Joshua Stein’s Reviews > The Tyranny of Big Tech > Status Update
Joshua Stein
is on page 39 of 320
Through the first three chapters, we get a wierd combination of Hawley superimposing his ideological positions on a very narrow set of historical events, focusing his discussion of corporate power on Morgan (rather than, say, the southern plantation owners or Hearst) and the dynamic with Roosevelt. It's all self-serving as "successor to Teddy" narrative.
— May 20, 2021 09:40AM
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Joshua’s Previous Updates
Joshua Stein
is on page 159 of 320
It's going to look like I finished this book abruptly, but this is actually the end of the substance of the book in the kindle edition that I'm reading.
— Jun 06, 2021 06:13PM
Joshua Stein
is on page 151 of 320
A Republican Senator lecturing on the importance of a new Glass-Steagall (but for tech) is sort of like a professional boxer warning you about the dangers of getting repeated concussions.
— Jun 06, 2021 05:32PM
Joshua Stein
is on page 150 of 320
So, the last chapter is just a regurgitation of the comments by Dina Srinivasan on anti-trust suits against Google. Which is entirely reasonable; Srinivasan's work is good, but readers should maybe just look at that instead.
— Jun 02, 2021 10:48AM
Joshua Stein
is on page 141 of 320
Perhaps the most interesting point of incoherence is the sheer volume of time that Hawley spends railing against what is essentially a libertarian conception of freedom (where freedom is individual and consists in non-interference) to advocating basically entirely for weak "personal responsibility" solutions.
— Jun 02, 2021 10:38AM
Joshua Stein
is on page 133 of 320
I support reforms to CDA Sec 230, but Hawley's discussion of the issue is plainly ridiculous and quickly descends into conspiracy theories. This is not surprising. Hawley shows throughout the book that he's an intellectual lightweight regurgitating partisan lines on these issues, without consideration for their internal incoherence.
— Jun 02, 2021 07:19AM
Joshua Stein
is on page 117 of 320
Actually laughed out loud when Hawley cited Marco Rubio as an authoritative source on tech companies' business practices.
— Jun 01, 2021 07:41PM
Joshua Stein
is on page 111 of 320
I genuinely wonder if Hawley has ever thought about the actual problems of traditional media monopolies, since everything he says about information pushing is equally true of the Murdoch papers, Sinclair, Fox, Comcast, etc. He just kind of ignores that to focus on social media, very narrowly.
— May 31, 2021 02:03PM
Joshua Stein
is on page 101 of 320
Now Hawley is touting the various Robert Epstein white papers as gospel, despite their infamous lack of peer review and their widespread criticism by actual computer scientists (which Epstein is not; he's a psychologist). It's really bad, but it supports Hawley's conspiracy theories, so he'll run it out anyway.
— May 31, 2021 01:17PM
Joshua Stein
is on page 96 of 320
This book is a painful slog. In addition to not knowing the basics of the technology that he's trying to regular, Hawley wants to paint himself as a sort of grand hero. It's normal for political books written in anticipation of a presidential run (which this is), but it's tedious and silly.
— May 30, 2021 06:14PM
Joshua Stein
is on page 80 of 320
We've now entered the "Josh Hawley is a mental health and social psychology expert" portion of the book, which is basically just a parade of basic correlations, asserting causation when it supports the argument and ignoring the findings when it doesn't.
— May 30, 2021 05:37PM
