The Hype Machine

Chapter 1

The New Social Age

This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature. ­Don DeLillo

Human beings have always been a social species. We ve been communicating, cooperating, and coordinating with one another since we were hunting and gathering. But today something is different. Over the last decade, we ve doused our kindling fire of human interaction with high-­octane gasoline. We ve constructed an expansive, multifaceted machine that spans the globe and conducts the flow of information, opinions, and behaviors through society. This Hype Machine connects us in a worldwide communication network, exchanging trillions of messages a day, guided by algorithms, designed to inform, persuade, entertain, and manipulate us.

The object of this machine is the human psyche. It was designed to stimulate our neurological impulses, to draw us in and persuade us to change how we shop, vote, and exercise, and even who we love. It analyzes us to give us options for what to read, buy, and believe. It then learns from our choices and iteratively optimizes its offerings. As it operates, it generates a data exhaust that traces each of our preferences, desires, interests, and time-­stamped, geolocated activities around the world. It then feeds on its own data exhaust, refining its process, perfecting its analysis, and improving its persuasive leverage. Its motivation is money, which it maximizes by engaging us. The more precise it gets, the more engaging and persuasive it becomes. The more persuasive it becomes, the more revenue it generates and the bigger it grows. This is the story of the Hype Machine ­the social media industrial complex: how it was designed, how it works, how it affects us, and how we can adapt to it. And the story opens in Crimea.

Ten Days

On a cold day in February 2014, heavily armed gunmen surrounded

Sinan Aral is the David Austin Professor of Management, Marketing, IT, and Data Science at MIT; director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy; and head of MIT’s Social Analytics Lab. He is an active entrepreneur and venture capitalist who served as chief scientist at several startups; co-founded Manifest Capital, a VC fund that grows startups into the Hype Machine; and worked closely with Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, WeChat, and The New York Times, among other companies. He currently serves on the advisory boards of the Alan Turing Institute, the British National Institute for Data Science in London, the Centre for Responsible Media Technology and Innovation in Norway, and C6 Bank, Brazil’s first all-digital bank.

Eminently relevant . . . [The Hype Machine] offers hope that we can re-engineer social media to better serve society. New Scientist

A timely and far-reaching book of great interest to anyone concerned with building a healthy public sphere in the twenty-first century. Zeynep Tufekci, author of Twitter and Tear Gas

What Sinan Aral has achieved with his new book The Hype Machine is probably the most comprehensive and best-structured presentation of social media s effects based on existing scientific studies and collective experience. The Y Circus
 
The scenario Aral describes should scare any technology leader, user of social media technology, or citizen within a democracy. . . . This book is worth reading to understand the sophistication of social media analytics alone. Myles Suer, CMS Wire

This is the most important book of the year! Our friendships, economy, and society now depend on billions of social media connections, and no one on the planet understands them better than Sinan Aral. . . . A lively, engaging masterpiece. Erik Brynjolfsson, bestselling co-author of The Second Machine Age

In a sea of books about social media, this is the one to read. Aral understands the new social age like no one else, and The Hype Machine offers the single best examination of how social media works and how we can make it better. Clint Watts, author of Messing with the Enemy

An immensely interesting, informative, and provocative look at the biggest technological questions of our time, and the future of our democracy. Eli Pariser, bestselling author of The Filter Bubble

The Hype Machine is a riveting story of social media s impact on how we live. Part spy novel and part science thriller, this book is an essential guide to ensuring our digital future. Jonah Berger, bestselling author of Contagious

A breathtaking journey through the economics, technology, and behavioral