Girl Gone Viral

This book started so well. I liked the main character, Opal Hopper, a high school student with a gift for interpreting data and manipulating social media. The premise is interesting - she, with her two talented friends, are running the virtual reality equivalent of a youtube channel as part of a competition. Opal wants to win the competition mostly so she can meet a high profile tech guru and ask him questions about her missing father.
Opal's tech-focused, high pressure school was a believable setting, and Ahmadi manages to create an intriguing sense of community. However, about halfway through the story seemed to run out of steam. Things that were built up as super important near the beginning, just sort of fell away for example, Opal's college application, especially the essay she was freaking out about writing, just sort of happens off screen. The love triangle that is set up early on also kind of fizzles out. But the main thing that bugged me was the odd approach to the Luddite faction.

Early on in the story we learn that Opal believes that much of human interaction and human endeavour can be replaced by technology and automation. Her opinions are presented in such a way that I, as the reader, felt sure that she would be challenged to reconsider her beliefs. She would learn to see things in a more complex way, perhaps.
But each time she encountered somebody who disagreed with her beliefs about technology their views were utterly wishy washy and unconvincing. Each time, we were left with Opal saying "But with tech, we can give people what they want!" And that was never really challenged.
There was a section near the end where Opal seemed to at least consider that being with her friends and family could not be replicated in virtual reality, but she didn't seem to join the dots, that maybe there are more areas in which technology and automation are not satisfactory.
And more importantly, there was no exploration of the idea that technology isn't neutral, that algorithms are created by humans, and replicate human biases.
The oddest and most interesting flaw was created by the Luddite political story line. The rise of a tech-phobic political party (the Luddites) that is clearly is meant to evoke the rise of Trump and his supporters, creates some interesting problems for the writer. The Luddites are explicitly presented as the equivalent of Trump supporters. Does that mean that their beliefs (that technology has gone too far) is the equivalent of the racism and xenophobia of Trump supporters? Does that means that the story can't really explore the Luddites' beliefs with any sympathy, as that might seem to be signalling a sympathy for racism and xenophobia?
Apart from these issues, the story just lost focus halfway through, and then came to a rushed ending that was entirely unsatisfactory.