The Chaos Machine cover art

The Chaos Machine

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

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The Chaos Machine

By: Max Fisher
Narrated by: Peter Ganim
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About this listen

How social media is hacking our minds, our societies and the world—and what we can do about it.

The Chaos Machine is the story of how the world was driven mad by social media. The election of populists like Trump and Bolsonaro; strife and genocide in countries like Myanmar, the rampant spread of COVID-19 conspiracy theories as deadly as the pandemic itself, all of these are products of a breakdown in our social and political lives, a breakdown driven by the apps, companies and algorithms that compete constantly for our attention.

Max Fisher is a leading New York Times technology reporter whose work has covered the way that social media sites—driven increasingly by artificial intelligence rather than human ingenuity—push users towards more and more extreme positions, deepening the divisions in society in pursuit of greater engagement and profit. With extraordinary access to the most powerful players in Silicon Valley, and with testimonies from around the world of the havoc being wreaked by our online selves, The Chaos Machine shows us how we got to this uniquely perilous moment—and how we might get out of it.

©2022 Max Fisher (P)2022 Hachette Audio Content Creation & Social Media Media Studies Social Media Social Sciences Technology Silicon Valley
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The narrator’s style of reading takes a bit to get used to - he kind of sounds AI generated and he imitates people’s accents, which is super jarring. The information is fascinating, and it’s been really illuminating in wake of what’s happening in the Middle East.

Important reading

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a cleaver left leaning listen. as much as I disagree with a fair bit of the content, I agree that tech companies are definitely manipulating people and users beyond what they are knowingly aware of. ontop of that, government or non government agencies using all this data to manipulate the minds of all to pin people off with one another. aside this book pushing the tech manipulation, which i found ironic, as it has always been a left leaning tool, proof of this was over covid. still a good listen, but aging quickly with the current landscaping showing the cracks.

chaos

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Max’s research into social media and the devastating impacts reads as a post apocalyptic novel which, unfortunately is true. It’s not far fetched to suggest that this book can save lives. Must be player way +1.5x as the readers voice is very slow.

A must read for everyone

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A chilling analysis of how social media algorithms influence our hearts, mind, lives and systems of governance.

This book is a must-read for anyone with a social media account that will challenge you to reflect on your own interaction with the platforms.

Taking the rose-coloured glasses of social media use

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This book confirmed my fears about social media - and then some. Solid research, clear arguments, and compelling conclusions.
If you use social media you need this book!

This is scary stuff!

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In my personal opinion I think it book has a lot is mix of content and ambiguous information

I didn’t like it

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