Hype is the backbone of social media. It's the content ingredient that catches the most eyeballs and creates value for advertisers spending money on platforms such as Facebook.  The problem with the social media business model, however, is that hype sometimes feeds off of false, salacious, and anger-inducing material. That's according to Sinan Aral, the David Austin Professor of Management at MIT, who details the unintended consequences of social media in his new book "The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health–and How We Must Adapt." While social media was supposed to make us closer to each other, communicate more easily, and share things with people around the world, the spreading of fake news and the way bad actors have been able to use social networks to divide and oppress have tarnished the technology. Sinan Aral joins the podcast to explore the issues and how they can be fixed.