Lanier coins BUMMER (Behaviors of Users Modified, and Made into an Empire for Rent) to name the integrated business machine where platforms track users, build predictive models, and sell continuous behavior modification to third parties. The product is not the service you use but the gradual, statistical alteration of your actions and perceptions, rented out to whoever pays.
Because engagement algorithms optimize for whatever holds attention, and fear, anger, and resentment arise faster and more reliably than trust or joy, the system structurally amplifies negative feeling. This is not ideological bias but a byproduct of optimizing for reaction speed and intensity.
Lanier argues social media selectively rewards the aggressive, trolling mode of personality because it generates more engagement than measured behavior. The platform's reinforcement loops gradually make habitual users crueler and more tribal, pulling the 'asshole' side of each person forward.
Viewing feeds, likes, and notifications through the lens of behaviorist conditioning reveals that unpredictable, variable rewards (the slot-machine pattern) create compulsive checking more powerfully than predictable ones. The product is engineered to exploit the same reinforcement schedules that drive gambling addiction.
When a service is free to the user, the user is not the customer; the advertiser or manipulator paying for behavior change is. Lanier contends this inversion means the platform's duty runs to the hidden third party, so the user is structurally positioned as the thing being sold rather than served.
Lanier frames deletion not primarily as protest but as regaining a mind not continuously steered by hidden statistical manipulation, so you can perceive the world and form opinions without an unseen optimizer shaping them. The individual act is justified by the recovery of autonomy and authentic perception, independent of whether others also quit.