"We all have a vague sense that social media is bad for us, for our children, and for our democracies. But what exactly is it about Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other platforms that causes this creeping feeling of unease? Max Fisher, using years of his own international reporting for the New York Times, tells the inside story of how the social networks fundamentally altered the world, detailing the roots of their ideology, their race to maximize engagement, and the resulting algorithms that drive everyday users to extreme opinions and, increasingly, extreme actions. Taking the listener from deep inside Silicon Valley to the far reaches of Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Germany, and Brazil, Max Fisher unfolds the definitive account of how the social-media harms that sometimes began in forgotten pockets of the world saw their dark culmination in America through the pandemic, the 2020 election, and Capitol Insurrection. The result is an intimately detailed account of the consequences of the polarization that social media incubates: the cancellations, the omnipotence of hate speech, and the spillover into real-world violence. Fisher weaves together the stories of dozens of alarmed outsiders and Silicon Valley defectors to reveal the true human cost at the heart of social media."--
adult
Max Fisher.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 343-375) and index
