It’s no secret that social media’s influence on us is designed to be invisible. It can tell whatever story it wants, affecting not only what you think but how you think—and ultimately how you behave in the world.

Here to help us unpack these important ideas is Max Fisher, a New York Times investigative reporter, Pulitzer Prize finalist, and author of a brand new, vitally important book entitled, The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World—a referendum on all of the individual and social damage currently being wrought by Big Tech and the social media empires that that have come to monopolize our attention, foment division and fracture our world.

We start by covering Max’s journey to reporting on social media and politics, the specific ways social media changes its users’ morality, and how algorithms can make users more prone to violence.

We also dive into cutting-edge research on how social media inculcates a super-exaggerated feeling of outrage and intolerance, making users more likely to believe misinformation and the complicated role of

free speech in it all.

And we close things out by sharing the dangers of Big Tech behemoths holding such large data sets on human behavior—and why social media addiction is so terrifying.

Watch: YouTube.

Read: Show notes.

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This is an admittedly scary but vitally important conversation about how social media’s reach and impact run far deeper than we have previously understood.

I hope you learn as much as I did—and adjust your screen time accordingly.

Peace + Plants,

Rich

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