Max Fisher @Max_Fisher Twitter profile | Pikagi

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Max Fisher

@Max_Fisher

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Podcasts & books. Hosting, developing and more (watch this space) @crookedmedia . Author of "The Chaos Machine," an NPR and New Yorker best book of 2022.

Los Angeles

https://t.co/WpO9TQNyQu

Joined October 2008

Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

2 years

Thrilled by this: NYT call my new book, The Chaos Machine, an "authoritative and devastating account of the impacts of social media." "Utterly convincing and should obliterate any doubts about the significance of algorithmic intervention in human affairs"

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How Social Media Influences Our Behavior, and Vice Versa (Published 2022)

Max Fisher’s “The Chaos Machine” examines the psychological impacts of technology.

www.nytimes.com

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

2 years

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

3 years

Rushing through federal executions while pardoning war criminals convicted of massacring unarmed Iraqi civilians in a public square

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

1 year

People really need to understand how mainstream it has become in some tech VC circles to argue that journalism itself is dangerous as an idea and should be abolished, and that it will be up to the tech world to carry this out.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

2 years

Only 30% of Americans support overturning Roe, with 69% opposed, according to the most recent polling. Get used to it: everything we know about the trajectory of American democracy suggests that minoritarianism will become the norm.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

5 years

Now live: Our monthslong project on YouTube radicalization. As YouTube diverts more and more users down far-right rabbitholes, could its algorithm, in a way, radicalize an entire society? To find out, we went to YouTube's 2nd-largest market: Brazil.

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How YouTube Radicalized Brazil (Published 2019)

YouTube built its business on keeping users hooked. This has been a gift to extremist groups. An investigation in the company’s second-biggest market found serious consequences.

www.nytimes.com

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

3 years

Facebook when its platform is a driving force for genocide vs Facebook when it faces possible regulation

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

2 years

The erosion of abortion rights is extremely rare in the world, and almost exclusively occurs in backsliding democracies. Here’s my reporting on the link between those two forces:

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As Abortion Rights Expand, the U.S. Joins a Handful of Telling Exceptions (Published 2021)

Recent shifts on access to abortion suggest democracy and women’s rights go hand in hand — and that the inverse might be true as well.

www.nytimes.com

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

3 years

One of the Blackwater contractors continued shooting civilians in the crowd even as his colleagues shouted over and over for ceasefire. One had to pull a gun on him to force him to stop. One of the people he shot was a mother clutching her infant.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

7 months

A sign of how much US popular and journalistic attitudes have changed. I did this exact chart at Vox during the 2014 war and got screamed at for weeks. David Frum accused me of agitating for murder of Jews. Ted Cruz condemned. Now it’s on the NYT HP without a blip.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

2 years

Afghans are starving not because of insufficient aid, but because the US forcibly emptied govt coffers, triggering a currency crisis and shutting down govt salaries and services. This move is a death sentence for untold numbers of civilians, including many kids and unborn babies.

@nytimes

The New York Times

2 years

Breaking News: President Biden is moving to split $7 billion in frozen Afghan central bank assets between 9/11 victims’ families and humanitarian aid in Afghanistan. The highly unusual set of moves is expected to be announced on Friday.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

9 months

I really feel we have lost touch with how close we came in 2020 to authoritarianism enforced by nationwide, city-by-city state violence. The forces behind that effort remain widely influential in US politics and their return to power in 15 months is entirely plausible.

@grace_panetta

Grace Panetta

9 months

....oh

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

5 years

YouTube’s algorithm has been curating home movies of unwitting families into a catalog of semi-nude kids, we found. YT often plays the videos after users watch softcore porn, building an audience of millions for what experts call child sexual exploitation

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On YouTube’s Digital Playground, an Open Gate for Pedophiles (Published 2019)

The site’s automated recommendation system, at times drawing on home movies of unwitting families, created a vast video catalog of prepubescent children.

www.nytimes.com

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

4 years

I’m not saying the outcome will be the same but this is almost word-for-word what went viral on FB in Myanmar and Sri Lanka just before the incitement turned to massive real-world violence. In both cases Facebook did nothing even as innocent people were dying.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

7 months

The WSJ story claiming Iranian involvement in the attack is getting knocked down in a way you rarely if ever see

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

4 years

South Korea and Italy had near-concurrent outbreaks that initially followed a parallel, terrifying trajectory. Mere weeks later, as Italy reports 793 deaths in one day, Korea has two. Some days it has *zero*. Me and Choe Sang-Hun report how they did it:

