The punishment for selling out humanity is bad dick.

But seriously, I was hoping I would warm to Mae at some point but wow. What a truly awful, insufferable, person. From the beginning. Maybe that was an attempt to mirror the assumed selfishness and navel-gazing of millennials but if so it's based on an incredibly short-sighted and inaccurate assessment and I think the, important, message is lost to many because of it.
As with any dystopian/speculative book the message here isn't "technology bad". It's about examining how we maintain our humanity alongside technology. In this case our rights to privacy and autonomy. I also felt there was a warning against blurring the lines too much between work and life. The current workplace attitude of that being your identity. That you should live and breathe the company you work for at all times even in your own time. If you even have that anymore thanks to emails and texts and the ability for work to reach you at all hours of the day and the accompanying expectation that they be able to. The Circle seems extreme but a look at the social media policy at your job and it's not that far off.