Review of the book Everybody Lies
Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens- Davidowitz ( Harper Collins, 2017)
review by Marjorie Prince
This is not a book I would normally read, let alone recommend. But this witty and provocative volume engaged me, a technology skeptic, in ways I had not expected. Stephens –Davidowitz studied economics and Harvard, then became a Google data scientist and now a New York Times writer and self-proclaimed “internet data expert” He convinced me of his expertise. Stephens-Davidowitz wrote his Ph.D dissertation on “The Cost of Racial Animus on a Black Candidate: Evidence Using Google Search Data.”
Most interesting to students of history is the use of new primary sources that cast doubt on previously held assumptions about race, economics, politics, sex, education and a variety of other subjects. Stephens-Davidowitz observes that all of us lie about things we don’t want others to know about us, e.g., how often we have sex, how many books we read and actually finish, whether we voted in the last election and for who we voted. Facebook, according to the author, is not a reliable source for what we really think and really do because we tend to present to our “friends” our best side. The same is true of opinion surveys and voter polls. “the power of Google data is that people tell the giant search engine things they might not tell anyone else” For Stephens-Davidowitz, “people’s search for information is …Information.”
Critical for us as the 2018 elections approach is to understand the virulent racism that is exposed through Google searches. Millions of Americans search for jokes about African Americans, “stupid niggers” and ”I hate niggers.” After Obama’s 2008 victory, Stormfront, a white supremacist site, was over ten times more active that usual. Post-racial society indeed!
What did this predict about the 2016 election? We should have known that Trump would win. According to Google search data, and contrary to conventional wisdom, there is scant evidence to suggest that unemployment or economic anxiety played any role in Trump’s election. “You might think that a major cause of racism is economic insecurity and vulnerability.” However, says the author, “neither racist searches nor membership in Strormfront rises when unemployment does.”
Big Data is important not only because the size of the sample matters but also because of the kinds of information requested. Stephens-Davidowitz admits that more research is needed and that we should be careful in predicting individual actions. Many gory searches, for example, do not lead to criminal actions.
Stephens-Davidowitz’s previous experience at Google, as well as the possibility of search manipulation, may cause some concern. But uncovering new primary materials, in my opinion, opens up whole new ways of viewing old assumptions and are, therefore, valuable. The results should prompt all of us to recognize that our overt and covert racism is trashing our supposed democracy.