Army of Liars, by Andrew V. Edwards, published on September 3rd, 2024 by Rowman & Littlefield.
Following up on his groundbreaking book Digital is Destroying Everything, Army of Liars now unveils the sinister agenda of an army of liars, the digitally-driven bad actors seeking to destabilize the United States by eroding the very foundations of liberal democracy with a relentless barrage of fabricated narratives and poisonous, digitally promoted misinformation.
Pulling no punches, Edwards identifies the culprits: social media platforms protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, audience targeting, real-time content recommendation, foreign state actors, and radical factions fueled by hate. Today’s social media has been weaponized by enemies of the United States and hate and discord are now the currency of thousands of anonymous “content providers.”
Army of Liars unpacks how we got here, what exactly is wrong with digital enterprise, and how to go about fixing it so that humanity may survive even in an age of artificial intelligence and digital command and control. Should we implement an “engagement tax” on social media platforms and generative AI? These funds could be used to help fight off the worst types of disinformation and to help fund the efforts of content creators whose work has been scraped, stolen, and reconfigured by generative AI and large language models (LLMs).
It’s a safe bet the tech giants won’t want to hear it. Army of Liars is designed to help humans not only survive in a digital age but to conquer digital and prosper in an age of truth in media.