I generally enjoyed this book, but in the context of 2024, parts of it fell a bit flat. Thankfully, unlike in the world of the Every, our regulators have some (if not enough) teeth, and the tech space feels like there is some glimmer of hope for a less corporately centralised ecosystem.

In the novel, the coagulation of all tech into one company, and the immediate acceptance of any and all violations of privacy broke the realism for me. You could draw direct parallels between some of the invasive ideas in the book (HereMe, for example) and chat control proposals in the EU.

That said, this sequel to The Circle provided a satisfying continuation of that world, and raised some interesting questions about the growth of anti-privacy and critical thought limiting technologies.