Episode 003: Social
Jaron Lanier has helped me think very differently about social media. The first book of his I read was Ten Reasons for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now.
My Twitter account disappeared on January 22. My Instagram account is scheduled to disappear on February 9. (None of these platforms lets you delete your account right away. They all have a 30 day “waiting period.” Guess who benefits?)
Facebook will be a little trickier for me, since I still have a few groups on that platform I find valuable. On the other hand, it’s probably the worst offender.
What I find most objectionable about these platforms is that they are mining our data as raw material, often without our consent, and selling it to the highest bidder, usually an advertiser, but who really knows?
In the next episode we’ll talk about surveillance capitalism and Google.