Broken Code

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

Facebook knew it had a problem. The company had been humiliated by headlines, painted as complicit in the manipulation of democratic voting and an assault on the global social fabric. Their stated mission was to connect people, but they couldn't afford to destroy society in the process. And so they hired a small team to make sure they didn't repeat the same mistakes.

From the Wall Street Journal reporter whose explosive stories have rocked Facebook and its leadership, this is the story of the Civic Integrity Team: a select band of engineers, coders, economists, and experts hired to peer inside the company's secretive algorithms for the first time and find out what exactly was going wrong.

They were successful. Too successful. The Integrity unit discovered proof that Facebook distorted and amplified the basest of human impulses. The company was not merely providing a platform for bad actors but amplifying their power for profit. Enduring personal trauma and professional resistance in their often lonely and dark investigations, the Integrity team nevertheless isolated many of Facebook's worst problems, complete with tentative and hopeful steps to solve them - only to discover that they were set up to fail, and would have to take matters into their own hands.

©2023 Jeff Horwitz (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

  • In trying to connect the world, Facebook tore at the fabric of society. With the skill of an award-winning journalist, through fascinating personal angles, Horwitz details the inner workings of the tech giant and their outcomes — misinformation, teen depression, and political division. A must-read.

    Scott Galloway, bestselling author of The Four

  • A dogged and meticulous reporter, Jeff Horwitz is at the height of his powers in Broken Code, a penetrating portrait of one of the most significant companies in the world and of one of the great new challenges of this technological era.

    Ronan Farrow, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and bestselling author

  • A well-researched, disturbing study of a tech behemoth characterized by arrogance, hypocrisy, and greed

    Kirkus

  • Jeff Horwitz has written a blockbuster expose of Facebook, the notoriously secretive social media giant whose benign mission—connecting people—masked a growing propensity towards some of humanity’s worst impulses. Populated by concerned, brave employees who defied their employer and leaked thousands of pages of internal documents to Horwitz, with the imperious, remote Mark Zuckerberg and his top lieutenants at the center, Broken Code is brilliant reporting and a page-turning narrative of immense importance

    James B. Stewart, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and New York Times bestselling author

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