Unregulated technology threatens truth, democracy, and humanity itself... Following up his groundbreaking book Digital is Destroying Everything, Andrew Edwards nowunveils the sinister agenda of An Army of Liars, thedigitally-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, 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.
Andrew V. Edwards is an author, technologist, entrepreneur, perennial iconoclast, and visual artist residing in New York's Hudson Valley. He is the author of Digital is Destroying Everything and dozens of articles about digital marketing for ClickZ, the world's largest online source of marketing advice and information. He has also published fiction and had a play produced in New York's East Village. His prizewinning paintings have been exhibited nationally. He is a Co-founder and Director Emeritus of the Digital Analytics Association. In the 1990s Andrew designed and built some of the very first websites, and ran Renaissance Multimedia, one of the first interactive agencies in New York City. He went on to found Technology Leaders, one of the first consulting companies devoted to digital audience measurement, with clients that included The Coca-Cola Company, Century 21, and Priceline.
