David Auerbach

David Auerbach is an American writer and former Microsoft and Google software engineer. He has written on a variety of subjects, including social issues and popular culture, the environment, computer games, philosophy and literature. His 2018 book Bitwise: A Life in Code was well received, and chosen by Popular Mechanics as one of its 30 "Best Sci/Tech Books of 2018". Auerbach worked on Microsoft's Messenger Service after college in the late 1990s – he is credited in The New York Times as having introduced smiley face emoticons to America during this time – before moving on to Google, where he stayed until 2008. He was a columnist for Slate magazine from 2013 to 2016, The American Reader, MIT Technology Review, The Nation, The Daily Beast, n+1 and Tablet.

In an article for Slate, Auerbach expressed criticism of facilitated communication, referring to it as a pseudoscience. Auerbach has also written on what he calls "A-culture", associated with anonymous online forums like Encyclopedia Dramatica and 4chan.

In 2017, BuzzFeed published screenshots of correspondence between Auerbach and Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos in which Auerbach appeared to provide Yiannopoulos with tips on topics such as Wikipedia controversies and the relationship status of Anita Sarkeesian, a Gamergate target at the time. Auerbach disputed the BuzzFeed article's statements about him. Publishers Weekly said Auerbach is a "natural teacher, translating complex computing concepts into understandable layman's terms", characterizing Bitwise as an "enjoyable look inside the point where computers and human life join".

Meganets: How Digital Forces Beyond Our Control Commandeer Our Daily Lives and Inner Realities

Auerbach published his second book in March 2023 titled Meganets: How Digital Forces Beyond Our Control Commandeer Our Daily Lives and Inner Realities.

Auerbach defines a meganet as a "persistent, evolving and opaque data network that heavily influences how people see the world", that necessarily involves constant interaction between services provided by big tech and the millions of users that use and influence those services. Auerbach opines that meganets are contributing to a "severe fracturing of society" as users split into "likeminded selfpolicing groups that enforce unanimity and uniformity, and prevent any largerscale societal consensus", a process also inherently selfreinforcing. Auerbach was a 2016 New America National Fellow.