Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now Quotes

“Go to where you are kindest”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“Social media is biased, not to the Left or the Right, but downward”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“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.”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“Here’s a non-geeky framing of the same idea: What if listening to an inner voice or heeding a passion for ethics or beauty were to lead to more important work in the long term, even if it measured as less successful in the moment? What if deeply reaching a small number of people matters more than reaching everybody with nothing?”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“What might once have been called advertising must now be understood as continuous behavior modification on a titanic scale.”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“Memes might seem to amplify what you are saying, but that is always an illusion. You might launch an infectious meme about a political figure, and you might be making a great point, but in the larger picture, you are reinforcing the idea that virality is truth. Your point will be undone by whatever other point is more viral. That is by design. The architects of BUMMER were meme believers.”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“One of the main reasons to delete your social media accounts is that there isn’t a real choice to move to different social media accounts. Quitting entirely is the only option for change. If you don’t quit, you are not creating the space in which Silicon Valley can act to improve itself.”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“BUMMER is a machine with six moving parts. Here’s a mnemonic for the six components of the BUMMER machine, in case you ever have to remember them for a test: A is for Attention Acquisition leading to Asshole supremacy B is for Butting into everyone’s lives C is for Cramming content down people’s throats D is for Directing people’s behaviors in the sneakiest way possible E is for Earning money from letting the worst assholes secretly screw with everyone else F is for Fake mobs and Faker society”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“How can you find happiness without authentic self-esteem? How can you be authentic when everything you read, say, or do is being fed into a judgment machine”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“Your character is the most precious thing about you. Don’t let it degrade.”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“Social media is biased, not to the Left or the Right, but downward. The relative ease of using negative emotions for the purposes of addiction and manipulation makes it relatively easier to achieve undignified results. An unfortunate combination of biology and math favors degradation of the human world. Information warfare units sway elections, hate groups recruit, and nihilists get amazing bang for the buck when they try to bring society down. The unplanned nature of the transformation from advertising to direct behavior modification caused an explosive amplification of negativity in human affairs.”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“With nothing else to seek but attention, ordinary people tend to become assholes, because the biggest assholes get the most attention. This inherent bias toward assholedom flavors the action of all the other parts of the BUMMER machine.”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“The better analogy is paint that contains lead. When it became undeniable that lead was harmful, no one declared that houses should never be painted again. Instead after pressure and legislation, lead-free paints became the new standard. Smart people simply waited to buy paint until there was a safe version on sale. Similarly, smart people should delete their accounts until nontoxic varieties are available.”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“Cats are everywhere online. They make the memiest memes and the cutest videos. Why cats more than dogs?1 Dogs didn’t come to ancient humans begging to live with us; we domesticated them.2 They’ve been bred to be obedient. They take to training and they are predictable. They work for us. That’s not to say anything against dogs.3 It’s great that they’re loyal and dependable. Cats are different. They came along and partly domesticated themselves. They are not predictable. Popular dog videos tend to show off training, while the most wildly popular cat videos are the ones that capture weird and surprising behaviors.”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“Trump supporters seem nuts to me, and they say liberals seem nuts to them. But it’s wrong to say we’ve grown apart and can’t understand each other. What’s really going on is that we see less than ever before of what others are seeing, so we have less opportunity to understand each other.”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“As a Twitter addict, Trump has changed. He displays the snowflake pattern and sometimes loses control. He is not acting like the most powerful person in the world, because his addiction is more powerful. Whatever else he might be, whatever kind of victimizer, he is also a victim.”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“It might sound like a contradiction at first, but it isn't; collective processes make the best sense when participants are acting as individuals (p48)”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“Most users of social media have experienced catfishing (which cats hate), senseless rejection, being belittled or ignored, outright sadism, or all of the above, and worse.”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“We have given up our connection to context. Social media mashes up meaning. Whatever you say will be contextualized and given meaning by the way algorithms, crowds, and crowds of fake people who are actually algorithms mash it up with what other people say.”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“Usually Google has had a way of coming up with the creepier statements, but Facebook has pulled ahead: A recent revision in its statement of purpose includes directives like assuring that “every single person has a sense of purpose and community.”5 A single company is going to see to it that every single person has a purpose, because it presumes that was lacking before. If that is not a new religion, I don’t know what is.”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“Speaking through social media isn’t really speaking at all. Context is applied to what you say after you say it, for someone else’s purposes and profit.”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“The imbalanced power relationship is in your face all the time. Don’t you feel humiliated using one of the Facebook brands, like Instagram or WhatsApp? Facebook is the first public company controlled by one person.32 I mean, I don’t personally have anything against Mark Zuckerberg. It isn’t about him. But why would you subordinate a big part of your life to any one stranger?”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“When you are a solitary wolf, you are forced to get directly in touch with the larger reality that doesn’t care about what a society thinks. You must find water and shelter, or you will perish. You have to scavenge and hunt for yourself. Your personality shifts; you must solve problems on the basis of evidence you gather on your own, instead of by paying attention to group perception. You take on the qualities of a scientist or an artist.”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“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.”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“If you aren’t part of the solution, there will be no solution.”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“Nuestra incapacidad para preservar un espacio en el cual inventarnos a nosotros mismos ajenos a la evaluación constante, eso es lo que me hace infeliz. ¿Cómo podemos tener autoestima cuando ha dejado de ser el tipo de estima que más importa?”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“Social media is biased, not to the Left or the Right, but downward.”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“If we want something different to happen, then the way money is earned has to change.”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“The damage to society comes because addiction makes people crazy. The addict gradually loses touch with the real world and real people.”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“The inability to carve out a space in which to invent oneself without constant judgment; that is what makes me unhappy.”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now