Delete your social media now, tech insider warns
Must-read manifesto gives us 10 solid reasons to sign off immediately
If you’re online these days, you likely sense that something’s wrong with the internet. You probably feel weird about how many times a day you check Facebook or Instagram, and likely a little uneasy about how annoyed or envious you feel when you do. Maybe the hostility online depresses you. Maybe you worry about the next generation, and how anxious they all seem. Maybe you’ve even considered deleting your accounts.
This is exactly what Jaron Lanier, a leader in the tech world, says you should do. Right away.
Lanier — a pioneer in the world of internet startups, and virtual reality in particular — has long been a critic of the Silicon Valley status quo. In this slim, highly-readable manifesto, he lays out his case against social media. And it is a devastating one.
In 10 simple arguments, the tech insider paints a picture of a wide-scale behaviour modification apparatus driven by social attention — both the carrot of approval and the stick of criticism, which generates the most intensity or “engagement.”
“There is no evil genius seated in a cubicle in a social media company performing calculations and deciding that making people feel bad is more ‘engaging’ and therefore more profitable than making them feel good,” he writes. “Or at least, I’ve never met or heard of such a person. The prime directive to be engaging reinforces itself, and no one even notices that negative emotions are being amplified more than positive ones.”
According to Lanier, the social media apparatus has made people into lab rats, placing them under constant surveillance. He believes the process is making people angrier, more isolated, less empathetic, less informed about the world, and less able to support themselves financially. (Since tech startups often disrupt whole industries, as in the case of Facebook’s impact on traditional media or Uber’s on taxis.)
Add to all that: Lanier says this highly tuned behaviour modification system is for rent to anyone looking to influence the public. The constant stream of data, and the algorithms that tweak subsequent efforts to sway people, aren’t just used to sell soap, he notes, but to influence politics. Most alarming, he says, as we learned in the recent American election, the Silicon Valley giants sometimes don’t even know who their customers are.
In Lanier’s opinion, the only option is to deprive these tech companies of our data, and force them to come up with a better business model. It’s “the most finely targeted way to resist the inanity of our times.”
Required reading for anyone who cares about the future of our society.