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Curriculum VitaeLanier, Jaron. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. Henry Holt and Company, 2018.
The book is 160 pages and not very dense. It’s light on images and figures, which makes eBook reading a breeze.
The cat on the book’s cover represents Larnier’s call for people to approach social media like cats rather than dogs. Larnier values that cats, unlike dogs, still maintained their independence and resistance to obedience after domestication. Social media creates a society of dogs, trained to turn on a dime and beg for scraps of attention. Continuing the animal metaphor, Larnier criticizes how current social media business models flip a person’s “pack/individual” switch to “pack”, to the detriment of individual critical thinking. Larnier uses the term “Solitary Wolf”, but I will avoid it because I think Larnier’s grasp of animal behavior is questionable.
The following are Larnier’s ten arguments, quoted from the chapter titles:
Many of the above depend on the same fundamental structures, often making the book repetitive. For example, Arguments 1 to 7 can be attributed to personalization of feeds and optimization toward user engagement, which often taps into outrage and negative emotions. Larnier summarizes the underlying infrastructure and business models that causes the perceived problems as BUMMERs.
Social media corporations that depend on targeted ads and data mining, like Meta (still named Facebook when published) and Google, are described as “Behaviors of Users Modified and Made into an Empire for Rent”, or BUMMER.
This whimsical and contrived acronym often feels inappropriately silly. For example, when describing how social media business exacerbates violent extremism, Larnier says “racism became organized over BUMMER to a degree it had not been in generations” (109). Relatedly, Larnier describes how “All the Russian agents had to do was pay BUMMER for what came to BUMMER naturally” (109) when describing international political conspiracy.
Continuing his preference for itemized lists, on page 30 Larnier describes the ABCs of BUMMERs as
Though Larnier focuses on criticizing the broad societal impact of social media, he glosses over how positive change will actually occur. To be fair, the book’s title only promises to try and convince you to delete your own accounts rather than fight the system. But considering the stakes laid out, this feels futile. It’s similar to the trend of covering webcams after the leak of NSA spying programs. If you escape the social media machine, what if your neighbors and elected officials haven’t? And if the ultimate goal is to enact change through everyone deleting their accounts, then this probably also calls for people to shift how they organize and demand corporate responsibility.
Corporations are anthropomorphized throughout the book, obscuring responsibility. Larnier claims his acquaintances at Google or Facebook are well-meaning and instead vaguely blames the company for the harm it produces. Although Larnier emphasizes individual responsibility for deleting accounts, the steps after and the practical measures people can take to enact widespread change are handwaved. Larnier leaves solutions to the companies that perpetuated the problem.
Larnier’s enthusiasm for individual freedom seems shaky as the driving motivation of the book because he misses awareness of the tug-of-war between responsibility and freedom. For example, with the pack/individual switch, Larnier’s illustrative example of the benefits of individual thinking is a classic “wisdom of the crowd” example of guessing the number of jelly beans in a jar. Present a large enough room with a jar of jelly beans, average everyone’s individual guesses, and the average will tend to converge on the correct answer (47). I’m pretty sure I made a similar argument in high school when I still believed the dogma that freedom of speech is the best thing ever (spoiler: it’s more complicated than that.)
Jelly bean estimation works because the true answer is objective, people know the task at hand, and everyone is trying their best. We could easily ruin the example by someone deciding that there are negative one billion jelly beans in the jar.
And even if everybody is acting in good faith, the average opinion could still be wrong, especially with moral questions. If you averaged everyone in 1845, we probably would not morally converge to the correct answer, which is that enslaving people is not good. Same with the early 1900s and women’s suffrage. Even now, the global average doesn’t look too rosy for gay rights or women’s equality.
This is an illustrative strawman; obviously, Larnier would not advocate for making decisions based on averaging responses. But it highlights that individuals thinking about core societal issues are probably going to trend toward falling into the ruts ingrained in them by their surrounding culture with or without social media. Social media only traces and deepens existing ruts, so quitting can only do so much.
I think the book misses an opportunity to take a shot at this larger issue that social media reveals, this question about our responsibility to each other. Larnier, in the conclusion, demurs and points the reader to Sherry Turkle and Cathy O’Neil (without naming any specific works) for more commentary on specific social issues. Larnier’s background is in Silicon Valley and computer science, so maybe he didn’t feel comfortable tackling anything beyond the observation that “social media bad” and the solution “don’t use social media”. But without this framework, the book seems hollow, a “not my problem” response to pretty terrible things that are our collective responsibility.
There are random snippets throughout the book that made me raise an eyebrow.
They are selfish, so wrapped up in their cycle that they don’t have much time to notice what others are feeling or thinking about…A personal mythology overtakes addicts. They see themselves grandiosely and, as they descend further into addiction, ever less realistically (40).
