Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier

is cheeky. Lanier, a computer scientist who has become one of Silicon Valley’s best-known apostates, aims to convince us that Facebook, Twitter and other such platforms are so deeply corrupt, their effects so personally and socially destructive, that we need to ditch them, and fast. “Quitting entirely is the only option for change,” he writes.

Lanier sees social media as a manipulative system that demeans everyone it ensnares. The more information about ourselves we feed into it, the better it gets at steering our thoughts and opinions.

The essential business of a company like Facebook, he argues, is behaviour modification. Not only does it harvest incredibly detailed data about individuals’ habits and preferences, but it also runs myriad experiments aimed at determining which messages and other stimuli are most likely to grab attention, elicit strong reactions and trigger compulsive consumption of information.

These sophisticated techniques for psychological engineering are invaluable to advertisers who want to sell us goods.

They’re equally valuable to political operatives who want to shape our views.

Because the techniques are hidden from us – the companies treat their algorithms as trade secrets – we’re rarely conscious of the ways we’re being