What have social media platforms done to our society? That’s the unsettling question that international reporter Max Fisher explores in The Chaos Machine. With many examples of how Big Tech has earned billions of dollars by spreading violence, misinformation, and hate speech, Fisher examines how Facebook and other platforms have caused chaos all over the world.
Shut It Down
In May 2021, Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee, shared thousands of internal research reports showing that Facebook knew it amplified harm and did so anyway, lying to regulators and the public. The whistleblower offered a straightforward response when asked what would most successfully reform the platforms: turn off the unsupervised algorithms causing the chaos.
But what would that entail?
