Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

by Jaron Lanier

Just in the last five or ten years, nearly everyone started to carry a little device called a smartphone on their person all the time that’s suitable for algorithmic behavior modification.

But to me it’s not even about the programs, however over-worshipped they might be, but about the power relationships that arise because people accept and implicitly respect the programs.

The judgments of the BUMMER algorithms that classify you might not be meaningful or reliable in a scientific sense, but they really do matter in real life. They play into what news you see, whom you’re introduced to as a potential date, what products you are offered. Judgments based on social media might determine what loans you can get,25 which countries you can visit,26 whether you get a job,27 what education you can receive,28 the outcome of your auto insurance claim,29 and your freedom to congregate with others.30

It’s wonderful that this technology works, but what’s not wonderful is that the people who are supplying the data that make it work—real, biological, bilingual humans—have become insecure. Human translators have suffered a loss of career prospects that mirrors what happened to investigative journalists, recording musicians, photographers, and others. We’re pretending that the people who know how to translate are obsolete, when in truth they’re still needed. Isn’t it some kind of sin to tell someone that they’re obsolete when it isn’t true?

it. Look at how rich BUMMER companies are and remember that their wealth is made entirely of the data you gave them. I think companies should get rich if they make things people want, but I don’t think you should be made less and less secure as part of the bargain. Capitalism isn’t supposed to be a zero-sum game.

None of this means that Facebook prefers one kind of voter to another. That’s up to Facebook’s customers, who are not you, the users. Facebook doesn’t necessarily know what’s going on. A social media company is in a better position if it doesn’t know what’s going on, because then it makes just as much money, but with less culpability.

To review: Your understanding of others has been disrupted because you don’t know what they’ve experienced in their feeds, while the reverse is also true; the empathy others might offer you is challenged because you can’t know the context in which you’ll be understood. You’re probably becoming more of an asshole, but you’re also probably sadder; another pair of BUMMER disruptions that are mirror images. Your ability to know the world, to know truth, has been degraded, while the world’s ability to know you has been corrupted. Politics has become unreal and terrifying, while economics has become unreal and unsustainable: two sides of the same coin.

AI is a fantasy, nothing but a story we tell about our code. It is also a cover for sloppy engineering. Making a supposed AI program that customizes a feed is less work than creating a great user interface that allows users to probe and improve what they see on their own terms—and that is so because AI has no objective criteria for success.