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

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.



Max Fisher, a New York Times investigative reporter, tells the gripping and galling inside story of how 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 companies' founding tenets, combined with a blinkered focus on maximizing engagement, have led to a destabilized world for everyone.

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.