Book
The chaos machine : the inside story of how social media rewired our minds and our world / Max Fisher.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780316703321 (hardcover)
- Physical Description: ix, 389 pages ; 25 cm
- Publisher: New York : Little, Brown and Company, [2022]
- Copyright: ©2022
Content descriptions
| Bibliography, etc. Note: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Search for related items by subject
| Subject: | Internet > Social aspects. Social media and society. Social media > Psychological aspects. |
| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lakeshore Branch | 302.231 Fis | 31681010290682 | NONFIC | Available | - |
- Baker & Taylor
"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 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 on maximizing engagement, have led to a destabilized world for everyone." -- Front jacket flap. - Baker & Taylor
A New York Times investigative reporter and Pulitzer Prize finalist, through research, exclusive interviews and on-the-ground reporting, captures the tangible havoc wreaked upon our minds and world by the titans of the tech industry, telling the inside story of how the social networks fundamentally altered the world. 75,000 first printing. - Grand Central Pub
Finalist for the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism
From a New York Times investigative reporter, this âauthoritative and devastating account of the impacts of social mediaâ (New York Times Book Review)  tracks the high-stakes inside story of how Big Techâs breakneck race to drive engagementâand profitsâat all costs fractured the world. The Chaos Machine is âan essential book for our timesâ (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 network preyed on psychological frailties to create the algorithms that drive everyday users to extreme opinions and, increasingly, extreme actions. As Fisher demonstrates, the companiesâ founding tenets, combined with a blinkered focus on 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 itâs too late. - HARPERCOLL
The debut of a New York Times investigative reporter and Pulitzer Prize finalist: a gripping narrative that fuses research, exclusive interviews, and on-the-ground reporting to capture the full inside story of Big Tech’s monomaniacal race to drive engagement—and profits—at all costs.
We all have a vague sense that social media is bad for us, for our children, and for our democracies. But what exactly is it about Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other platforms that causes this creeping feeling of unease? Max Fisher, using years of his own international reporting for the New York Times, tells the inside story of how the social networks fundamentally altered the world, detailing the roots of their ideology, their race to maximize engagement, and the resulting algorithms that drive everyday users to extreme opinions and, increasingly, extreme actions.
Taking the reader from deep inside Silicon Valley to the far reaches of Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Germany, and Brazil, Max Fisher unfolds the definitive account of how the social-media harms that sometimes began in forgotten pockets of the world saw their dark culmination in American through the pandemic, the 2020 election, and Capitol Insurrection. The result is an intimately detailed account of the consequences of the polarization that social media incubates: the cancellations, the omnipotence of hate speech, and the spillover into real-world violence. Fisher weaves together the stories of dozens of alarmed outsiders and Silicon Valley defectors to reveal the true human cost at the heart of social media.
The Chaos Machine is a fresh, excoriating, and definitive narrative of the rise and legacy of the social-media giants. Delivering both astounding stories and hard-hitting reporting, Fisher captures the tangible havoc wreaked upon our minds and our world by the titans of the tech industry.
