Book Review

Web of Lies: Exploring the murky world of online extremism and misinformation

Aoife Gallagher’s study of the attraction, danger and history of conspiracy theories on the internet and how ordinary people can get sucked into it is essential reading

Aoife Gallagher, author: ‘People start seeing conspiracies in everything and cannot be assuaged by evidence that proves their theory wrong.’ Picture: Shane Gallagher

I wish I hadn’t needed to read this book. Lies, misinformation, extremism . . . the internet wasn’t supposed to be like this. Its precursor, ARPANET, was an academic project intended to let computers share research information. In its early years, the internet was heralded as a new dawn, a final farewell to post-Cold War paranoia.

But here we are, slap bang in the middle of a digital age where our eyeballs are monetised and ...