A lot happens in "Lurking," but true to its title, the book mostly shines a light on what foul things other people are doing - and how one's odds of getting away with it depend on how much the man in the mirror looks like Zuck.

Ms. McNeil considers how social media have changed our behavior, first as offline interaction became normalized, and then as it has become weaponized.

Personal behavior is the focus here, so Google is mentioned only offhandedly. A leisurely defunct platform called Friendster opens the book, followed by crash courses in trolling on Twitter and 4chan and reverse-engineering what Facebook thinks you want.

Conversely, we hear about Wikipedia and successful efforts by the underrepresented to own and share their true stories.

But ultimately Ms. McNeil can't hold back: "...I have tried to maintain a consistent tone of criticism that is not openly combative... but I have found it next to impossible to maintain this distance when it comes to the topic of Facebook. I hate it. The company is one of the biggest mistakes in modern history, a digital cesspool that, while calamitous when it fails, is at its most dangerous when it works as intended."

I won't slice that as a quote post because it sounds shrill out of context. In context, it makes absolute sense.