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Should You Delete Your Facebook Account?

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Original Air Date:

December 22, 2018

Your finger’s hovering over the "delete" button on your Facebook app. Your friends are abandoning Twitter. Every day brings fresh revelations of data breaches, privacy abuses, Russian spies, trolls. Is it time to hit “delete” on all of it?

But then again, we joined these platforms for a reason. In a more perfect world, what could these platforms be doing for us?

Deleting Is Hard To Do

Mark's facebook ephemera

Sonic Sidebar

We shared our lives on Facebook, and in return, we got rampant privacy abuse. It might feel right to end our relationship, but as digital producer Mark Riechers discovered, that's more complicated than you might think.

Length:

03:20

A Message From A Web Pioneer: Delete Your Account. Right Now.

Girl with phone

Audio

Jaron Lanier — the visionary computer scientist who helped build the internet and invent virtual reality — thinks the solution to our Facebook problems is clear.

Length:

11:48

If We Can Change The World With Social Media, Why Would We Give It Up?

happy people social-ing on phones

Audio

Ethan Zuckerman directs the Center for Civic Media at MIT. He argues that simply quitting these platforms isn't enough — we have to stick around and demand something better.

Length:

10:00

Want the Internet To Be Less Mean? Think Before You Share.

internet of nonsense

Articles

Viral videos and memes are good for a laugh — but how often do you think about where they came from? Digital culture scholar Whitney Phillips says the internet is both playful and mean. And we’re not good at telling the difference.

Length:

12:31

Twitter, Your Friend Who's Up All Night

deray on Twitter

Sonic Sidebar

Maybe you can do without social media, if your life is already pretty comfortable. But you know what? Some people can't wait for something better to come along. They need social media today. Like organizer DeRay Mckesson.

Length:

03:57

Control The Data, Control The World

Data streams

Articles

Yuval Noah Harari is the big-thinking historian who warns that whoever owns the data owns the future. He told Steve Paulson that it’s become the most important resource in the world.

Length:

12:42

Should We Flee Social Media Or Fix It?

flee or stay our social media platforms?

Articles

A pioneering computer scientist thinks we should delete our accounts, while an internet ethicist argues we should fix the system rather than abandon it entirely.

Extras

Show Details 📻

Airdates

December 22, 2018

August 24, 2019

August 15, 2020

June 19, 2021

Guests:

Jaron Lanier

Computer scientist and philosopher

Ethan Zuckerman

Media Scholar

Whitney Phillips

Digital folklorist and scholar

DeRay Mckesson

Author and Activist

Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Noah Harari

Historian and Author

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Last modified:

June 18, 2021

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