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How South Korea Flattened the Curve (Published 2020)

The country showed that it is possible to contain the coronavirus without shutting down the economy, but experts are unsure whether its lessons can work abroad.

www.nytimes.com

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

3 years

Whatever happens now, we may spend the rest of our lives dealing with the party-wide normalization of: • Refusal to concede losses • Refusal to transfer power • Efforts to overturn election results • Delegitimation of outparty governance Very hard to unring this bell

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

1 year

I would really like people to understand the speed and severity with which state-level electoral autocracy is advancing in this country

@PoliticsWolf

Stephen Wolf @stephenwolf.bsky.social

1 year

Missouri GOP senators have passed a measure that uses gerrymandering to make it harder for liberals—but not conservatives—to amend MO's constitution. How? It requires 57% statewide to pass or a simple majority both statewide & in 5 of 8 congressional districts—which the GOP drew

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

3 years

I once asked a political scientist whether there was a litmus test for democracy, and they said yes: the power of elections to remove incumbents. If that’s gone, it’s not a democracy. It’s just not.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

5 years

This blew my mind: YouTube (and Google) divert users who search basic health terms to conspiracy videos that told them to fear vaccines & their doctors Experts and fomer govt officials told us that "Dr. YouTube" is driving MULTIPLE public health crises, including Zika resurgence

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

2 years

Something very Roman about a coup failing because the leader had abused his Praetorian guard to the point that they defy him at the critical moment

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

4 years

I get why folks are being sort of arch about this, but just to be crystal clear: The president contracting coronavirus, going extended incommunicado, put on experimental treatments, and then airlifted to a military hospital are, taken together, a big deal.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

7 months

Hamas no doubt has real support but it is also a violently suppressive group that rules Gaza by force. A lot of pro-occupation hardliners, as well as twitter lefty edgelords, want you to believe that “Hamas” and “the Palestinians” are synonymous, but they’re simply not.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

3 years

Quite a contrast from the overwhelming police force against this summer’s protests!

@JenniferJJacobs

Jennifer Jacobs

@JenniferJJacobs

3 years

Protesters roaming inside US Capitol

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

11 months

Incredibly funny that as long as our garbage nation stands, its history books will reflect that the first-ever federal indictment of a president was announced via an unhinged social media rant about garage doors

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

6 months

It's hard to overstate how much of the disaster in Gaza is because Netanyahu backed himself into a corner with his far-right minority coalition in order to dodge corruption charges

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

3 years

My one consistent plea to fellow journalists covering US foreign policy is to treat the DC think tank circuit as part of why that foreign policy is the way it is, rather than as a source of objective commentary on it

@Charles_Lister

Charles Lister

@Charles_Lister

3 years

In many respects, #Afghanistan represents the 1st real implementation of the "ending forever wars" doctrine. The results so far? - Crumbling of a democratic government; - #Taliban rule; - #AlQaeda ecstatic; - Emergency mass evacuation; - Unprecedented transatlantic divisions.

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Max Fisher

1 year

It comes out of a Valley utopianism has said since the 90s that all legacy institutions are ultimately barriers to progress, but that the enlightened minds of the tech world, guided by the pure science of engineering, will one day liberate us by smashing the old ways.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

3 years

The US foreign policy establishment had a real opportunity this week to confront and learn from its 20-year failure in Afghanistan. Instead, just like in Iraq, it’s refused, blaming it all on poor execution. American empire can never fail, it can only be failed.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

3 years

Always amazing to me how US conventional wisdom treats the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a narrow Hamas issue, as if the rockets went away then there would be no conflict. The occupation simply does not exist in a lot of the American conversation.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

5 years

On a personal note, I found reporting this emotionally straining, far more so than I'd anticipated. Watching the videos made me physically ill and I've been having regular nightmares. I only mention it because I cannot fathom what this is like for parents whose kids are swept up.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

5 years

We expected, at most, faint hints that YouTube helped inch far-right Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency. Instead, Bolsonaro allies and far-right lawmakers all told us YT put them in power. Far-right activists gratefully credited YT's algorithm with their "political awakening."

