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Jaron Lanier

Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now Kindle Edition

by Jaron Lanier (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.4 3,874 ratings

in Social Aspects of the Internet

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AS SEEN IN THE NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY THE SOCIAL DILEMMA
A WIRED "ALL-TIME FAVORITE BOOK"
A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK
"THE CONSCIENCE OF SILICON VALLEY"- GQ

“Profound . . . Lanier shows the tactical value of appealing to the conscience of the individual. In the face of his earnest argument, I felt a piercing shame about my own presence on Facebook. I heeded his plea and deleted my account.”
- Franklin Foer, The New York Times Book Review

“Mixes prophetic wisdom with a simple practicality . . . Essential reading.”
- The New York Times (Summer Reading Preview)

You might have trouble imagining life without your social media accounts, but virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier insists that we’re better off without them. In Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, Lanier, who participates in no social media, offers powerful and personal reasons for all of us to leave these dangerous online platforms.

Lanier’s reasons for freeing ourselves from social media’s poisonous grip include its tendency to bring out the worst in us, to make politics terrifying, to trick us with illusions of popularity and success, to twist our relationship with the truth, to disconnect us from other people even as we are more “connected” than ever, to rob us of our free will with relentless targeted ads. How can we remain autonomous in a world where we are under continual surveillance and are constantly being prodded by algorithms run by some of the richest corporations in history that have no way of making money other than being paid to manipulate our behavior? How could the benefits of social media possibly outweigh the catastrophic losses to our personal dignity, happiness, and freedom? Lanier remains a tech optimist, so while demonstrating the evil that rules social media business models today, he also envisions a humanistic setting for social networking that can direct us toward a richer and fuller way of living and connecting with our world.

Print length

147 pages
Language

English
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Henry Holt and Co.
Publication date

May 29, 2018
File size

3651 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

A WIRED "All-Time Favorite Book"
A Financial Times Best Book of 2018

“Profound . . . Lanier shows the tactical value of appealing to the conscience of the individual. In the face of his earnest argument, I felt a piercing shame about my own presence on Facebook. I heeded his plea and deleted my account.”
―Franklin Foer, The New York Times Book Review

“Mixes prophetic wisdom with a simple practicality . . . Essential reading.”
―The New York Times (Summer Reading Preview)

“The title says it all . . . Lanier advocates untethering from social media, which fosters addiction and anomie and generally makes us feel worse and more fearful about each other and the world . . . The experiment could be a useful one, though it will darken the hearts of the dark lords―a winning argument all its own.” ―Kirkus Reviews

“Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now is not anti-tech or even anti-phone. It is one of the most optimistic books about the Internet I’ve ever read because it dares to hope for better. Profoundly skeptical of the business model that undergirds social media, Lanier demonstrates the ways in which our social media accounts make us not consumer but product, our every connection monitored by unseen third parties who harvest our data, monetize our communication, and curate and manipulate our behavior. Another online life is possible, but first we have to destroy the one we’re trapped in. The great news is you don’t have to take to the streets―you don’t even have to leave your room. You can do it all by pressing one little key . . . A blisteringly good, urgent, essential read.” ―Zadie Smith, author of Feel Free

--This text refers to the hardcover edition.

About the Author

Jaron Lanier is a scientist, musician, and writer best known for his work in virtual reality and his advocacy of humanism and sustainable economics in a digital context. His 1980s start-up VPL Research created the first commercial VR products and introduced avatars, multi-person virtual world experiences, and prototypes of major VR applications such as surgical simulation. His books Who Owns the Future? and You Are Not a Gadget were international bestsellers, and Dawn of the New Everything was named a 2017 best book of the year by The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and Vox. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B079DTVVG8
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Henry Holt and Co. (May 29, 2018)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 29, 2018
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3651 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 147 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #47,989 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1 in Social Aspects of the Internet
- #2 in Human-Computer Interaction (Kindle Store)
- #3 in Social Media

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4.4 3,874 ratings

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Jaron Lanier
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Jaron Lanier is known as the father of virtual reality technology and has worked on the interface between computer science and medicine, physics, and neuroscience. He lives in Berkeley, California.
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Michael

Jaron Lanier Provides Brilliant Insights

Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2023

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Buy this book! I just discovered Lanier recently and bought this book because it's a relatively recent title. I was shocked at how intelligent and well informed this author is. And he can communicate beautifully. But more importantly, he teaches something that we need to understand. Social Media is a Frankenstein in sheep's clothing doing untold damage to individuals and dripping invisible poisonous influence to society as a whole. Get to know Lanier. He's amazing.

