Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy

A stinging polemic that traces the destructive monopolization of the Internet by Google, Facebook and Amazon, and that proposes a new future for musicians, journalists, authors and filmmakers in the digital age. Move Fast and Break Things is a path-breaking polemic in support of the future of the creative industries in the age of the Internet platform. The title, taken from a term coined by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, originally referred to reckless hacker culture at the social media behemoth. In Taplin's telling, Move Fast and Break Things piquantly describes the way in which the largest Internet platforms--Facebook, Google and Amazon-used the music, news and film industries to build their businesses to scale only to sideline them, and the millions of Americans who work for them. The result is a news industry subservient to social media traffic, a music industry in which life is harder than ever for the "middle class" musician, and a book industry threatened by the overwhelming digital market share of a single retailer. As broadband ubiquity increases, the film and television industries will be the next victim.