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

3 years

It’s so strange how these concerns only materialize when the US withdraws, and never when it’s pumping weapons into a conflict zone

@blakehounshell

Blake Hounshell

@blakehounshell

3 years

NEW: U.S.-made weapons seized by Taliban could lead to regional arms bazaar - POLITICO

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

2 years

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

5 years

I asked YouTube— why not just turn off recommendations on videos of kids? Your system can already identify videos of kids automatically. The recommendation algorithm is driving this whole child exploitation phenomenon. Switching it off would solve the problem and keep kids safe.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

5 years

We talked to child psychologists, sexual trauma specialists, psychologists who work with pedophiles, academic experts on pedophilia, network analysts. They all said YouTube has built a vast audience — maybe unprecedented — for child sexual exploitation, with grave risks for kids.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

4 years

When you ask scholars of democratic decline to name the number one red-alarm warning sign, this is almost always what they describe.

@fordm

Matt Ford

4 years

In the last two weeks, DOJ has announced the imminent departures of the solicitor general, the Civil Division chief, the Criminal Division chief, and the U.S. attorney for Manhattan.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

2 years

You can post as hard as you want about electoral backlash, but our national political institutions are simply not engineered to reflect popular will.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

4 years

I can’t overstate how irresponsible and nuts this new political line is.

@BillGertz

Bill Gertz

4 years

Trump at Fox News town hall suggests China’s leaders deliberately allowed global travel so China would not suffer alone from virus. I agree. We’re talking here of a crime against humanity by CCP

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Max Fisher

1 year

The idea of rejecting institutions to build a purer society on the internet, in vogue in tech in the 90s, by the 2010s had become a mandate to abolish and remake those institutions in big tech's image

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

5 years

As I reported last year with @kbennhold , YouTube’s algorithm does something similar with politics. We found it directing large numbers of Germans news consumers toward far-right extremist videos, with real-world implications.

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As Germans Seek News, YouTube Delivers Far-Right Tirades (Published 2018)

A researcher found the platform’s recommendation system had steered viewers to fringe and conspiracy videos on a neo-Nazi demonstration in Chemnitz.

www.nytimes.com

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

5 years

But the most shocking things we found went beyond politics. Everywhere we looked—and we looked so many places— YouTubers were leveraging the algorithm to sow misinfo and outrage. Schools in chaos, activist groups shuttered by threats, a lot of fear. Always began w a viral video.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

1 year

It's the VCs of the 2000s and 2010s, especially Peter Thiel, who came up with a certain Elon Musk via PayPal, who argued that this was the technology industry's destiny

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

1 year

There's been a movement for a few years now among many of big tech's most powerful VCs to mass block, even try to harass or ban, news reporters as a class. Journalism unwelcome in the new digital utopia. And that's the circle from which a certain new Twitter CEO comes.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

4 years

When coronavirus is allowed to spread unchecked, health systems get overwhelmed, deaths rise exponentially, and the case fatality rate jumps to near 10%. I can't believe this has to be said, but that is not any better for the economy than a prolonged shelter-in-place.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

1 year

If you remember the Clubhouse sagas of 2020, you saw how openly this is now discussed among some of the Valley's most powerful. "Why does the press have a right to investigate private companies? Let the market decide."

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How Clubhouse brought the culture war to Silicon Valley’s venture capital community

Silicon Valley, Clubhouse, and the cult of VC victimhood.

www.theverge.com

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

5 years

Our story also reveals two new studies on how YouTube shapes your reality, both exclusive, from @ufmg + @BKCHarvard They independently confirm what many suspected: YouTube has been systematically diverting its millions of Br users toward far-right bloggers + conspiracy theories.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

5 years

YouTube's algorithm leveraged the Zika crisis to enormous gain, hooking in users desperate to understand the disease crippling their infant children. In Zika-afflicted areas, we found parent after parent virtually addicted to the platform — and served dangerous misinformation.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

6 months

Gaza Health Ministry reports have proven reliable in the past, and their numbers so far are consistent with the scale of bombardment and siege in Gaza. This is quite a charge to make without evidence, and it's telling he did not feel compelled to provide any.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

3 years

The only variable that can explain the high rate of mass shootings in America is its astronomical number of guns.

