Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier
We think Facebook is indispensable. We see Facebook, and other social media, as a unique way to connect with people and to find out what is happening in the world. It is easy to use, and, best of all, it is free.
Sure, we have concerns about privacy, and we complain about it. We ask Facebook to change, to protect our privacy, forgetting that Facebook makes its money by people who paid Facebook to access our preferences and views in order to influence us. We are not the customers, we are the product.
In our eagerness to access the social media, we are giving up our own freedom. There is a shift, from being free people, we are becoming resources for organizations, such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, who, with our voluntary assistance, are harvesting personal views and preference, in order to use or sell the information. Facebook, claimed Sean Parker, ex-Facebook president, now a venture capital investor and philanthropist, is "made to exploit human 'vulnerability.'"
Truth suffers on Facebook. We tend to trust and be influenced by our peer groups. But on social media our extended peer group may contain a lot of fake people, calculated to manipulate us, to influence us without even realizing it. Every moment Facebook algorithms calculate the chances that a person will act in a particular way and then it directs our behaviour in the sneakiest way possible.
Laboratory experiments have established that emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to mimic – unconsciously – expressions and emotions, positive or negative. A technique called A/B testing, a popular method for figuring out the best online promotional and marketing strategies, is used extensively from companies like Facebook, Google or Amazon to test over some fraction of users and see how people react.
Social media affect the way we perceive people. If we were to meet them in person the people we interact with on social media, we would probably get a different impression of them, because we tend to cover up parts of ourselves out there. Social media is a form of deception, and a lot of people, including fake people, hide behind that facade..
My social media presence is limited. Some months ago, I deleted my Facebook account. Occasionally I use Twitter. I deleted my account when I came to the conclusion that Facebook made me sad and sometimes angry. Being polite and nice is not popular on social media. Inflating statements, or writing things you know people want to hear or being in purpose inflammatory is popular. Unconsciously you are becoming a nasty person. Friends, people I knew for years stopped speaking to each other after a silly, inconsequential argument on Facebook. Do you want to be that kind of person? I don’t.
Jaron Lanier is truly a renaissance man. Computer science, author, musician, composer, a pioneer in virtual reality. With strong arguments, Lanier presents the social and psychological ways that social media is affecting our lives. Don’t get me wrong, this isn't a book against technology. Technology has made many things easier in our lives and can change the world for the better, perhaps in ways, we have not yet understood. But we should be shaping technology to fit our needs rather than allowing technology to shape us.
Hopefully, the book will be read by as many people as possible.