Jaron Lanier was chief scientist of the engineering office of Internet2 back in the day, which is to say, definitely one of the godfathers of the internet. In 2018, he set out the reasons to get rid of your social media in his book Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. When I read it, I shorthanded it to: “Facebook. I really should just close down my Facebook account.” There was no way back then I would have got rid of Twitter. It was where I went to complain about Brexit, and that’s all I did. Also, seven years ago, Twitter wasn’t just porn and chatbots.
Regarding Facebook, though, all Lanier’s propositions were laid out in a buffet: in politics, it creates a bias “not towards the left or right, but downwards”. Any position that could be less evidenced, more stupid, would be the one that would fly.
The manipulative algorithms, the spread of misinformation, the generation of weird hostilities, the amplification of divisive narratives – it was all right there, but on top of that Facebook was already very boring. Feeds were full of acquaintances who you didn’t know had that much anger in them, raging about potholes, or underwired bras, or one of their kids. There was a lot of preening and boasting, a lot of puffed-up position-taking. And this was before AI, so all those dumb made-up interiors of exquisitely tiny hobbit houses, all those triumph-over-adversity stories, hadn’t yet arrived. And it was still rubbish.
I never hit the “delete my account” button, because there was always some tiny thing. Where else would I find out who from my primary school was a wrong ’un now? How long would it take to find the photos from a decade ago and save them? (Five minutes.) How else would I wish people I never saw a happy birthday?
Between a thoroughly made, well-evidenced and profound case for change, and the pull of absolutely minute convenience and the comfort of inertia, there was a clear winner. I was just waiting for one more little nudge, which, when it finally came, wasn’t just that Mark Zuckerberg discontinued fact-checking. It was when, in a petty but revealing move, the tampons and sanitary towels for trans men and non-binary people were removed from the men’s toilets at Meta. I actually will fight the billionaire overlords on the beaches, or in the toilets, or wherever the hell they bring it; and first I need to stop watching these melted cheese videos.
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