Helpful

Maxwell Jennings Conkling

[UPDATE] The algorithms don't care. Come soon, solar flare!

Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2022

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Anna Salter, in her book about predators, reminded readers of a sign warning hikers, "The mountains don't care." I gleaned an analogous lesson from this book: "The algorithms don't care." The invincible indifference and infinite distance that a distressed, lost hiker finds in the menacing mountains, a social media addict encounters, but in a more sinister, insidious manner. However, the mountains don't manipulate and commodify endangered hikers to enrich malicious actors; and endangered hikers don't usually delude themselves into thinking they are safe and flourishing in the face of certain death.

I was frustrated with the author's insistence in refusing to impute (what I regard as merited) moral culpability on Silicon Valley techies for what the book itself exposes as positively evil. I don't think his optimism is warranted at all. His is a desperate, self-abandoning faith of a troubled ascetic amid an endlessly protracted dark night of the soul. His optimism would be almost endearing if it were not so absurd at points (like when he laments over AOC's use of BUMMER, not realizing that she and other opportunistic populists like her, on both the left and the right, are the very incarnations of BUMMER).

I am far too cynical and pessimistic to see any silver lining to this situation. What the author calls "BUMMER" has irreparably destroyed the promise, potential and hope of humanity as a whole. The trajectory and evolution of human civilization has been hopelessly derailed.

We are all in hell now. There's no exit. Godot is never coming. The only hope remaining is the giant solar flare that will wipe out the grid.

This book reminded me of my Sunday school discussions regarding the inclusion of Ecclesiastes in the Biblical canon. This book reminded me why such a book made it into the canon. Regarding social media and the resultant chaos, "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity. Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof" (Eccl. 1:2, 7:8).

Having said all that, I liked the book and the author. Even if the situation is hopelessly helpless, I want to see it for what it is, even if I end up like King Lear at having had and lost some infinite thing, crying out in hapless despair, "Never, never, never, never, never." To borrow an image from Tool, I want my "third eye" torn open, even if what I see is the face of hell.

Anyways, to end in a more positive note, I hope more books like this are written. Thanks to the author and publishers.

-------

"The bird is freed " LOL - The billionaire who faked Autism and whose family got rich from blood diamonds just bought Twitter. This only substantiates this reviewer's opinion on social media. I won't be the only one wishing for the big solar flare when Twitter becomes Parlor 2.0.

16 people found this helpful

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Elijah

Life changing and thought provoking

Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2023

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Loved this book. It definitely opened my mind up to different perspectives on the topic of social media and technology.

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AJ O.

More relevant now than when it was written!

Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2021

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If you buy this book, make sure to take note of the original publication year inside the cover. I had personally been talking about the negative effects social media was taking on myself and my own relationships with friends and relatives, as well as total strangers I had never met in person. The first chapter should have you on the edge of your seat as soon as you read the paragraph from the first president of Facebook. Ever wonder why FB does not have a phone number to contact customer service? Because users are not customers. I would have given this book a five-star rating if not for Chapter 4, wherein the author makes a case that social media is contributing to climate change and leans heavy into environmentalism. It can be dry or lengthy at times, but there are only ten chapters, and overall most of the chapters felt short. Don't blaze through, I encourage taking moments to mull over some of the ideas and thoughts presented in the pages. I agreed and disagreed with many things, and felt vindicated for deleting FB in 2016 and Twitter in 2020. Get this book, and when you finish it, regardless if you liked it, please consider giving it to a friend or relative and share the facts published within. The biggest issue I had with the book was that most, if not all of the citations provided were nothing more than typed links to online new articles and research studies. As if the author figured it was prudent to have readers manually type the links to find the citation he provided. They are for and go to legitimate sources, so even if printed website links in a book is beyond lazy to me, it shows the guy did his homework.

