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Inside The 'Chaos Machine' Of Social Media — Science Friday

Mar 2023 🇺🇸 Science Friday

In this Science Friday segment, host Ira Flatow interviews Max Fisher about the central argument of The Chaos Machine: that the harms his reporting documented are embedded in platform design itself — engagement-ranking systems that reward divisive, outrage-driven content — rather than being solely the work of bad actors exploiting neutral tools. Fisher revisits Myanmar, where Facebook's free-data strategy made the platform nearly synonymous with the internet, a concentration of algorithmic filtering he links to the amplification of hate speech ahead of mass ethnic violence. He also draws an extended comparison to tobacco companies, arguing platforms held internal research consistent with harm while publicly disputing it, and notes that empirical evidence now distinguishes this from earlier media panics. TechKids Foundation includes this segment as Fisher's clearest science-audience articulation of the design-not-content argument.

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Fisher, Max, interviewed by Ira Flatow. "Inside The 'Chaos Machine' Of Social Media." Science Friday, March 3, 2023. https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/the-chaos-machine-social-media/

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