Social media companies needs us to keep returning to their platforms, and to make this happen they collect data about us. That data is used to give us more of what engages us the most and in that way creating wealth for the companies.
The problem is that what engages us most is content that evokes fear, anxiety and outrage. And that’s what we get served!
Notes & Highlights
📝 BUMMER Platforms: Service like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are “driven by a business model in which the incentive is to find customers ready to pay to modify someone else’s behavior.”.
📝 A key point to remind yourself about: for services like a Facebook, we are the product, not the customer.
📝 We talk to our BUMMER connected products like they where humans, but it works even better if we do it in a way that makes you behave more like machines. (I.e. me talking to my Google Assistant 😂)
📝 Podcasts are still not BUMMER. They are made by real people that are known to the listener. They are build on a sense of personality and context. It’s also harder for the listener to jump from one audio snippet to the next.
⚖️ VERDICT:
This short book only scratched the surfaces of the problematical issues social media brings to the table but does so in a good way! If you feel like something is off with the way social media makes you feel and think then this book shines a light on why that is. Like so often before the media is the message.
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ out of 5
Further reading:
If you enjoyed Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier then you might also like these books:
21 Lessons for the 21st Century – Yuval Noah Harari
So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed – Jon Ronson
Find more great reads on my book reviews page and the Great Books List
Video Reviews every week on YouTube