5 people found this helpful

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Steve VN

GREAT DISCUSSION IF SOCIAL MEDIA

Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2023

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The author does a fantastic job of exposing the ugly side of social media. The book is small and short, but there is NO wasted fluff anywhere in the book. It is worth the price. He suggests you get 100% off of social media, but he also admits that many people cannot to that cold turkey, so he invites you to learn ways to take back your data and mind from Mr. Z and Mr. Musk. As I read, I thought of several things I will be doing to stop me from being addicted to "Likes" and awards from the people on high. You will also learn how to help your kids escape the slavery of the smart phone.

4 people found this helpful

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Kwamina

Social Media and Society

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 5, 2018

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I deleted Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram after reading Cal Newport's Deep Work. I'd always had a lingering antipathy towards those services, as I'd sensed that they insidiously seized my time - not only without my consent, but with my permission! Before reading Cal Newport's lauded, though sometimes lampooned, tract on working deeply, it'd never occurred to me to actually examine my own relationship with social media. Well, I was quickly swayed, and after reading Deep Work it was soon apparent that social media was harming me, rather than helping me. Ever since I've quit social media, I've been a happier and more productive person. If only someone had encouraged me sooner.

Jaron Lanier wants to encourage you right now. Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (which I'll abbreviate to Ten Arguments, thank you very much!) is Lanier's 4th book. As one of Virtual Reality's prime movers, Lanier is perhaps silicon valley's most respected Jeremiah. Based on his tech credentials, you might guess that Lanier champions social media. He doesn't. Ten Arguments is his attempt to get everyone to shed it.

Before opening the book, its front cover immediately entices with a visual metaphor. There's a scene of outstanding beauty - the reflection of an azure sky in the foreground, with snow-capped mountains in the distance - rudely interrupted by a chat bubble. It feels like a statement that any interaction with nature needs some commentary mediated by social media, even if that interaction materialises in the form of a pretty picture on a book cover. A statement about the pervasiveness of social media then, and the fact that it's everywhere, even on the cover of a book which is about discouraging you from using social media. Very meta.

Lanier proceeds to make a forceful case through 10 arguments. Lanier is always sweet and likeable, both in writing and videos, though he's sometimes indulgent. Ten Arguments is notably less self-indulgent than his previous works. If his renowned sesquipedalian* prose has irked you before, you'll be pleased to know that he's relatively plain and direct in his writing here. Besides the odd** acronym, the prose in Ten Arguments isn't as circuitous as it's been in Lanier's previous works. The arguments are:

1. You are losing your free will
2. Quitting social media is the most finely targeted way to resist the insanity of our times
3. Social media is making you into an asshole
4. Social media is undermining truth
5. Social media is making what you say meaningless
6. Social media is destroying your capacity for empathy
7. Social media is making you unhappy
8. Social media doesn't want you to have economic dignity
9. Social media is making politics impossible
10. Social media hates your soul

Lanier's arguments often incorporate what he groups as BUMMERs. I won't spoil the acronym here. But he includes Google, Facebook and to a lesser extent Twitter within that group of BUMMERs, alongside a few others. All of the arguments are targeted at BUMMERs.

Many of the arguments feel as though they were written for an audience of citizens, rather than individuals. The risk an activity poses to society might not dissuade individuals from contributing to a particular activity, and in this book, it sometimes feels as though Lanier has confused the societal drawbacks of using social media with personal ones. This is isn't a serious flaw, but Ten Arguments For Us All Deleting Social Media Accounts Right Now probably would've been a more accurate title.