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Why Does the U.S. Have So Many Mass Shootings? Research Is Clear: Guns. (Published 2017)

Americans advance a lot of theories for why they have so many more gun deaths than other countries do. The answer is lying in plain sight.

www.nytimes.com

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

5 years

For more on what happens when YouTube and other social networks route an ever-growing global share of human social relations through engagement-maximizing algorithms, read our essay on “the Algorithmification of the Human Experience”:

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

3 years

Audible cheers on the UES of Manhattan. And this was one of the least blue parts of NYC.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

5 years

We talked to one mother, in Brazil, whose daughter had posted a video of her and a friend playing in swimsuits. YouTube’s algorithm found the video and promoted it to users who watched other partly-clothed prepubescent children. Within a few days of posting, it had 400,000 views

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

5 years

@ufmg @BKCHarvard @virgilioalmeida The @BKCHarvard study found YouTube's algorithm over & over redirecting users toward far-right and conspiracy videos. Crucially, the algo is linking the channels together, creating an ecosystem where none had existed. Its pathways just happen to be ideal radicalization vectors.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

4 years

What blows my mind about Korea’s coronavirus success: • The speed of its turnaround. The numbers are staggering. • The simplicity of its model. No futuristic gadgets fueled by unobtainium. No China-style mass lockdowns. It’s mostly political will, public will, and some planning

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

1 year

Still, few in the Valley wholly shared this view. At least until 2018, when a series of disruptions radicalized – there's no other word for it – elements of the tech world, particularly around the idea that the news media is incompatible with their mission to elevate humanity.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

4 years

I’ve said this before and will keep saying it: • Korea & Singapore show that covid-19 can be contained and its spread pushed to zero • In the absence of Korea-style measures, you end up like Wuhan, overrun with rapid mass infection. Many countries already on this trajectory.

@MaxCRoser

Max Roser

4 years

South Korea shows that it is possible to win against #COVID19 Testing is a big reason for their success Daily new confirmed cases peaked 12 days ago and are falling since then. You can see the data for all countries in our entry

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Max Fisher

4 years

To be clear, Facebook’s inaction in Myanmar and Sri Lanka wasn’t because they didn’t know. Human rights monitors were flying to Menlo Park and cornering FB officials at conferences to plead with them to do something, anything. They knew every step of the way.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

2 years

It’s worth underscoring that the direct US-Russia war that is being demanded here would explicitly, and with near-total certainty, lead to a full nuclear exchange and potentially millions of deaths.

@zackbeauchamp

Zack Beauchamp

2 years

Okay but Russia has nuclear weapons whereas Saddam very famously did not

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

3 years

Free speech is dead, I write in a tweet that silicon valley will broadcast to 3 million people at no charge

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

3 years

Why are European leaders so adamant that Americans kill and die in Afghanistan in perpetuity on their behalf? Every EU foreign policy pro I’ve ever spoken to has been clear on this: to prevent Afghan refugees from coming to Europe.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

1 year

There's a deep belief that the defining battle of our time is bw tech companies that want to liberate us and dying institutions like the newsmedia trying to halt that progress out of a desperate bid for survival. Only by destroying those institutions can big tech save humanity.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

1 year

Of course there's a lot that got us from the 1990s cyber-revolution manifestos to what we see on Twitter today, and a lot more going on behind the curtain. If you'll forgive the crass plug, I tell that story and its implications for our future in my book:

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The Chaos Machine

Finalist for the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in JournalismFrom a New York Times investigative reporter, this “authoritative and...

www.hachettebookgroup.com

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

5 years

Each video might appear innocent on its own, a home movie of a kid in a two-piece swimsuit or a nightie. But each has three common traits: • the girl is mostly unclothed or briefly nude • she is no older than age 8 • her video is being heavily promoted by YouTube’s algorithm

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

5 years

Any user who watched one kiddie video would be directed by YouTube's algorithm to dozens more — each selected out of millions of otherwise-obscure home movies by an incredibly sophisticated piece of software that YouTube calls an artificial intelligence. The families had no idea.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

7 months

During the 2014 Israel-Gaza war, Twitter was like 80% news reports and firsthand civilian accounts, plus 20% shitposters. The result was an unprecedented shift in US attitudes on the conflict. Today those proportions are basically flipped and the result is, well, this.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

5 years

@ufmg @BKCHarvard @virgilioalmeida We've spent two years reporting on the causes and consequences of online radicalization. Nothing disturbed me as much as this story, because it shows that we are all deeply vulnerable. Here's our @readercenter on how this fits into our other reporting:

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We Wanted to Know How Online Radicalization Was Changing the World. We Started With Brazil....

