Summary of Max Fisher's The Chaos Machine

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 I visited Facebook headquarters in late 2018, and among the artwork was a two-story mural painted by a Chinese artist flown in from the Guggenheim Museum. The mural reminded me of the Chinese artist who’d been featured at the museum.

#2 In 2017, Jacob, the Indian man in charge of reviewing posts for Facebook and Instagram, noticed the posts growing more hateful, more conspiratorial, and more extreme. He felt his team’s ability to constrain this rising hate and incitement was hamstrung by the platforms’ secret rulebooks.

#3 I would go to interview Facebook officials, and they would always have thoughtful answers about how they were going to fix the problems they were facing. But when I would ask about the dangers posed by the platform itself, a mental wall would go up.

#4 Many within Facebook believe in the platform's ability to generate positive effects. The company's global-policy chief explained to me how the platform's algorithms and design deliberately shape users' experiences and incentives, but she seemed unaware that these elements are the core of the product.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Sep 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9798350026146

IRB Media

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Insights on Max Fisher's The Chaos Machine

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

In 2014, Rene DiResta, a Wall Street analyst, was hired by a Silicon Valley investment firm to scout startups. She was still an analyst at heart, and spent her downtime researching and investigating anti-vaccination movements.

#2

Eventually, DiResta realized that Facebook was recommending anti-vaccine content to her, and she began to notice that mainstream health and parenting pages tended to have groups with many more members, but those recommendations came later.

#3

What DiResta saw was that the platforms were pushing these fringe groups because they were attracting more engagement, which meant more money for the companies.

#4

The Santa Clara Valley, in central California, was a sleepy expanse of fruit orchards and canneries in 1941. That began to change in 1941 when the Japanese navy struck Pearl Harbor, setting in motion a series of events that transformed the valley into one of the greatest concentrations of wealth the world has ever known.

#5

The Santa Clara Valley, which was home to many of the Valley’s technological companies, was able to grow its pool of talent, money, and technology thanks to an unusual funding practice: venture capitalism.

#6

The arrangement between venture capitalists and founders was that the former would take a seat on the company’s board, help select the executive team, and personally mentor the founder. This meant that each generation of successful engineers reified their strengths in the next.

#7

In September 2006, the operators of a dorm-grown website, Facebook. com, made an accidental discovery. They had 8 million users, but not enough to guarantee survival. The company had tried expanding to workplaces, but few workers signed up.

#8

The news feed, which allowed users to scroll through updates from their friends, drove engagement rates up. But the appearance of widespread anger was an illusion. In reality, only a minority of users ever joined. But proliferating updates made them look like an overwhelming majority.

#9

The companies hooked so many users that the market value of Facebook, a free-to-use web service with almost no physical products or consumer services, exceeded that of Wells Fargo, one of the world’s largest banks.

#10

The exploitation of the human mind, far from being a dark secret, was openly discussed in the 1990s as a exciting tool for business growth.

#11

The reason your smartphone looks and feels like a slot