Hacktivist

Hacktivist appeared on a list somewhere and I decided to give it a try. I read it through my library and while I’m glad I read it and I liked it enough to keep going to the next volume, I’m not sure I loved it.

Hacktivist follows two cofounders of a large social media site YourLife (I’m sure you can guess what real world company this is modeled on) and while doing so, they hack for good, essentially. They’ll have sessions together where they hack into government servers to help people around the world. And in doing this, they cause some trouble. So there are allusions of the Arab Spring as well in the book. I don’t want to say much more, but the story line and the handling of the ethics involved in having the data that a company like YourLife would have, is interesting.

According to things I’ve read online, the books are a tribute to Anonymous in some way, but I’m not so sure that came across to me as I was reading. I was surprised by how the books did attempt to show how the data collected by any private company can be coopted by governments, even if the creators of those companies have the best of intentions.