It was still the era of the social web. Everyone in the pool. Alone, together. Social networks, claimed the social networks’ founders, were tools for connection and the free circulation of information. Social would build communities and break down barriers. Pay no attention to that ad tech behind the curtain: social would make people kinder, fairer, more empathetic. Social was a public utility for a global economy that was rapidly becoming borderless, unbounded—or would be, if anyone in Silicon Valley could figure out how to win China.
