False economy What’s in it for me? Understand what makes the

Argument 2: The social media business 
model is invasive and outright dangerous.
House paint used to contain lead, but, 
eventually, the evidence of the dangers of lead 
became impossible to ignore. However, this fact 
didn’t cause a mass outcry against people 
painting their houses. Rather, after a period of 
protest and petitioning, lead-based paints 
became nonstandard.
We should approach social media in a similar 
way. We don’t need to do away with the internet 
or smartphones or online socialization; that 
would be like banning the painting of houses 
instead of banning a certain kind of house paint.
What we need to abolish is social media’s 
predominant business model, which the author 
refers to as BUMMER.
BUMMER stands for Behaviors of Users 
Modified, and Made into an Empire for Rent. 
Think of it as a machine that modifies our 
behavior, compiles data about people and then 
sells it to advertisers for profit.
Since the data collected by BUMMER’s 
algorithms is statistical, it doesn’t reveal exactly 
what a single person will do or like. But it can 
reveal, to a near certainty, what a general 
population of people will do or like.
The BUMMER machine has six components:
A – Attention Acquisition leading to Asshole 
supremacy. This basically means that social 
media is designed in such a way that the 
loudest, most unpleasant people get the most 
attention.
B – Butting into everyone’s lives. As mentioned 
before, BUMMER companies butt into people’s 
lives by watching their online activity.
C – Cramming content down people’s throats. 
Social media users are constantly barraged with 
personalized content. Just think of your 
Facebook feed, for instance.
D – Directing people’s behaviors in sneaky 
ways. Algorithms direct your behavior on social 
media, encouraging you to, for example, make 
purchases.
E – Earning money by letting the worst assholes 
secretly screw with everyone else. BUMMER 
companies make money by selling their users’ 
data to advertisers and other third-party 
companies. Sometimes they sell data to dubious 
bad agents, such as Russian state intelligence, 
which then use this data to manipulate people.
F – Fake mobs and Faker society. Many 
“people” online are in fact bots, contributing to 
the superficiality of society at large.
In the United States, there are only two 
companies that rely entirely on the BUMMER 
business model, and therefore contain all six of 
its components: Facebook and Google. Other 
companies, such as Reddit and 4chan, may 
contain some of these components, but not all of 
them.
It’s important to remember that no single 
technology is to blame for society’s current ills. 
The issue is the BUMMER business model and 
its reliance on the manipulation of people who 
use technology.
So remember: you don’t need to throw out your 
smartphone or stop visiting your favorite 
websites, just as people didn’t need to stop 
painting houses. What you need to do is stop 
using BUMMER services!