Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

by Jaron Lanier

Social media is biased, not to the Left or the Right, but downward.

To free yourself, to be more authentic, to be less addicted, to be less manipulated, to be less paranoid … for all these marvelous reasons, delete your accounts.

With nothing else to seek but attention, ordinary people tend to become assholes, because the biggest assholes get the most attention.

you don’t know what other people are seeing,

Don’t forget that Facebook had already noisily published research proving it can change voter turnout.

The best way you can help is not to attack those who would manipulate you from afar, but simply to free yourself.

We need to find a way back to reality, and the only way to do that is to have conversations that aren’t mediated by technology that is financed and animated by third parties who hope to persuade us. We must fight to speak to each other outside of the persuasion labyrinth.