What we found there, for an article and an episode of “The Weekly,” went far beyond anything we had anticipated, with important, disturbing lessons for us all.

www.nytimes.com

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

5 years

@ufmg @BKCHarvard The @ufmg @virgilioalmeida study found that, just as YouTube installed its new algorithm, pro-Bolsonaro channels saw their reach explode. And ***comments sitewide*** suddenly shifted in favor of Bolsonaro + Bolsonaro-promoted conspiracies. The platform was shaping user sentiment.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

2 years

The speed and extent of Moscow's climbdown is just head-spinning. Three weeks ago it called Ukraine a rightful Russian territory run by genocidal Nazis. Now it’s voluntarily offering the Sweden model – a Western ally in all but name – and getting told no! Incredible.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

5 years

@ufmg @BKCHarvard @virgilioalmeida It’s not about any political agenda at YouTube. Incremental extremism — the rabbit hole — is just what works. But it goes beyond indulging preexisting impulses. It trains users to have them. Much like the child sexualization ring we found during reporting:

@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

5 years

YouTube’s algorithm has been curating home movies of unwitting families into a catalog of semi-nude kids, we found. YT often plays the videos after users watch softcore porn, building an audience of millions for what experts call child sexual exploitation

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Max Fisher

5 years

YouTube’s algorithm also changed immediately after we notified the company, no longer linking the kiddie videos together. Strangely, however, YouTube insisted that the timing was a coincidence. When I pushed, YT said the timing might have been related, but wouldn’t say it was.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

1 year

The similarity in Brazil to Jan 6 is not a coincidence. The Brazilian right and especially far-right have long looked up to and modeled themselves after the US right. No one had to tell them to copy Trump.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

1 year

if you're wondering what happened to cnn, the answer is conservative billionaire john malone

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Billionaire John Malone loves Fox News. But he owns a piece of CNN.

One of the world’s most powerful news outlets has a new mandate.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

3 years

This very weird moment, with the transfer of power just sorta stalled out, is a lesson in how much our democracy is built on unwritten norms (media validates consensus reality, losers concede voluntarily) and how easily they can be torn down. Just adrift in the abyss, again.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

3 years

The gap between what political scientists are saying about the status of American democracy, vs what non-scholars are saying, has never been wider in my feed than it is today. After five years of hearing the former accurately project all this, I’m taking their warnings seriously.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

5 years

Initially, YouTube gave me comment saying that they were trending in that direction. Experts were thrilled, calling it potentially a hugely positive step. Then YouTube “clarified” their comment. Creators rely on recommendations to drive traffic, they said, so would stay on. 📈

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

3 years

you too senator

@ossoff

Jon Ossoff

11 years

@Max_Fisher Not sure how late I am, but congrats on the new gig.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

2 years

News: A major U.S. company is, through a factory in owns in Russia, quietly supplying vital materials used by Russia’s air and missile forces in Ukraine Our investigation reveals the company’s terms with Moscow – and its struggle to keep its plant running

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U.S. Company Supplying Russian Military Seeks Exit, Caught Between Sanctions and Kremlin (Published...

Arconic runs a huge Russian metal plant, bought in an era of cooperation between the U.S. and Russia. Now it is struggling, after years of increasing Russian military aggression.

www.nytimes.com

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

5 years

@ufmg @BKCHarvard @virgilioalmeida @readercenter Please watch @TheWeekly episode on FX / Hulu on this story. I love the written word but was blown away by the power of film, and of feeling like you're meeting some of the incredible people we met while reporting this. Please do watch:

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The Weekly | What Is YouTube Pushing You to Watch Next? (Published 2019)

YouTube makes its money by keeping you hooked, but critics say this leads it to boost extremism and conspiracies.

www.nytimes.com

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

1 year

It’s pretty funny that this joke tweet turned out to be our trillion dollar military’s actual plan

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

4 years

I really went into thinking that South Korea’s success would be built around some secret sauce no other country could possibly reproduce, but it was the opposite. All pretty straightforward really. And Korean officials are very eager to share their lessons – and their test kits!

