Outrage Machine

Foreword by Jonathan Haidt, author of THE RIGHTEOUS MIND

An invaluable guide to understanding the technology that captures our attention with anger.

The original internet was not designed to make us upset, distracted, confused, and outraged. But something unexpected happened at the turn of the last decade, when a handful of small features were quietly launched at social media companies with little fanfare. Together, they triggered a cascading set of dramatic changes to how media, politics, and society itself operates-inadvertently creating an Outrage Machine we cannot ignore.

Author, designer, and media researcher Tobias Rose-Stockwell shares the defining shifts caused by these technologies, and how they have ignited a society-wide crisis of trust. Drawing from cutting-edge research and vivid personal anecdotes, Rose-Stockwell illustrates how social media has bound us to an unprecedented system of public performance, training us to react rather than reflect, and attack rather than debate.

OUTRAGE MACHINE reveals the triggers and tactics used to exploit our anger, unpacking how these tools hack our deep tribal instincts and psychological vulnerabilities, and how they have become opportunistic platforms for authoritarians and a threat to democratic norms everywhere.

But this book is not just about the problem. In a story spanning continents and generations, Rose-Stockwell explores how every new media technology disrupts our ability to make sense of the world, from the printing press to the telegraph, from radio to television. OUTRAGE MACHINE situates social media within a historical cycle of confusion, violence, and emerging tolerance. Using clear language and powerful illustrations, this book reveals the magnitude of the challenges we face, while offering realistic solutions and a promising pathway out.

Tobias is a master of intuition and metaphor. This is a vivid and unforgettable book -- Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist at New York University and bestselling author of THE RIGHTEOUS MIND
With insight and sensitivity, Tobias offers a deep examination of how digital technologies are shaping our perceptions, relationships, and even our sense of personal identity. This book offers a vital perspective that's needed for us to build a more humane future -- Tristan Harris, cofounder of Center for Humane Technology, cohost of Your Undivided Attention podcast, as seen in the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma
A riveting exploration of the double-edged sword of our time: social media. This book provides a road map of how we got here, what's really at stake, and how we can find our way out. An absolutely urgent read -- Ryder Carroll, New York Times bestselling author of THE BULLET JOURNAL METHOD
Based on solid research, this is a disturbing examination of the destructive impact of social media Kirkus

Tobias Rose-Stockwell is a writer, designer, and media researcher whose work has been featured in major outlets such as the BBC, The Atlantic, Wired, NPR, CNN and many others. His research has been cited in the adoption of key interventions to reduce toxicity and polarization within leading tech platforms. He previously led humanitarian projects in southeast Asia focused on civil-war reconstruction efforts, work for which he was honoured with an award from the 14th Dalai Lama. He lives in New York City.

Foreword by Jonathan Haidt, author of THE RIGHTEOUS MIND A noticeable shift has occurred in the last two decades. The prevalence of hate speech online. The turn toward authoritarianism and populism across the western world. Every day, it seems, we're hearing more angry voices and fearful opinions, we're seeing more threats and frightening news, and we're reacting faster and less rationally.The cause is hidden in plain sight: for the first time, almost all of the information we consume is controlled and curated by algorithms designed to capture our emotional attention. This, media researcher and strategic advisor Tobias Rose-Stockwell argues, is the outrage machine. It is the wide-cast net of social media that is propelled by tech, has been exploited by all of us, and which has been allowed to steadily replace our newspapers, emergency communication systems, town halls, churches, and more. And this ubiquity has had unintended consequences.OUTRAGE MACHINE reveals how to navigate a world that has been thoroughly disrupted by technology. It demystifies the underlying machinery that has come to control us and will help guide readers toward reflection rather than reaction. Pulling together 15 years of research and inquiry, Rose-Stockwell gives readers a language with which to comprehend what is happening to society, and offer new mental models for how to manage our time, our technology, and our attention, as well as big-picture recommendations for the way forward, how to redesign these platforms, and methods for fixing this broken system before it changes us for ever.

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