREE for Prime members, otherwise — cheap! Reputed to be fascinating and a superfast read. And you already know it is well-written. https://www.amazon.com/Straight-Dope-...
September 18, 2022
I really didn’t like his writing style but found the concept interesting. Some of the suggestions were really good and I think the ideas were solid, but some of the supporting arguments were presented very weakly. Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone who didn’t specifically want to broaden their knowledge on the published works on the impact of technology/the internet/social media. It felt like at times there was a lot of padding in the work re-explaining the content of every chapter, almost disrespectful to a reader’s intellect.
July 5, 2022
An easy and entertaining approach to the problems facing 21st century digital media and its need for regulatory control. Not the deepest exploration of the subject matter, but timely and accessible
August 2, 2025
chapters are SO SHORT. feminist king (?) nepo baby (?)
September 29, 2024
easily one of the most important books ive read lately, although i dont 100% agree with all the points he makes. i still would encourage everyone to read this, even those who’ve never cared about digital technology, ethics or politics. mega relevant book and a really interesting read!
June 3, 2024
A difficult and dense read at times, but Susskind presents his ideas in a well-researched and entertaining manner. Some really good takeaways from this and much to think about in the coming years as technological development continues rapidly. When technology is no longer just a tool to be used for convenience but becomes part of many people’s lifestyle, it’s important to consider it in a different light, which is definitely what Susskind does.
July 17, 2024
Food for thought and a powerful reminder of the impact major social media platforms have. Inspires thinking about how different aspects and impacts of big tech might be governed to protect citizens and foster democratic processes instead of threatening and harming them
January 31, 2023
The basic philosophical premise of this book felt smart and correct to me and is put forward with striking clarity. Mr. Susskind first points out how technology has come to control us in many insidious and non-obvious ways and how this control is in the hands of a few unregulated giant corporations driven by goals of growth, domination and making money. This state of affairs has come about through our reliance on a philosophy of market individualism, which has led to great wealth and innovation, but which has also caused extreme inequality, concentration of power and loss of privacy and autonomy, and has created a very undemocratic culture in which people have polarized opinions and are unwilling to have reasoned discussions that can produce concensus government and the rule of law in a well functioning society. Mr. Susskind sees the solution to these problems in a return to what he labels "republican" values characterized by caring for the common good, giving everyone a meaningful opportunity to be heard and avoiding situations where one group has the ability to exercise unrestrained power over others. So far, so good. I'm totally on board with the basic proposition.
But then in the second half of the book, Mr. Susskind's ideas for implementing his republican values are far less fresh and interesting than the presentation of his basic idea. He advocates for regulatory standards and certifications for tech businessess, better anti-trust enforcement, specialist regulators and enforcement through private causes of action. All of this is basically a retread of Progressive Era thinking. I'm not against it. I think that it would help to try all of these things, but I also think that something more is needed and that old ways of reform will only be halfway solutions for solving modern problems. Mr. Susskind is too much of a believer in law as a solution. We need to go beyond law to find social and technological weapons to help us to fight this battle. We should find ways to foster digital communities that are more oriented to civil discourse and promoting the common good. We need to build technolgies that reward good behavior and discourage bad. I don't have all of the answers, but I do think that if the good guys put their minds to it, there are answers to be found and that laws and regulations are only one of several legs of the stool.
But then in the second half of the book, Mr. Susskind's ideas for implementing his republican values are far less fresh and interesting than the presentation of his basic idea. He advocates for regulatory standards and certifications for tech businessess, better anti-trust enforcement, specialist regulators and enforcement through private causes of action. All of this is basically a retread of Progressive Era thinking. I'm not against it. I think that it would help to try all of these things, but I also think that something more is needed and that old ways of reform will only be halfway solutions for solving modern problems. Mr. Susskind is too much of a believer in law as a solution. We need to go beyond law to find social and technological weapons to help us to fight this battle. We should find ways to foster digital communities that are more oriented to civil discourse and promoting the common good. We need to build technolgies that reward good behavior and discourage bad. I don't have all of the answers, but I do think that if the good guys put their minds to it, there are answers to be found and that laws and regulations are only one of several legs of the stool.
September 1, 2025
3.75/5
i purchased this book after having enjoyed his previous book (which i continue to recommend) knowing it would help in my legal studies. quite honestly his position in Gaza and Palestine as a whole is nauseating (he doesn’t touch on it in the book but he is very vocal about it on his social media) and i wouldn’t have picked up the book had it not been a required reading for one of my courses.
-> definitely not as well written as his previous book;
-> is not written from an impartial point of view and his personal political (and economic) leanings are apparent throughout the entirety of the book;
-> very little comparative law, only leans on US, UK and the ‘big’ (france and germany for the most part) E.U. States;
-> doesn’t explore the rest of the world except to say that they are either wrong - sometimes describing them as reprehensible - or unable to think/innovate independently from Western States;
-> uses the phrase “civilized societies” an uncomfortable amount of times;
-> why does he rarely cite the jurisprudence (especially from European courts) that he refers to?;
-> good that he took the time to give precise and detailed definitions to the majority of the key terms he employs;
-> why on earth are the development notes at the end of the book instead of at the bottom of each page?;
-> last 2 parts + conclusion feel incredibly rushed.
i purchased this book after having enjoyed his previous book (which i continue to recommend) knowing it would help in my legal studies. quite honestly his position in Gaza and Palestine as a whole is nauseating (he doesn’t touch on it in the book but he is very vocal about it on his social media) and i wouldn’t have picked up the book had it not been a required reading for one of my courses.
