An Ugly Truth

A riveting New York Times–bestselling exposé of Facebook’s fall from grace.

Facebook has been under constant fire for the past five years, roiled by controversies and crises. As the tech giant was connecting the world, it was also mishandling users’ data, spreading fake news, and amplifying dangerous, polarizing hate speech—while relentlessly pursuing growth.

The company, many said, had simply lost its way. But the truth is far more complex. Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, held up as archetypes of uniquely twenty-first-century executives, attempted to deflect attention from the crises. And while consumers and lawmakers focused their outrage on privacy breaches and misinformation, Facebook solidified its role as the world’s most voracious data-mining machine, posting record profits and shoring up its dominance via aggressive lobbying efforts.

Drawing on their unrivaled sources, award–winning New York Times reporters Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia King unravel the tech behemoth’s complex politics, alliances, and rivalries to expose the fatal cracks in its architecture. They reveal how its missteps were not an anomaly but an inevitability—this is how Facebook was built to perform.

WINNER OF THE SABEW BEST IN BUSINESS AWARD

A Book of the Year: Fortune, Foreign Affairs, The Times (London), Cosmopolitan, TechCrunch, WIRED