The Chaos Machine
The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World
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The Chaos Machine
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Narrated by:
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Peter Ganim
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Written by:
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Max Fisher
About this listen
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.
©2022 Max Fisher (P)2022 Little, Brown & CompanyYou may also enjoy...
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What the critics say
“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
What listeners say about The Chaos Machine
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Siloetry
- 2022-11-08
Great Read!!
Just get off social media! It isn’t worth your time and mental space. Trust me!
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 2023-05-15
Wow! What a listen
Wonderfully narrated and appealing story. A little too dark, gloomy, and depressing at times. However, it's a tale of your species interacting with our technological creations and all that comes with it. Well done, Max!
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- J3ss7c4
- 2022-11-01
Great BUT
I really enjoyed it but wished he took a more objective stance on politics. Without that objectivity I found myself questioning the veracity of some claims.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 2023-01-26
A MUST read/listened to!!
A mind-popping document. We must shutdown social media or demand accountability by Legislative institutions.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Kristopher
- 2022-11-29
Everyone needs to read this
What a powerful and eye opening read. We all know it’s bad but not this bad. Perhaps Elon Musk’s power play will undermine the surveillance capitalism and algorithm based business model that is at play in social media and increasingly all major tech.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Chick loves lit
- 2023-01-28
brilliant
I am recommending this read to everyone I know. a brilliant, scary look into what social medias are doing to society, and the individuals within it. well researched. exceptional writing. Narrator did a great job.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Gerry Corcoran
- 2024-01-08
A good premise choked by bias
I've listened to a number of books whose premise I vehemently disagree with because I believe it's important to have a well rounded perspective on things. In this case, I've been well aware of the insidious, toxic nature of social media for many years, but wanted to hear more behind the inner workings of what drives that.
Unfortunately, as soon as I heard the title of the second chapter, I knew that facts are not something this work relies on. As someone who hates the entirety of the GamerGate controversy, hearing so many facts about it distorted or outright ignored right from the jump was disheartening. The narrative that Zoe Quinn and her ilk are victims, as opposed to a group that is well documented and proven to be full of lies and fraud immediately removed any trust I had in this author. Even if I may agree with his premise about social media, if he is going to rely on a false narrative to make a point, it calls into question the basis of every other point he is making.
Many other reviews cite the fact that the author only talks about how social media has emboldended the extreme right and acts as if there isn't an extreme left that isn't having just as bad a societal impact. I consider myself quite socially liberal, but the modern extreme left is illiberal and regressive and is absolutely as driven by social media as the extreme right is. Both of these extremes are awful and to only call out one of them while pretending the other doesn't exist is just disingenuous and frankly, not very respectful to the reader. Given that the author is a co-founder of Vox, a network of sites with about as much integrity and in-built biases as Fox, I'm not surprised. Had I known that before purchasing, I wouldn't have done so.
There are many books that talk about the corrosive nature of social media and I would recommend giving them a look and staying far away from this one. I've never returned a book on Audible before, but this one made me happy that their return policy is as generous as it is. I don't mind if your beliefs aren't the same as mine. You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.
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