Seen and Unseen review: George Floyd, Black Twitter and the fight for racial justice

Marc Lamont Hill and Todd Brewster's brilliant book considers the history of communications technology in a racist society

Nearly all the books I have read about the internet have deepened my fears about the net effect of social media on the health of our body politic. For example, I thought three facts from the congressman Ro Khanna's recent book, Dignity in a Digital Age, were enough to scare anyone concerned about the future of democracy.

Khanna reported that an internal discussion at Facebook revealed that 64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendations"; he revealed that before 2020, QAnon groups developed millions of followers as Facebook's algorithm encouraged people to join based on their profiles"; and he pointed to a United Nations report that Facebook played a determining role" in events in Myanmar that led to the murder of at least 25,000 Rohingya Muslims and the displacement of 700,000 others.