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ot so long ago, everything related to the Internet was exclusively associated with new things. It was a kind of gateway to a new earthly paradise: the digital revolution illuminated a new economic paradigm; a "flat world" of open access to information that promised to strengthen institutions and progress insofar as we would have better-informed citizens. Some analysts like Moisés Naím even theorized about "the end of power": it was argued that digital forces implied the ineluctable decentralization of previously powerful hierarchical structures.
The truth is that the years have passed and many of the promises regarding the Internet have fallen by the wayside. In a short time, the Internet replicated the patterns of power and influence distribution of the real universe that the "flat world" announced by Thomas Friedman promised. What we have observed is how the actors changed, but the script of the play was essentially the same in its main parts, with the aggravating factor that in some cases the new digital hierarchies exert their influence in a much more veiled way.
Social networks seem open, flat, democratic, politically neutral, when in reality we are entering a card game where the cards are markedJaron Lanier, pioneer of the digital world and former techno-evangelist, returns to the publishing world with the provocative bookTen Reasons You Should Delete Your Social Media Accounts Right Now(DEBATE). The book arrives after his influential booksWho Controls the Future?andAgainst the Digital Herd, where the computer expert discovers some of the most perverse dynamics that happen behind the screen of our Tablet orsmartphone. Lanier, in 2011, already began to warn about thedigital apathyand the hidden dangers behind the multitude of seemingly free services –social networks included–, easily accessible from any device. Lanier discovered the meta-structure of the network; a network where not all nodes are equal, but some are more equal than others: a concentration of information in a few hands that is most clearly reflected in the stock market valuation of the great technological giants, which increasingly have more weight within global indices. As Stanford professor Niall Ferguson has warned in The Tower and the Square, which analyzes our recent history through the dialectic between vertical and horizontal powers, networks have the property of being disruptive to hierarchical powers and then quickly transforming themselves also intotowers
Without realizing it, we have ceased to be free users to become part of the product. And all of the above in a veiled way, hence the great risk.It is due to the existence of centralized control elements, outside the very dynamic of network theory that makes them never flat by default, that these domesticate behaviors, exacerbate our cognitive biases and, furthermore, are deeply addictive: networks have a component of instant gratification, which makes them deeply addictive (it is well explained byNicholas Carrin his fundamental bookThe Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains?). Social networks like Twitter, for example, generate the false illusion of knowledge and reinforce our ideological biases insofar as they only replicate what we would like to see and hear. They are not governed by truth; no algorithm has an ethical code; basically, they don't want us to be wiser or more intelligent, but rather seek to maximize traffic and the number of clicks to monetize advertising revenue.
In the PC era, Lanier argues, the user could establish their own rules – on an operating system, we could download programs in a controlled manner. It was a model of atomized distribution where the user controlled the flow of information. This power is diluted in the era of smart devices where the user is now a simple "branch" receiving easily manipulable content from a central control point. Social networks and content distribution platforms are the paroxysm of all the above. These are applications that, a priori, seem open, flat, democratic, politically neutral, when in reality we are entering a card game where the cards are marked, and where the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which has revealed the commercial use of our profiles (filled to the brim with information that even our psychologist didn't have before), is just the tip of the iceberg.
Without realizing it, we have stopped being free users to become part of the product. And all of the above in a veiled way; hence the great risk. Lanier argues up to 10 powerful reasons to close our social media accounts, which include:
- the loss of freedom
- the fact that networks (like television) basically make us more idiotic
- they empty the content of what we say
- they make us unhappy
- they weaken our capacity for empathy, which in turn makes political debate impossible or they abhor our soul.