My Issue with The Social Dilemma

“We are the product.”

It’s not every day that we face such savage truth. The idea that somehow, somewhere, giant tech companies are profiting off our attention alone is, quite frankly, chilling. Someone is making a shed load of money while I’m sitting in bed watching funny animal vines.

If you haven’t seen it yet, Jeff Orlowski’s Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma” is a collection of interviews with past execs from Google, Pinterest, Facebook, and tech designers, who reveal the algorithms designed to keep us obsessed with our social media.

The film opens with a quote from Sophocles: “Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse”. We are introduced to Tristan Harris, a former Google design ethicist, who sets the tone of the film with his ethical struggles on the addictiveness of Gmail.

Tristan offers us a recurring message throughout the documentary: he declares that these tech companies are “simultaneously utopia and dystopia”, and drives the notion that social media is quickly evolving from its utopian intentions into a dystopian nightmare.

“Never before have 50 designers, 20-30-year old white guys, in California, made decisions that will have an impact on 2 billion people.”

We later meet Julian Rosenstein, a former Facebook engineer who led the team that built the Facebook “like” button, with the sole purpose of spreading love and positivity. Julian, amongst other contributors, outline their initial intentions to connect us globally, share stories, love and happiness, all that jazz.

The film unveils a whole heap of industry professionals (predominantly white males, might I add) who are ready to openly discuss the crucial social debate - where did they go wrong, and why? Tim Kendall, former Facebook executive, reveals he was hired to solve the monetisation problem for Facebook by advertising. Money overtook intention and advertising rapidly became the driving force for these tech giants. As Tim (I think somewhat shamefully) exclaims:

“We were naive about the flip side of that coin”

The message is undoubtedly clear. Advertising led to profit, profit led to efficiency, efficiency led to greater intelligence. All of them unanimously agree on one, single thing.

They failed to see just how smart their intelligence would become.

---

As we move further into the documentary, it is explained how Artificial Intelligence has become its own life force. It is evolving into an unparalleled, unregulated set of algorithms that have designed a future of unprecedented and manipulative marketing strategies.

It learns us, and then it sells us.

We have known some of this for a while, though. Even Elon Musk, with his IQ of 155, has publicly addressed his fears over Google and AI, and anti-surveillance activists have been warning against AI and surveillance for years.

What I didn’t know was just how bad. The film provides a shocking insight into the precise extrapolation mechanisms behind these tech giants. They digest our attention and information through recommendations, analytics, advertising, paid clicks, targeted news, personalised google searches depending on your location. They monitor the amount of time you spend looking at an image.

Surveillance capitalism 101.

The film argues that AI is causing a social crisis by spreading misinformation and lies, leading to increases in problems like child suicide rates, hate speech, anxiety, to name a few.

So what do they suggest?

“Turn it off.”

The film finishes by stressing that we have the power to fine-tune what we see.

Turn off notifications. Unsubscribe from pointless emails. Don’t click on irrelevant material. Don’t click on relevant material. There is a great moment when Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist, advises:

“Never accept a video recommended to you on YouTube. Always choose. That’s another way to fight.”

Guillaume Charlotte, a YouTube Engineer, echoes Lanier. He tells us never to click on recommended videos.

Weren’t you responsible for that recommendation feature? Jeff asked.

“Er... Yep.”

The credits ended. I scrabbled for my phone and immediately followed their advice, almost in a panic.

But then I felt hollow. This solution seems rather trivial, and I was left feeling dazed and confused. There must be more to it than this.

I remembered something Tristan said not long before.

“It’s not the technology itself that is the existential threat. It is the technology’s ability to bring out the worst in society. And the worst in society being the existential threat”.

By using a mix of emotive music, an exaggerated storyline on a family addicted to social media, and the harrowing words of former employees, there was no other option but to feel that Mark Z and AI are the devil. Orlowski spends most of the film chasing this dystopian narrative that technology is the sole reason for many of our problems - but that’s not enough.

The film could have instead focused on the fact we have to make systemic changes outside the bounds of technology. How do we accomplish that without using the immense reach of such platforms? I have no idea. But the whole thing seemed like an overexaggerated attack on social media.

---

Blaming uncontrollable algorithms or AI for youth anxiety, mental health, political polarisation (all issues that have existed throughout history) is a bit of a misdirection. AI doesn’t photoshop men and women to unrealistic standards, it doesn’t directly incite hatred, it doesn't make laws or policy, and it doesn't make ethically based decisions. That’s on us.

There are so many other pre-existing factors like class inequality, race, even environmental anxiety that all contribute, but simply aren’t given a voice.

Instead of shaming social media (which has also done immense good in the world) and without trying to sound too Marxist, a final rallying cry to challenge the existing structures that allow such problems to continue unaddressed might have provided a more satisfying ending, rather than “turn off notifications, it’s basically out of our hands now”.

While it was valuable to know exactly what we’re in for, and it’s made me think twice about picking up my phone, I can’t help but wonder if it was a slightly missed opportunity. And more to the point, what the hell are we supposed to do now?