For years, fringe ideologues were able to use Facebook undisturbed to promote their extreme ideologies and conspiracies. In An Ugly Truth, New York Times tech reporters Cecilia Kang and Sheera Frenkel reveal how Facebook’s algorithms sacrificed everything for user engagement and profit, while creating a misinformation epicenter and violating the privacy of its users.

Through deep investigatory work, Kang and Frenkel came to a shocking conclusion: the missteps of the social media platform were not an anomaly but an inevitability—this is how Facebook was built to perform.

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