These sweeping character snapshots of an extremely diverse crowd seem inaccurate, designed to scare readers into not wanting to be BUMMER “addicts” rather than being an honest summary of addiction, which results from a complicated interplay of factors. At worst, descriptions like these deaden empathy for those suffering from addiction. After reading Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe, which focuses on the Sackler-produced opiate crisis in America, I think that many addicts fully realize the extent of their problem but chemical dependence renders them unable to respond. One patient in Empire of Pain, who asked for OxyContin on personal recommendation from the Sackler/Purdue head corporate lawyer, eventually realized the extend of the problem and attempted to testify against Purdue Pharma. In response, the legal defense humiliated her, attacking her character and perceived selfishness and greed.
People who dig too deep into social media become assholes becomes of the unique incentives in the system, not because addicts are assholes. Larnier stretching a metaphor to addiction seems unnecessary and misplaced.
Because of the dilemma I just mentioned, I don’t want to criticize people who seem to like the situation—for instance, young people who are trying to be social media influencers (63).
Larnier’s dilemma is his focus on freedom conflicting with writing a book telling you what to do. I think he should be creating an argument that discourages people from becoming influencers, otherwise this seems like a weird concession that weakens the book’s purpose. Even having this dilemma highlights the previous point about Larnier not having a framework of social responsibility that extends beyond freedom.
Larnier is optimistic about podcasts, claiming that long-form audio entertainment avoids the pitfalls of image- or text-based timelines. He imagines podcasts could be made worse by platforms that splice specific segments and generate a sort of personalized audio timeline.
Podcasts tend to get away with loose citing, overly bombastic, and off the cuff. I think Larnier’s construction of a corrupted podcast platform is contrived and misses the mark. Twitch, YouTube live, and the rising popularity of live chats (which I’m pretty sure existed when Larnier wrote the book) are closer to how podcasts became another notch in corporate social media, creating echo chambers and constructing of social media stars who market their life and personality.
The weirdness is normalized when BUMMER customers, who are often techies themselves, accept AI as a coherent and legitimate concept, and make spending decisions based on it.
…We forget that AI is a story we computer scientists made up to help us get funding…
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…and this is so because AI has no objective criteria for success (136).
With recent developments in image generation programs, large language models, etc., dismissing the looming technology of artificial intelligence seems misplaced. I agree with Larnier that certain fancy image processing and machine learning was packaged as artificial intelligence to draw in grants and venture capital, but now it’s undeniable that there is plenty of momentum behind creating thinking machines that could displace human intellectual work. Diving deeper into why artificial intelligence and associated AI threats aren’t a “fantasy” is for another time, but Larnier is probably far off the mark in terms of tone and insight into how this technology evolved. DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, and ChatGPT are already forcing employers, educators, and researchers to rethink human intellectual work and valued skills.
The Saudis are not the only ones who promote empathy for mute props as a way to deny empathy to real but muzzled humans. It’s also been done in the name of anti-abortion activism and animal rights (n.p.)
For context, the comment about the Saudis refers to rights being granted to a feminine AI chatbot when the same rights are not granted to Saudi women.
Framing animal rights activism as comparably morally questionable to violent misogyny is incongruous. My interpretation of Larnier’s stance is that he thinks animal rights activists are using their position of anti-speciesism to “deny empathy” to…people who abuse animals? Probably, Larnier eats meat and doesn’t like vegans moralizing to him.
![[2023-01-04-larnier-kittens.jpg]] Let’s say Person A kicks two kittens off of a tree stump and Person B accosts them. Person A claims that they want to sit on the tree stump and Person B is infringing on their happiness. It would not be typical to think, “wow, Person B is using kittens as a prop and denying empathy to Person A.”
Vegans and animal activists extend that moral framework to be consistent across species. Going into arguments for veganism is another post, but let’s assume that humans can thrive eating far fewer animals than is typical. Also, assume that animals suffer and are conscious. Industrialized agriculture and meat-eating would naturally seem morally egregious. For someone who takes their moral impact seriously, ending these practices would be especially important and they cannot afford to give people who perpetuate these moral atrocities leeway.
For me, Larnier’s inclusion of this statement really cheapens the entire emotional impact of the book. When the main message is about empathy and preserving your values, it feels quite shallow to also throw in a poorly thought out potshot at a group that probably has done a lot of self-reflection into their moral choices. Although social media may contribute to a more aggressive vegan community, it doesn’t seem to be on the same level as groups that see women as subhuman and disposable.
Capitalism isn’t supposed to be a zero-sum game.
BUMMER is economically unsustainable, which is even worse, perhaps, than its being unfair. Bringing down a society to get rich is a fool’s game, and Silicon Valley is acting foolishly (102).
I think this is Larnier trying to be an edgy capitalist libertarian rather than making a serious statement. I don’t take it on faith that any of the above is true or useful for modeling the world. Historical evidence seems to indicate that, when the world is largely capitalist and neoliberal, getting rich at the expense of others is actually a pretty successful strategy for an individual. Using the Sacklers’ example again, it doesn’t seem like they’re too bad off after the multitude of lawsuits. Sure, they have a victim complex, but they’re still enormously wealthy and their family name is plastered over buildings and museums worldwide. It may have been a “fool’s game” for broader humanity, but the individual actors played intelligently and evaded responsibility for losses incurred by the public.
