Blaming the messenger

Mr McNamee is right that a 15-year-old company got this powerful because it learnt how to get under the skin of its users

Facebook, the social platform that was supposed to help us share pictures of kittens with family members living far, has transformed itself into a global behemoth that can arguably affect the outcome of elections, give voice to all manner of conspiracy theorists, and provide a mechanism by which the most dastardly content can be widely shared.

In his book, whose title leaves no doubt which way his sympathies lie, Roger McNamee, an old Silicon Valley hand and early Facebook evangelist, lays the blame for this state of affairs squarely at the door of the company’s leadership. Having worked with both Mark