Book Review: Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

Reviewed by paulml

Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier, Henry Holt & Co., 2018, ISBN13: 978-1250239082

For most people, being on social media is as important as eating and breathing.  This author gives a very different view.

There is a very strong comparison between a person who is addicted to social media and simply must check Facebook every ten minutes, and a trained dog.  What is happening on social media these days is no longer just advertising; it has now entered the realm of behavior modification.

The present-day business model seems to be to find customers who are ready to modify their behavior.

In the past, advertisers could measure whether a product did better after an ad was run.  But today, it is possible to measure if a specific individual changed their behavior (usually in a negative way), and their feed is continually tweaked to get that individual behavior to change.

The author talks a lot about a statistical machine in the cloud that he calls BUMMER.  It stands for "Behaviors of Users Modified, and Made into an Empire for Rent."  Among its components are: cramming content down people's throats, earning money from letting the worst people secretly screw with everyone else, and directing people's behaviors in the sneakiest way possible.  Don't forget the rise of fake mobs.  BUMMER can be found in the author's other objections to social media: social media is undermining truth, it doesn't want you to have economic dignity, it is making what you say meaningless, and social media hates your soul.

This book is short and excellent.  The author is one of the pioneers of virtual reality, so he knows what he is talking about.  This book is very much recommended, both for those who wonder if social media is really worth the time and for those who can't imagine life without it.