In our current time of disruption, innovation, and new perspectives and approaches, perhaps it’s fitting to “touch base” with a visionary on the edge, such as Jaron Lanier.
Mr. Lanier has some New Mexican roots, attended NMSU, founded a very early VR company called VPL Research, has written a number of books, and ticks off all the boxes for “eccentric”. He has been quoted for decades on where we are at with computer technology, and where we are going, occasionally plays in Stephen Colbert’s house band, and his latest book is Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now.
[gview file=”https://publicservicesalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Why-Facebook-Is-Bad-Twitter-Might-Be-a-Little-Bit-Good-and-Social-Media-Is-Rotting-Our-Brains-GQ.pdf”]That anytime you are provided with a service, like Facebook, for free, you are in fact the product being sold. That social media companies are basically giant behavior-modification systems that use algorithms to relentlessly increase “engagement,” largely by evoking bad feelings in the people who use them.
That these companies in turn sell the ability to modify your behavior to “advertisers,” who sometimes come in the old form of people who want to persuade you to buy soap but who now just as often come in the form of malevolent actors who want to use their influence over you to, say, depress voter turnout or radicalize white supremacists.
That in exchange for likes and retweets and public photos of your kids, you are basically signing up to be a data serf for companies that can make money only by addicting and then manipulating you. That because of all this, and for the good of society, you should do everything in your power to quit.