Jaron Says Dump Social Media

Book review: “Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now” by Jaron Lanier

When this book was first published in 2018, I passed it by. I suppose I was put off by the title which seemed to me a bit excessive. These days, I no longer feel that way, and in fact I have gotten rid of all but one of my social media accounts.

It is old for a book of technical criticism, but when I finally got around to reading it, i found it fresh and up to date. Jaron is often a step ahead of the rest of us. I hope you will give it a chance as well. What might sound like a rant, is a deeply considered and thorough examination of what animates social media and what effect it has on all of us. It says a lot about Jaron that does not point at any enemies or adversaries. He is a denizen of silicone valley himself and sees all of us as caught up in the BUMMER machine. BUMMER? What’s that?

Behavior of
Users
Modified and
Made into an
Empire for
Rent

BUMMER encapsulates how the business model of the social media giants translates into a ruthless system that victimizes both advertisers and users. A system that consumes oceans of data (our personal information) and uses it to manipulate and divide us. Not because the programmers or managers are inherently evil, but because this is the consequence of a model that optimizes for “engagement” .

Now, this may sound like old news, but Jaron dives deeper that other commentators, continuing this alphabetic analysis he describes the ABCs:

Attention Acquisition leading to Asshole supremacy; 
Cramming content down people’s throats; 
Directing people’s behaviors in the sneakiest way possible; 
Earning money from letting the worst assholes secretly screw with everyone else;
Fake mobs and Faker society.

He has a key insight that the world I see through social media is different from that presented to others. While it may not seem from my direct experience that the effects are very bad, the worst effects are in the aggregate impact on the whole society. You have to take a few steps back to see this and Jaron helps us get this perspective.

I came to similar conclusions myself before reading the book and withdrew from all social media except one, YouTube. YouTube is clearly no better that Facebook, but as a musician I cannot bring myself to give up the worldwide access to the music of ordinary folks that YouTube provides. Jaron would understand. He frequently makes it clear that he is not an absolutist, and individuals ought to find their own way to live in this situation, and that we can benefit from any distance from social medial that we can manage.

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