Larnier occasionally gestures to his political and economic stances throughout the book (broadly progressive, doesn’t like stereotypical liberals or extreme conservatives, neoliberal) and I think there was room for more interesting discussion of the economic incentives that guide patterns in social media. Larnier believes that there’s a more economically sustainable (read as: profitable) version of social media that also has less of these social pitfalls. Though if he believes economic unsustainability is worse than being unfair, he probably wouldn’t mind too much if it wasn’t completely clean in terms of its social impact. But probably the best “solution” for social media is for it to be not profitable and fair, which isn’t explored here.
Larnier’s arguments feature prominently in the original Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma (2020), which also suffers from tonal issues. The presentation of facts is interspersed with a subplot following a family dealing with their screenagers. These scenes often feel contrived and unnecessary.
Additionally, Larnier-style, The Social Dilemma anthropomorphizes the personalized social media feed. The algorithm is represented as three people in a digital control room tasked with constantly analyzing a user’s environment and strategizing about how to deliver content. Their roles range from deducing who a user’s ex is to shoving extremist political content into YouTube feeds. The image of being beholden to the distant decisions of pasty nerds probably tried to trigger viewers’ aversion to manipulation but ends up seeming melodramatic and unserious.
Throughout reading, I kept comparing my book to other self-help or lifestyle books I enjoyed more.
The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo is great at delivering memorable, actionable information interspersed with illustrative personal experiences.
The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb hardly counts as self-help, but it occasionally provides pretty memorable and robust advice in between takedowns of conventional economics, news media, and statisticians. Taleb’s acerbity is hardly elegant but is certainly entertaining.
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer (author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) also barely fits into this category. The book is part autobiography, part investigative journalism into meat production. Foer makes a strong ethical stance, takes his audience seriously, and adds in enough gross-out anti-factory meat production information to make a case without being tasteless.
Good for Larnier for building a career without social media. Depending on your field, it’s probably helpful to have some kind of social media presence. During COVID-19 for example, epidemiologists used Twitter to a) rapidly inform the public of scientific details otherwise skipped over in popular media, and b) spread information that would otherwise be slowed down by the arduous scientific publication process. Not perfect, but probably net positive for saving lives.
Also, connecting to a previous point before, unless everyone quits social media, it’s still useful. For example, I publicize things over social media because it’s the best way to reach people, no argument. Larnier’s book could as easily be arguments for minimally useful social media use. Besides making the title snappier, I don’t think any of his arguments require that one quits rather than reduces.
These are measure to make social media healthier. I still hate it though.
Meta platforms often default to showing a personalized feed. I haven’t found an easy workaround for this besides removing suggested posts that aren’t from friends (often through an option menu on each post). Or, probably easier, ignoring the feed and going to the useful features, like direct messaging and posting.
Backend access to YouTube is possible and often allows for very granular customization (such as removing the cesspool that is the comments section). But I’m not sure these platforms are legal and I won’t say I’ve personally used them.
Most social media also now has options to “depersonalize” your experience, opting you out of targeted ads or customization. Given that companies even have this option, I have little faith in their effectiveness. Try it anyway. I often use a VPN set to some random non-English speaking country to further depersonalize ads by making them incomprehensible.
Adding website blockers helps. Most of them are fine, so no specific recommendations from me.
It sounds paranoid, but assume everything is paid promotion. For everything, especially if you catch an emotional flare, ask: Is it profitable for somebody to show me this? This question basically explains social media outrage culture. It also extends to published science. New research downplaying the impact of carbon emissions? Yup, probably funded by oil corporations1. Article claims that increased saturated fat intake isn’t that bad? Looks like lots of funding from dairy and meat companies2.
The next book on my list is Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, which should also address these points more thoroughly.
If you’re looking for a book to thoroughly convince you to quit social media, this might not be the one. The book doesn’t seem to aim to convince people that social media is bad. It only fleshes out existing misgivings for people that are already most of the way to quitting. It might be useful for bite-sized pieces of information to bring up when criticizing social media and some understanding of how social media affects social dynamics. But if you want understanding that motivates change, maybe a different set of readings will help more.
A Q&A with Geoffrey Supran, a research fellow in the History of Science Department at Harvard, describes how oil companies fund both standard climate change denial work and deliver propaganda through advertisement. Read more. ↩
An admittedly very lazy search of PubMed using the term “dairy for children” brought me to an article titled “Saturated Fats and Health: A Reassessment and Proposal for Food-Based Recommendations”, essentially combatting new dietary guidelines recommending restricting saturated fat intake. A cursory glance of the funding section reveals money from various dairy and beef organizations. Read more. ↩