Summary of Sinan Aral's The Hype Machine

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The Hype Machine is a machine that connects us in a worldwide communication network, exchanging trillions of messages a day. It was designed to stimulate our neurological impulses and draw us in, but it also persuades us to change how we shop, vote, and exercise. #2 The debate about what happened in Crimea continues today. Russia denies it was an annexation, while many consider it a hostile encroachment by a foreign power. In just ten days, the region was flipped from one sovereignty to another with hardly any noise. #3 The information operation in Crimea was extremely sophisticated, and social media was essential in framing the reality of what happened there. If this was an annexation, NATO would have to respond. But if this was an accession, overwhelmingly supported by the Crimean people, intervention would be harder to justify. #4 I had to take a detour to explain how I understand the events that transpired in Ukraine. In 2016, I was working on a research project with my colleagues Soroush Vosoughi and Deb Roy at MIT, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the spread of fake news online. We found that false news diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth.