Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now
By Jaron Lanier
About the book
Jaron Lanier, a virtual reality pioneer who takes part in no social media himself, argues that people are better off without it. His reasons include the way it brings out the worst in users, makes politics terrifying, creates illusions of popularity and success, distorts the relationship with truth, isolates people while they seem more connected than ever, and erodes free will through targeted advertising. He describes a world of constant surveillance, with algorithms run by some of the wealthiest corporations in history, companies whose only way to make money is being paid to manipulate behavior. Lanier remains a tech optimist, and alongside his critique of current social media business models he sketches a more humanistic form of social networking.
David Heinemeier Hansson said that, next to How to Break Up with Your Phone, which he felt took a tame view of social media, Lanier's goes for the jugular, reviewing how social media companies sell attention to the highest bidder.
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David Heinemeier Hansson (Co-Founder/Basecamp)
Where How to Break Up with Your Phone took a pretty tame view of social media – hey, maybe it’s not great, so let’s just do a bit less – this book goes for the jugular. Reviewing all the ways social media companies are conspiring against us, selling our attention to the highest bidder (whether that be an ad for a new car or a new president), and how the algorithms that drive social-media engagement are self-optimizing for the worst of everything.
There wasn’t that much new information here, especially for someone who’s been paying close attention to the social media landscape for years, but there was a renewed sense of outrage and purpose and contextualization. The idea that you don’t have to believe that Zuckerberg or Sandberg are evil masterminds plotting to derail civilization to accept that social-media engagement algorithms that run on auto-pilot much of the time could very well get us there.
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