The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health--and How We Must Adapt

I highly recommend this book. Through storytelling supported by data, Sinan Aral describes and quantifies social media's impact on society - from relationships, charitable giving, elections, and the economy.  He analyzes the different ways social media has been manipulated to serve specific agendas and then investigates the resulting impact on society. Much of it is alarming and everyone should be aware of how it works to be more conscientious about their own interactions online.  This book is very timely - Aral predicted the political strife that has recently played out in the US. There is a lot of noise about social media right now - much of it opinion rooted in emotion.  What I like about The Hype Machine is that 1) it quantifies impact and tries to understand causation 2) it focuses on the positive impact as well as the negative 3) it offers ideas for potential solutions to improve our current plight. At a minimum this book will help you think through all the actions you take online which is really important right now...and at most it will inspire some ideas about how to fix the problems.  These are complex issues and in order to find solutions, we need to observe, measure and identify the root cause and effect.  This is what Sinan Aral is doing - along with his colleagues - and I hope to see more from him in the future.

This researcher/author has uncovered a great danger in how both social media is potentially used and how it can be consumed for dangerous purposes! America has long led the world with our genius-like abilities concerning imparting information to consumers through different mediums i.e., TV, the internet, and now dominated through the use of social media i.e., Facebook, Twitter, Tic Tok, etc.However, the unfiltered propagandizing of all the aforementioned mediums appear to be growing unabated and infiltered by the average consumer.This, as per the lessons learned from studying the proliferation of propaganda that heralded and sustained Hitler's rise to power in Germany should be a lesson in national disaster!One simply needs to note the efficiency of imparting "Alternative Facts" that the former Hitler propaganda machine was so brilliant at mastering! to see the parallels developing here now in our beloved America!Sadly, we are all now just beginning to understand the dangerous nature of mass "disinformation" and how it can tear the underbelly of Democracy!Hell yes, this is a book well worth reading and should be required reading in all Civics, Communications, public policy, and ethics classes all across the country!

The examples, data, and support are great and the conclusions are useful. It just took me a couple years reading on planes to read it, because watching a screen was always more entertaining, so I kept stopping.

With the covid-19 pandemic, the recent Biden/Trump US elections, the END SARS campaign in Nigeria, and many other social issues; the Hype Machine is the best book so far trying to help us crystalize the impact of social media in our current world. The quantitative insights and qualitative predictions from the book are one you expect from an MIT professor like Sinan Aral who takes you on a journey as he tries to show us the peril and promise of social media. Each chapter of this book can be a best seller book by itself!I know this book is so powerful so I began my personal thread on Twitter on what I am learning for the book here. This thread has garnered many views and I have recommended The Hype Machine to anyone that interacts with social media (which is basically all of us).Thank you again, Sinan for this needed conversation and for providing 20-year research in a well-documented manner.

I am a total amateur when it comes to Digital Marketing but Professor Aral does a very good job in taking very complex concepts and distilling them down into their basic elements. At the same time I find myself disturbed and appalled by the Cambridge Analytica events I am also left feeling that there is still good in the world that can come from understanding and evolving the hype machine for good. Quite a heavy read but well worth the time. You will be left with a different view of the world that we now live in, and start questioning what you see AND feel everywhere. Highly Recommended.

The (research-based) easy to read book by an MIT star faculty is a thoughtful exposition of the "end of reality" - as we have known it, and the powerful impact digital hyper-socialization is having on each of us now. The the wisdom and madness of crowds are highly counter intuitive as explained well here. The author shows how the J curve of star ratings might be at fault. It should be a must read for everyone who plans to vote, or to understand what drives our modern society. I will assign it to all my students. The book will help them better understand the unexpected digital transformation of our 'collective' public opinion.

This is a book that we should all read to learn more about the hype machine. The book touches on very important points on how the social media problems are created both as a result of algorithm design and human agency. The solutions to the problem are heavily focused on regulation. I believe you get a good picture of the problem reading this book but not great solutions.

Es un libro que debe ser leído. Te explica como las redes sociales pueden influir en tu vida diaria, como las fake news pueden llegar a perjudicar socialmente a un grupo de minorías.

Sinan Aral brings his wide and deep knowledge about how social media works and how it works on us. His engaging writing style helps you quickly understand the topic. He doesn't soft pedal the seriousness of what social media is doing to us world-wide, but he also clear guidance on how to manage it so that its benefits outweigh cost.

This book is a wonderful read which makes you realise the major impact social media plays in our day to day life.

If you have watched the Netflix program “The Social Dilemma” then this book is a great follow up.Sinan Arai is a clever guy, (which is good), he has analysed data to answer some of the questions that are left hanging from “The Social Dilemma”. It’s great that it’s up-to-date, the book was published during the Pandemic and Arai knows his social media, he talks about the “attention economy”, understands that nobody wants to be interrupted with adverts, emails and cold calls anymore. He also touches on the benefits of networks, community and crowds to the buyer and the seller.It is worth pointing that the first 100 pages discuss were our elections influenced by social media? Only to admit on around page 120 that nobody looks at ads on social media anyway. In that sense, he could have got to the pointer quicker, that said, while the book is pretty hefty at over 300 pages. There isn’t any filler, which you can get with some books today.If you are interested in the subject I highly recommend the book “Ctrl Alt Delete” by Tom Baldwin.

I was looking for a book that went into filter bubbles, rage bait and things - you know, how I’m being played to make other people money - and possibly this book does, but it’s so repetitive and boring I’ll never finish it to find out.The one thing I did learn is Russia did it. All of it. Including interfering in the 2020 US Election, so presumably they elected Joe Biden. Or perhaps they’re responsible for the whole election fraud story and all those reports and all that footage of it coming out of the mouth of Trump and other Republicans was deep fake news?