I recently found about this guy from reading his not so recent book--Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. He also wrote You Are Not A Gadget.
Here are some notable videos of him questioning the current ethics of social media and how companies like Google and Facebook business models are detrimental to society from an ethical POV.
If you prefer reading here's an article about him and is his thoughts:
www.gq.com
The guy is very smart and makes really good arguments. I think most of us that lived through the 2016 election and Gamergate before that have seen the nefarious uses of social media. Moreover, recent FB whistleblower revelations about the negative mental health consequences of platforms like Instagram.
Jaron is not a Luddite. He's a technie himself, so he knows the space very intimately, but he feels we, as a society, we wrong in tech by clamoring for free everything (making users the 'Product") and lionizing SV businesspeople like Steve Jobs, Google's founders, and thus not questioning their motives.
He's particularly hard on Google and FB since the other Big Tech companies, which having their own issues, don't trade user information for money as their primary business model, unlike those two, who basically live and die on user data.
Here are some notable videos of him questioning the current ethics of social media and how companies like Google and Facebook business models are detrimental to society from an ethical POV.
If you prefer reading here's an article about him and is his thoughts:
Is Social Media Good For Anything At All?
Tech oracle Jaron Lanier saw the evils of social media platforms before anyone else. Now he talks about whether Twitter activism really works, how to fix Facebook, and why he won't be joining Silicon Valley's overlords in New Zealand.
The guy is very smart and makes really good arguments. I think most of us that lived through the 2016 election and Gamergate before that have seen the nefarious uses of social media. Moreover, recent FB whistleblower revelations about the negative mental health consequences of platforms like Instagram.
Jaron is not a Luddite. He's a technie himself, so he knows the space very intimately, but he feels we, as a society, we wrong in tech by clamoring for free everything (making users the 'Product") and lionizing SV businesspeople like Steve Jobs, Google's founders, and thus not questioning their motives.
He's particularly hard on Google and FB since the other Big Tech companies, which having their own issues, don't trade user information for money as their primary business model, unlike those two, who basically live and die on user data.
