Chaos Machine

Most people sense that social media is harming their attention, their children, and the health of democracies. Max Fisher, a New York Times reporter, argues that the damage goes much deeper than that vague unease suggests. He traces how Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other networks, chasing ever larger revenue, built recommendation systems that exploit human psychological weak points and steer users toward more extreme beliefs and, increasingly, more extreme actions.

Fisher's reporting moves across the globe. He follows hate speech from the distant places where it first took root and spilled into bloodshed, then carries the story to the United States, where the same forces surfaced during the pandemic, the 2020 election, and the attack on the Capitol. Throughout, the platforms insisted they were defending free expression, while their real priorities lay with profit. The outcome, he contends, is a public divided less by disagreement over facts than by misinformation, outrage, and fear.

The book also follows the outsiders and former insiders from Silicon Valley who sounded the alarm and exposed what went on behind closed doors. Its scope is both wide and personal. It serves as a history of how the tech giants rose and what they left behind, and as an urgent argument for addressing the harm to minds and societies before it grows worse.

Fisher previously covered world affairs for The Washington Post, and that international perspective shapes the book. Myanmar, where Facebook's role in violence against the Rohingya Muslim minority is among the most closely examined cases, is one of the places he investigates.