-> definitely not as well written as his previous book;
-> is not written from an impartial point of view and his personal political (and economic) leanings are apparent throughout the entirety of the book;
-> very little comparative law, only leans on US, UK and the ‘big’ (france and germany for the most part) E.U. States;
-> doesn’t explore the rest of the world except to say that they are either wrong - sometimes describing them as reprehensible - or unable to think/innovate independently from Western States;
-> uses the phrase “civilized societies” an uncomfortable amount of times;
-> why does he rarely cite the jurisprudence (especially from European courts) that he refers to?;
-> good that he took the time to give precise and detailed definitions to the majority of the key terms he employs;
-> why on earth are the development notes at the end of the book instead of at the bottom of each page?;
-> last 2 parts + conclusion feel incredibly rushed.
August 20, 2022
This is a welcome follow-up to Susskind’s 2018 ‘Future Politics’. He argues that the current laws around digital technologies (not companies per se) do not do enough to adequately govern the power and harms involved. It’s a systemic failure stemming from an obsession with the ideology of market individualism. Digital republicanism, he proposes, provides a template for how to regulate the unaccountable power of digital technologies (no relation to the contemporary US Republican Party, but rather the neo-republicanism of Philip Petit and Quentin Skinner).
The thesis is compelling and it’s a very well-written book, backed up with deep citations. My only criticism is that the chapters are extremely short, leaving not enough room for Susskind to provide exhaustive defences of the positions he advocates for; that’s left for the reader to go off and investigate themselves (for which the extensive literature Susskind cites proves useful!). This doesn’t detract from the book, though, and ensures that it remains exceedingly readable!
All in all, a welcome intervention that presents a genuinely novel vision of digital technology regulation, driven by a normative core built on a powerful, different understanding of liberty.
The thesis is compelling and it’s a very well-written book, backed up with deep citations. My only criticism is that the chapters are extremely short, leaving not enough room for Susskind to provide exhaustive defences of the positions he advocates for; that’s left for the reader to go off and investigate themselves (for which the extensive literature Susskind cites proves useful!). This doesn’t detract from the book, though, and ensures that it remains exceedingly readable!
All in all, a welcome intervention that presents a genuinely novel vision of digital technology regulation, driven by a normative core built on a powerful, different understanding of liberty.
November 30, 2025
Digital Republic is an insightful and thought-provoking book in which the author raises a very valid and timely issue, one that is likely to become increasingly important for the world in the years ahead. The narrative clearly highlights the growing tension between technological advancement, digital rights, and societal well-being.
While the book succeeds in framing the problem with clarity and urgency, it ultimately offers no real, practical solution. This absence does not diminish the value of the work. it underscores the complexity of the challenge and the need for continued global dialogue. Overall, it is a compelling read that stimulates reflection on the digital future we are collectively shaping.
While the book succeeds in framing the problem with clarity and urgency, it ultimately offers no real, practical solution. This absence does not diminish the value of the work. it underscores the complexity of the challenge and the need for continued global dialogue. Overall, it is a compelling read that stimulates reflection on the digital future we are collectively shaping.
January 20, 2024
A remarkably readable and pragmatic approach to regulating technology and stop it from harming democracy further. One of its appeals is framing regulation as a very simple question: why are we letting technology make decisions for us? And more to the point, why are we allowing to do it in ways we mostly don’t understand and without appeal, when we do not apply the same logic to justice, medicine or finance?
June 14, 2022
It's not an easy or entertaining book but it's an important book that talks about politics and how it is changing in the current world.
There's plenty of food for thought and I'm still "grokking".
An interesting and informative read.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
There's plenty of food for thought and I'm still "grokking".
An interesting and informative read.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
October 4, 2022
Excellent summary of a potential governance approach to the digital tech in Europe and North America. Similar to his earlier book Susskind excepts himself from any consideration of the governance needs, approaches or traditions of most of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. A big exception to say the least.
November 3, 2022
A solid review of the current plight we are in and the differing goals of social contract with large capitalistic growth. Offers a series of recommendations on oversight of regulations to keep some level of control over misinformation and user privacy, without breaking the technical aims of these behemoths.
Read
August 17, 2022My interview with barrister Jamie Susskind on "The Digital Republic" for The Armen Show:
353: Jamie Susskind - "The Digital Republic"
353: Jamie Susskind - "The Digital Republic"
August 29, 2022
A very well structured argument on why digital technologies threaten democracy and individual liberty, and what governments can do about it. I particularly enjoyed the thinking on competition law reform and hierarchical regulation.
Also dinosaur jokes.
Also dinosaur jokes.
May 1, 2023
Not as good as his first work, but still a very good read. Probably because the topic material is still beyond the state of the art. Great points and ideas throughout, a coherent and cohesive thesis, and the overall message resonated with me. Loved the closing.
May 12, 2025
The Digital Republic is a powerful and timely book that challenges us to rethink power, freedom, and democracy in the digital age. Susskind makes a compelling case for regulating tech platforms and designing fairer digital systems. A must read for anyone concerned about the future of society…
June 21, 2025
We need to pay attention to this and update our approach. Slightly aspirational given the split in today’s society.
November 19, 2022
writing style is a bit of a drag with the “in this book, i will discuss…” at the end of EVERY chapter. would also point out that this book approaches democracy x tech from more of a legal perspective than a sociopolitical one.
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