The Chaos Machine

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

By: Max Fisher

Narrated by: Peter Ganim

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 & Company

Critic reviews

“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

read this book

if you've ever wondered about those YouTube suggestions, you'll never see them the same way.

So Enlightening

Outstanding and important work. My only wish is for updates that keep us as well informed.

😱 oh! WOW

Perfectly explained, like everything and since the dawn of time; we are manipulated and used for the wellbeing of a few. Be religion, government or busines. A perfect description of exploitation. Must READ.

Highly Recommend

This book does an amazing job at shedding light on a major force propelling our society’s polarization. I highly recommend it. As a parent of a teen and tween who consume social media content, I appreciate the information and insight in this book. I plan on taking some of the insight gained to engage in conversations with them on how we can enjoy the positives of our favorite platforms while also needing to be aware of and ever vigilant of their shortcomings and pitfalls.

glass half empty or half full

The book lacks describing the good of social media among the chaos. By over describing the horrors and damaging influence that social media exerces over people, it leads to the conclusion that it should be controlled by government agencies for the good of democracy. Unfortunately the established media, newspapers and TV, are often aligned with the government, pushing an agenda..the social media and free speech is the only tool everyday people can have acess to what is going on with their society, government and cultural customs, so the individual can decide for himself. For example....Biden's cognitive behavior has been show on the social media YouTube for the last 3 years, and only last couple of months, the average person found out after the last debate on TV ! ?!?.

Eye opener

This isn’t a light read.

If you’re like me, you’ll recognize how your own behavior has shifted because of social media. And not positively.

The Author presents current research on specific ways social media changes our brains and how algorithms can shift your moral compass.

There’s a deep dive on the tech industry and it’s shameful.

No feel good here. It’s an EYE OPENER.

Wow... powerful look at Social Media

Whatever you think you know about social media, this book will open your eyes and scare you to death.

A great eye opener , just told from a biased angle

This is a great book (for the first few chapters) after a few chapters it’s told from a obvious perspective of an anti right wing perspective. The book is full of amazing information to help you rewire yourself , I feel the book could do more good for people being told from a neutral perspective and viewpoint. Even though the perspective did not affect my take on the book , I just feel it was very obvious and took the front stage after a few chapters.

The reader’s voice is not my favorite however that’s personal preference and I feel that’s reader to reader.

So I still suggest this book if you yourself can place yourself in a neutral position.

Wake up

Mind blowing. Every person on the planet with a smart phone should read. Passive mind control is real.

Should be mandatory reading for all adults

Should be mandatory reading for all adults. The research Max Fisher did for this book is mind-blowing.