McSweeney's 54: The End of Trust

A single-theme issue of McSweeney's that takes distrust, and the data practices behind it, as its subject.

The issue starts from an era of low-level distrust in tech companies, peers, democracy and the justice system, in which no one can be sure who is watching or how the information will be used. It looks at data mining, breaches and misinformation, and at the contradiction of wanting privacy while handing personal information to social platforms. More than thirty writers and experts contribute, among them Julia Angwin, Cory Doctorow and Virginia Eubanks. The hardcover came out on 20 November 2018.

The issue was produced with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which acted as special advisor and helped compile the content. Cindy Cohn, Soraya Okuda, Cory Doctorow, Dave Maass and Bruce Schneier wrote pieces for it. It was McSweeney's first all-nonfiction issue, a break from the short fiction the quarterly usually carries, with essays, debates, interviews, graphs and manifestos. Dave Eggers and Nyuol Lueth Tong edited it. The digital content was released under a Creative Commons license.