Name: Ten arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now
ISBN: 9781250196682

Ten arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now

You might have trouble imagining life without your social media accounts, but virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier insists that were better off without them. In Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, Lanier, who participates in no social media, offers powerful and personal reasons for all of us to leave these dangerous online platforms. Laniers reasons for freeing ourselves from social medias poisonous grip include its tendency to bring out the worst in us, to make politics terrifying, to trick us with illusions of popularity and success, to twist our relationship with the truth, to disconnect us from other people even as we are more connected than ever, to rob us of our free will with relentless targeted ads. How can we remain autonomous in a world where we are under continual surveillance and are constantly being prodded by algorithms run by some of the richest corporations in history that have no way of making money other than being paid to manipulate our behavior? How could the benefits of social media possibly outweigh the catastrophic losses to our personal dignity, happiness, and freedom? Lanier remains a tech optimist, so while demonstrating the evil that rules social media business models today, he also envisions a humanistic setting for social networking that can direct us toward a richer and fuller way of living and connecting with our world.

What Hacker News says

ScroungerAug 2025

> Social media as a vessel for diverse discussion is a tall order. It’s too public, too tied to context, and ultimately a no-win game. No matter how carefully you present yourself, you’ll end up being the “bad guy” to someone. The moment a discussion touches even lightly on controversy, healthy dialogue becomes nearly impossible.

Worth reading Jaron Lanier's Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now book:

https://www.amazon.com/Arguments-Deleting-Social-Media-Accou...

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ordinaryradicalMar 2024

I’m the most calm and happy I’ve been in a long time. I threw away almost all of my social media and news consumption.

The more I’ve come to stand outside of it, the sillier and more crazed the culture has seemed. We really need a collective break and some wisdom building work.

Laron Lanier’s book, Ten Arguments for Deleting your Social Media Accounts Right Now, is still a great read and one I often recommend to my friends. I think now that we’re mostly dealing with socially acceptable forms of addiction, and the sooner we realize that and start treating it like a public health crisis the better off we’ll be.

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tayistayOct 2021

Well you've been living under a rock I guess. Try reading all the recent WSJ articles. Many of us who despise Facebook deleted our accounts long ago.

Books to read:

- "Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now"

- "Surveillance Capitalism"

- "The Attention Merchants"

And those aren't even the most scathing ones about Facebook.

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_mkefSep 2020

Good movie overall.

I also suggest Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now , by Jaron Lanier

Jaron is in the documentary and makes additional points. Social Media is making you a jerk is a great one.

While he doesn't directly critique Online Dating, he does mention Catfishing and Ashley Madison being mostly bots. If you Google 'FTC sues Match' you'll find bots are very common across the industry.

At least now you can't detach online dating from social media , you need to get your matches to add you on Snapchat so you never actually meet anyone. Just off pure stats, people are more alone than ever before. By design it doesn't work for most people. And what company would want to lose subscribers ?

I found myself an anxiety filled 'lab rat' when using that junk. Deleted all my social media a year or so ago , and I've had no issue meeting great folks since.

Generally I go out to do things I want to do. Everyone that's joined me along the way, including a fellow .net programer, has been a bonus.

All that said, I see it getting much worse before it gets better. Social Media is eventually going to be regulated , but it's already destroyed a generation. Rates of suicide have exploded since Social Media became mainstream.

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m10nSep 2018

Best-selling authors seem to be aware of this trend, because I keep coming across excellent but very, very short non-fiction books. Among those I can remember reading and would recommend, these are published in the past <5 years and are <150 pages (or <5 hour audiobook):

- Discrimination and Disparities By: Thomas Sowell

- A Colony in a Nation: Chris Hayes

- Between the World and Me: Ta-Nehisi Coates

(three very different takes on race relations in America)

- Astrophysics for People in a Hurry: Neil deGrasse Tyson

- Seven Brief Lessons on Physics: Carlo Rovelli

- When Breath Becomes Air: Paul Kalanithi

- On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century: Timothy Snyder

- Requiem for the American Dream: The Principles of Concentrated Wealth and Power: Noam Chomsky

- Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now: Jaron Lanier

[edit: linebreaks]

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pipeline_peakFeb 2026

Let’s not forgot the emerging deity-esque “content creator” and “influencer”. A far stretch from the humble “vlogger” or “YouTuber”. The latter two sound like a jolly guy with a camcorder and a backpack.

I remember when social networks were at the very least portrayed in the interest of “connecting people from around the world”.

I’ll often hear something along the lines of these services being engineered to pin us all against each other. Jaron Lanier’s “ Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now” likes to claim this, but I never see any actual evidence.

Either way, when I visit social media site these days, people are definitely nastier. There’s more snark, a need to ridicule others for not knowing niche little factoids. “You still use tea bags?” something something cast iron pans and dish soap.

There’s a lot more capitalizing through hoarding trivial information. They know something you don’t, and they love it.

It’s like joining an MMORPG and realizing you have to put more time in to reach the same level as everyone else.

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