Facebook Nation: Total Information Awareness

This book explores total information awareness empowered by social media. At the FBI Citizens Academy in February 2021, I asked the FBI about the January 6 Capitol riot organized on social media that led to the unprecedented ban of a sitting U.S. President by all major social networks. In March 2021, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey appeared before Congress to face criticism about their handling of misinformation and online extremism that culminated in the storming of Capitol Hill.

With more than three billion monthly active users, Facebook family of apps is by far the world's largest social network. Facebook as a nation is bigger than the top three most populous countries in the world: China, India, and the United States. Social media has enabled its users to inform and misinform the public, to appease and disrupt Wall Street, to mitigate and exacerbate the COVID-19 pandemic, and to unite and divide a country.

Privacy advocates scored a triumph in April 2021 with anti-tracking features in Apple's privacy nutrition labels and, to a lesser extent, Google's Federated Learning of Cohorts replacement for third-party cookies. However, data security remains elusive as cybercriminals posted online the stolen personal information of 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries.

Mark Zuckerberg once said, "We exist at the intersection of technology and social issues." This book offers discourse and practical advice on cybersecurity and privacy issue, cryptocurrency and business intelligence, social media marketing and caveat, e-government and e-activism, as well as the pros and cons of total information awareness including the Edward Snowden leaks.

"Highly recommended." - T. D. Richardson, Choice Magazine
"A great book for social media experts." - Will M., AdWeek
"Parents in particular would be well advised to make this book compulsory reading for their teenage children..." - David B. Henderson, ACM Computing Reviews

Prof. Newton Lee is the founding president of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Institute for Education, Research, and Scholarships based in Los Angeles, California and a 2021 graduate of the FBI Citizens Academy.

Lee was the founder of Disney Online Technology Forum, creator of AT&T Bell Labs' first-ever commercial artificial intelligence tool, inventor of the world's first annotated multimedia OPAC for the U.S. National Agricultural Library, developer of an AI Expert System for counterterrorism at the Institute for Defense Analyses, designer of an AI Expert System in pharmacology and drug interactions at Virginia Tech, and the longest serving editor-in-chief in the history of the Association for Computing Machinery for its publication Computers in Entertainment (2003-2018).

He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Virginia Tech with a B.S. and M.S. degree in Computer Science (specializing in Artificial Intelligence), and he earned a perfect GPA from Vincennes University with an A.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and an honorary doctorate in Computer Science.

Lee has lectured at Emily Carr University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Simon Fraser University, University of Southern California, Vincennes University, and Woodbury University. He has been honored with a Michigan Leading Edge Technologies Award, two community development awards from the California Junior Chamber of Commerce, and four volunteer project leadership awards from The Walt Disney Company.