The MIT Press, ISBN 978-0262547420, English, 242 pages, 2024, USA

If the algorithmic automation mechanisms that industry has implemented over the years have severely conditioned the lives and work of countless people, rebalancing these imposed conditions is above all a question of awareness, technical skills and cooperation, despite a “disproportionate computational power”. In this book, Bonini and Trere have produced a valuable ethnographic study in which they show how and where resistance has been expressed by counter-organised groups and collectives. The reappropriation of code logic and the resulting actions are analysed in three main areas: Gig work, Culture Industry and Politics, which are discussed in the respective chapters based on field research. The “moral economy” of platforms is then thoroughly questioned and often simply reversed in order to improve people’s conditions by exploiting the technical means. The resulting “algorithmic agency” has been studied in several countries (India, China, Mexico, Italy and Spain) and more generally in both the privileged global North and the global South. The rationality of the moral economy of users could mean algorithmic hijacking, amplification and evasion, but is mainly based on the logic and mobilisation of communities, which has already been effectively done in the past, as the various historical references in this excellent book prove.