Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

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Jaron Lanier: Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (2019, Penguin Random House)

176 pages

English language

Published Aug. 13, 2019 by Penguin Random House.

ISBN:
978-1-5291-1240-5
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3 stars (2 reviews)

5 editions

if you find-replace "social media" with "capitalism" in this book it's almost got a point

1 star

I read this because I was asked to write something to coincide with a re-broadcast online of a talk Lanier did about the book in 2018.

While I think Lanier does an OK job of outlining some of what's fucked about social media, this book suffers from the same delusion of Zuboff's surveillance capitalism: treating what social media does as an anomaly to capitalism, rather than a logical extension/stage of it. Lanier's pretty libertarian so it makes sense that his theory of change and his arguments for quitting social media are so "you, the reader" focused rather than collective imperatives. But much like "quitting" capitalism, quitting social media is something that requires either tremendous sacrifice or privilege to do as an individual and only really means an individual feels OK without necessarily contributing to anyone else's well-being.

In terms of readability it's not very jargon-y and relatively self-aware, but there …

Subjects

  • Sociology