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

4 years

Incredible moment. Implicit acknowledgement that the recommendation systems at the heart of the social media business model are dangerous for society, and on a scale that matters for US elections

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

5 years

YouTube, to its credit, said it has been working nonstop on this issue since a similar issue was first reported in February. YT also removed some of the videos immediately after we alerted the company, though not others that we did not specifically flag.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

3 years

Three days before Facebook executive Adam Mosseri said the platform did too much good in Myanmar to turn it off, a UN fact-finding team said FB played a "determining role” in the still-ongoing genocide.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

2 years

So about that Atlantic cover story blaming global democratic decline on a handful of anti-American leaders

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U.S. Allies Drive Much of World’s Democratic Decline, Data Shows (Published 2021)

Washington-aligned countries backslid at nearly double the rate of non-allies, data shows, complicating long-held assumptions about American influence.

www.nytimes.com

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

7 months

Every sentence of this from today’s big NYT Morning newsletter is false. Highly ideological fantasy dressed up as news analysis. Telling that the whole thing hangs on an aggregated quote from a goofball blogger with zero foreign policy knowledge.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

2 years

I spoke to nuclear strategists this week who raised US TV news as a serious risk factor for inadvertent nuclear escalation.

@joshtpm

Josh Marshall

2 years

Hopefully this will remain a matter of academic and media studies interest only. But it is worth considering why much of cable news has become a nonstop cheerleading for the US to declare war on Russia, often via a 'no fly zone'.

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Max Fisher

4 years

I know people keep making this point but you really cannot overstate the late-era Soviet vibes to bungled & contradictory official statements about the leader’s ailing health amid a chaotic & uncertain transition of powe&

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

2 years

Simultaneously shutting down Afghanistan’s economy and flooding it with food aid is all but certain to decimate the country’s agricultural sector for a generation. This is what the US did in c.1990 Somalia and the country has still never recovered.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

7 months

Many many things to be pessimistic about in this conflict, but fwiw I do think that mainstream American understanding has advanced dramatically as taboos around discussing and reporting it honestly have fallen away

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Max Fisher

1 year

India's wealthy liberals are veering hard into "I'm a liberal but how dare these rights groups criticize my country," a standard milestone in any democracy's slide toward electoral autocracy.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

4 years

I keep thinking about Lodi and Bergamo, two small cities in northern Italy both hit by coronavirus around Feb 23 Their infection rates looked identical for weeks, until, on March 8, Bergamo’s surged so rapidly that the military was later sent in to relieve overwhelmed morgues

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

4 years

The United States may be actively accelerating one of the world’s worst coronavirus epidemics, in Iran. This @HRW report finds US sanctions have “drastically constrained” Iranians’ access to “vital medicines and medical equipment.”

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Iran: Sanctions Threatening Health

The Trump administration’s broad sanctions on Iran have drastically constrained the ability of the country to finance humanitarian imports, including medicines, causing serious hardships for ordinary...

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

3 years

If it seems outlandish that a handful of play-acting opportunists exploiting social division and systemic distrust for short-term gain could really bring down democracy from within, I am here to inform you that this is precisely how modern authoritarianization works.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

11 months

have you ever seen a photo that more perfectly captured our fucked up era? incredible

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

4 years

The Facebook exec in charge of the news feed during both rounds of violence got a big promotion afterwards

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

9 months

Guys I'm so sorry but the UFOs aren't real. The propagators of this story are known cranks who claim they can communicate with the dead plus some weirdo hucksters. There are no aliens.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

4 years

Two common misapprehensions about Korea: 1) That it prevented an outbreak. In fact, their success was subduing an epidemic already underway 2) That Korea relied on special magical technology. In truth, its methods and containment tools are not prohibitively complex or expensive.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

5 years

@ufmg @BKCHarvard @virgilioalmeida @readercenter @TheWeekly Any journalists or researchers interested in digging in to this further, please get in touch! Happy to share our findings, sources, etc. Our story covers maybe 5% of what we found, and I suspect even that barely scratches the surface. The more of us looking into this the better.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

4 years

Demographic trends suggest that the Senate will only become more minoritarian, with one study estimating that, by 2040, half of the country will hold 84 Senate seats, with Dem voters, though a national majority, clustered heavily in the 16-seat permanent minority.

@ObsoleteDogma

Matt O'Brien

4 years

Democrats have just won the national popular vote for the 7th time in 8 elections, something no party has ever done before… … and yet Democrats are sweating out another Electoral College squeaker & have only appointed 3 of 9 Supreme Court justices. Minoritarian government.

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@Max_Fisher

Max Fisher

3 years

I cannot overstate the absolute certainty that getting your news on here will lead to you being consistently misinformed

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‘Anti-Sex’ Beds in the Olympic Village? A Social Media Theory Is Soon Debunked (Published 2021)

The coronavirus has forced a number of social distancing measures at the Summer Games, but the recyclable cardboard beds provided by organizers are not one of them.

www.nytimes.com

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