The Chaos Machine, Max Fisher
The Chaos Machine, Max Fisher
List: $31.99 | Sale: $22.40
Club: $15.99

The Chaos Machine
The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World

Author: Max Fisher

Narrator: Peter Ganim

Unabridged: 15 hr 55 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/06/2022

Synopsis

From a New York Times investigative reporter, this “authoritative and devastating account of the impacts of social media” (New York Times Book Review)  tracks the high-stakes inside story of how Big Tech’s breakneck race to drive engagement—and profits—at all costs fractured the world, and is “an essential book for our times” (Ezra Klein). We all have a vague sense that social media is bad for our minds, for our children, and for our democracies. But the truth is that its reach and impact run far deeper than we have understood. Building on years of international reporting, Max Fisher tells the gripping and galling inside story of how Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social networks, in their pursuit of unfettered profits, preyed on psychological frailties to create the algorithms that drive everyday users to extreme opinions and, increasingly, extreme actions. As Fisher demonstrates, the companies’ founding tenets, combined with a blinkered focus maximizing engagement, have led to a destabilized world for everyone.

Traversing the planet, Fisher tracks the ubiquity of hate speech and its spillover into violence, ills that first festered in far-off locales to their dark culmination in America during the pandemic, the 2020 election, and the Capitol Insurrection. Through it all, the social-media giants refused to intervene in any meaningful way, claiming to champion free speech when in fact what they most prized were limitless profits. The result, as Fisher shows, is a cultural shift toward a world in which people are polarized not by beliefs based on facts, but by misinformation, outrage, and fear.

His narrative is about more than the villains, however. Fisher also weaves together the stories of the heroic outsiders and Silicon Valley defectors who raised the alarm and revealed what was happening behind the closed doors of Big Tech. Both panoramic and intimate, The Chaos Machine is the definitive account of the meteoric rise and troubled legacy of the tech titans, as well as a rousing and hopeful call to arrest the havoc wreaked on our minds and our world before it’s too late.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Randal on May 18, 2022

I have to say that this book really shocked me. Being someone who likes to think of myself as being well informed, I'm completely surprised at how social media companies have manipulated me. And, for that matter, the world! Never again will I be able to look at Facebook and similar companies as just......more

Goodreads review by Karen on June 07, 2024

I would like to thank my Goodreads friend, Casey for encouraging me to read this book. Their review is here: [URL not allowed] In many ways, I feel like I am in a race against time as I read and write about what we are facing in our country. I am still in “shock” awe by what I......more

Goodreads review by Carla on July 06, 2022

This is a terrifying, well-argued polemic against the power of social media to turn the average apolitical person into a hate spewing warrior or worse, both at home and abroad in places like Myanmar and Brazil, and even Germany. The origin story of Silicon Valley culture is not nerd kids in garages,......more

Goodreads review by Laura on September 19, 2022

Throughout reading this book, I could not stop thinking about it. After finishing it, I have to say it completely changed the way I understand our current world. I had an inkling about most of what was in this book, but I did not grasp the full scale of any part of it: the greed, the violence, nor t......more

Goodreads review by Graeme on June 15, 2024

This is definitely one of the most moving and impactful books that I have read in quite awhile. The information inside of this book is nothing short of revelatory. For so long now I have wondered how anyone could be a part of implementing the misinformation that social media consistently spews. Its......more

Quotes

“The Chaos Machine is an authoritative and devastating account of the impacts of social media . . . The way the book connects the dots is utterly convincing and should obliterate any doubts about the significance of algorithmic intervention in human affairs.”—New York Times Book Review

“A stark warning about the extent to which Facebook et al distort our perception of reality.”—The Guardian

“The single most complete understanding of how social media has rewired our brains, our culture, and our politics that I have ever read. It’s outstanding.”—Jon Favreau, Offline

“A sobering investigation into the effects of platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Tracking political movements that spread over social media, both in America and worldwide, Fisher describes how algorithms . . . systematically promote extreme content that sparks moral outrage and forges group identities united by a sense of threat.”—The New Yorker

“Fisher has drawn together a chilling record of the cultural and commercial imperatives behind violent events, and how the perversity of machines and of people, working in tandem, have upended life around the globe.”—Air Mail

“Well argued, engaging, and often necessarily discomforting… The Chaos Machine’s greatest achievement is perhaps how skillfully it traces seemingly disparate phenomena back to the design of social media platforms that prioritize engagement at all costs… At a time when calls for the regulation of platforms is growing ever louder, Fisher makes an urgent, compelling case for change.”—Mary McGill, Irish Independent

“Social media isn’t just changing our lives. It’s changing the world, and even its creators and would-be overseers have only the foggiest ideas about how. In this meticulously reported, grippingly told account, Max Fisher chases the results across continents, and paints a disturbing picture of not just where we are, but where we’re going. The Chaos Machine is an essential book for our times.”—Ezra Klein, author of the New York Times bestseller Why We’re Polarized

“Well-researched and thoroughly unnerving… Fisher’s lucid, clear explanations and convincing arguments are bound to leave readers questioning their own use of social media.”—Booklist (starred review)

“A scathing account of the manifold ills wrought by social media… There’s no shortage of books lamenting the evils of social media, but what’s impressive here is how Fisher brings it all together: the breadth of information, covering everything from the intricacies of engagement-boosting algorithms to theories of sentimentalism, makes this a one-stop shop. It’s a well-researched, damning picture of just what happens online.”—Publishers Weekly

“An often riveting, disturbing examination of the social media labyrinth and the companies that created it… Fisher dives into the chaotic social media landscape, synthesizing dozens of interviews from a wide range of sources… he examines the rise of the social media giants and the dangers they have created for our society… Fisher is spot-on when he describes how the promotion and manufacture of moral outrage were not glitches in the system but inherent features.”—Kirkus Reviews

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