Speaking of the arguments, some of them are stronger than others. Let's look at a weaker argument first: I found the suggestions raised in Argument 8 - "Social Media Doesn't Want You To Have Economic Dignity" problematic. Lanier suggests that we directly monetise services like search and social media, and that within that system, users earn money on the basis of their contributions, provided those contributions are popular. So, sort of like a subscription model, but with a reciprocal financial component for subscribers.

I find this problematic because once you're monetising on the basis of subscription, you've changed the revenue model. In our current system, BUMMERs offer services for free to attract people. People are attracted to those services and provide data by using them. Data is then the crude oil which is refined and then sold on to advertisers, and that's how BUMMERs make their money.

In Lanier's proposed subscription model, the popularity of your posts wouldn't increase revenue unless your posts resulted in more people adopting subscriptions for the given services, so I'm not sure why BUMMERs would feel inclined to pay users for their contributions. It wouldn't make financial sense for them to. Remember, according to this suggestion, we've stripped away the whole ad-revenue model, and so in theory, popularity (which is really only useful as "engagement") doesn't matter any more. Subscriptions do.

Furthermore, Lanier partially concludes the argument with "It just isn't right to tell people they are no longer valuable to society when the biggest companies exist only because of data that comes from those same people". I'm an economic layperson, so take everything I've just said with a huge grain of salt - but I have a slight problem with this too. Yes, the companies only exist because of the data that comes from those same people, but as Lanier alludes to throughout the book, the monetary value these companies accrue comes from their ability to use that data to modify behaviour and provide services to advertisers. I'm on board with the underlying sentiment, and the overall sense that we should try to create a fairer way to redistribute the spoils of mass data mining, but this argument in particular wasn't a very strong one for me.

Okay, now the stronger arguments: "You are losing your free will", "Social media is destroying your capacity for empathy" and "Social media hates your soul arguments" were all persuasive and passionate. If you only read one argument in the entire book, I recommend that it's the one on free will, as that's the most gripping argument for both citizens and individuals.

Arguments aside, there are more things that the book could've covered, and there aren't many compelling solutions to accompany the plea to delete social media accounts. When I've spoken to people about my own experience deleting social media accounts, they tend to ask me questions like "How'd you keep up with events?" and "Don't you miss out on things?" or "How'd you stay up to date?". In fact, if you speak to people about social media, and you'll soon discover that most people aren't in love with it. They dislike it, and often want to it quit too. It isn't hard to persuade people that social media is deleterious. It is however, very hard to persuade people that social media is not indispensable. On that basis, Lanier was a little remiss to not explore these common objections and queries a little further. So, prospective reader, you should know that Ten Arguments is more of a polemic than it is a primer. For practical guidance on actually getting by with substantially less / no social media at all, I highly recommend Catherine Price's How to Break Up with Your Phone.

Back to Ten Arguments. In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Russia's alleged tampering of the recent US presidential election, revenge porn, tribalism and tax avoidance, this book is important. It is a civic duty to examine your (yes, YOU!) relationship with social media given our present zeitgeist, and that's precisely what Ten Arguments forces you to do. With that in mind, think of Ten Arguments as an examining body, and take an opportunity to examine your relationship with these "indispensable" services, and the impact of your relationship on society, by reading this book.

4*

*I'm aware of the irony here
**I'm aware of the double entendre here

23 people found this helpful

gagandeep singh

Print and paper quality is cheap.

Reviewed in India on July 4, 2023

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Content is alright and insightful, but book and paper quality is ultra cheap.

Sajan

best writter award

Reviewed in India on June 16, 2023

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best book

Sofia

Un libro necesario para estos tiempos

Reviewed in Mexico on August 2, 2023

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Creo que muchas personas, este libro apenas en unas pocas páginas te convence de casi que tirar el celular, es magistral

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Philmore East

Maybe we do not need ten arguments, but thanks anyway

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 13, 2023

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I didn't really need this book for myself (0 social networks, not even LinkedIn, only e-mail), but seeing my family members becoming hooked and now addicted made this book relevant (not that any of the arguments would help convince my daughter, unfortunately)

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