Framed is part confessional, part manifesto, and part digital history lesson, giving readers an unflinching look at the dark underbelly of social media from the eyes of someone who didn’t just observe the chaos but actively fueled it. Why was this an important book for you to write?

I was annoyed by how shallow social media punditry had become. As a prolific reader, I enjoyed most of the “Big Tech” books but was surprised to find that none of them had been written from the engineer’s perspective. Further, there was indication that some of them had been “dumbed down.”

In playing the software engineer and “bad guy,” I wasn’t looking for penance. Rather, I was interested in preserving internet history and culture. Writing this book came at a massive opportunity cost that I could never possibly recoup in book sales. My hope is that this book can entertain readers, drive policy discussions, and perhaps be one day seen as an important reference work.

I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?

In terms of writer’s block or “getting it right,” the Myspace chapter was the hardest. In 2022, it was nothing more than an add-on and I was trying to secure interviews and source material from people I attended middle school with. By late 2023, I was restructuring the book around Myspace being the genesis. I’ve cut thousands of words and several notable tangents from that chapter, and I could spend another two years trying to perfect it.

In terms of emotional difficulty, it was hard to reconcile that my ventures, though “successful,” paled in comparison to other operators which earned millions of dollars more than my team did.

It was also tough to face the reality that, after years of effort, I produced this cool book, but how many other “cool books” haven’t been started because we’re so distracted by cell phones? “Screengrabbing,” originally, would have been almost one hundred pages in print. It was really hard to find the right way to address this problem.

What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?

• The evolution of “Myspace whoring” to digital marketing automation
• Big Tech’s reversal of course on “open” APIs
• The wide spectrum of “black hat” and “white hat” in user behavior and business decisions
• Instagram growth’s reliable ~10% rate of reciprocity, established by research and aligned with my experience
• An updated take on the dead internet theory

What is one thing that you hope readers take away from Framed?

The Internet Age has brought immense opportunity but also has ushered in social and ethical decay.

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