The Social Dilemma on Netflix is the most discussed documentary of the moment. In this documentary conscientious defectors from big social media companies describe that the perniciousness of social networking is a build-in feature (Girish, 2020). It is striking that former employees are interviewed who no longer agree with the direction of the companies. According to these employees the manipulation of human behavior is intentionally implemented. The people around me received the documentary in an educational and revealing way, but I had my doubts about it.
First of all, the director Jeff Orlowski has a certain strategy how he wants to convey documentaries to the public. I quote: “he brings compelling new insights to a familiar topic while also scaring the absolute shit out of you” (Ehrlich, 2020). Of course: climate change is a troubling problem, and so is the social dilemma, but aren’t we all aware of these issues? The question is: is it even possible to change this and how are we suppose to do that? And that is exactly the question Orlowski did not answer.
Besides, as we have learned within the course Information Strategy: the development of data analytics and big data has helped us providing better, and faster information in every branch of business (Li, 2020). The development of negative externalities described in ‘The Social Dilemma’ are problems of the contemporary era that arise with a new, progressive development such as Big Data. However, they are not, as Orlowski describes, ‘too-powerful entities fragmenting attention and rewiring brains by a design that leads to an addiction to phones. The social media would be a function of their business model which devides the community and drives us to dystopia’ (Horton, 2020).
In conclusion, I found the documentary ‘The Social Dilemma’, which is in line with our master in Business Information Management, a superficial documentary that can give ignorant viewers a wrong picture of reality. However, it seems like I am the only one who feels that way about this, so I am curious about your opinions. Please let me know in the comments!
Ehrlich, D. (2020, January 29). ’The Social Dilemma’ Review: A Horrifyingly Good Doc About How Social Media Will Kill Us All. IndieWire. Retrieved from https://www.indiewire.com
Girish, D. (2020, September 9). ‘The Social Dilemma’ Review: Unplug and Run. Https://Www.Nytimes.Com/#publisher. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com
Horton, A. (2020, September 8). ‘A climate change-scale problem’: how the internet is destroying us. Retrieved 24 September 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/sep/08/the-social-dilemma-netflix-internet-tech-film
Li, T. (2020, September 1). Information Strategy [Slides]. Retrieved from https://www.canvas.eur.nl
Dear Gianna,
Thank you for your interesting blogpost! I agree with you that social media is not that scary as the documentary wants you to believe.
Everyone is responsible for themselves and if they do not want their brains to be ‘rewired by phone addiction’ they could just delete social media applications of their phones.
However, I do think many people are dependent on their telephones and it is not easy to rehabilitate since society expects you to be be reachable at any time of the day. Also, whenever you want to find a job you can’t go without social media (linkedin) or even finding a new house to live (profiling yourself on Instagram). Thus, it is fair to say that social platforms are irreversibly important in our lives.
But then again, how bad is that? It also makes a lot of things easier, faster, cheaper and more fun. There are hundreds of thousands of people that earn their income by posting pictures on Instagram. What is wrong with that?
One downside that I do agree with is that young children and teenagers are negatively affected by social media and internet bullying. Because they are still very insecure and vulnerable, we should maybe think of a system where younger people can’t join. Like an age restriction?
In conclusion, I’d say that you are right, we need to embrace the digitalization of society because it will come eventually.
Hi Gianna! Thank you for your interesting blog about the social dilemma. Recently, I have watched the social dilemma and I was hooked by it, so I understand why you would choose this particular subject for an in-depth discussion. First of all, I agree that a lot of people, who I know, watched the documentary and reacted frightened by its message. To be honest, I was one of them. Clearly, the documentary is set up to scare people and make them think twice when they open Instagram, Facebook or even WhatsApp. I agree with you that the director Orlowski exaggerated on the scariness for exposure, yet I do believe that it is a useful tool to encourage a solution-focused mindset. In your blog, you propose that no solution is offered. Yet, the ending of the documentary clearly focuses on the fact that the solution should be our collective behavior. My own conclusion for this so-called collective behavior would be to spend less time on social media, avoid platforms that abuse our privacy and thoroughly check sources when on the internet.
Of course, I must agree with your statement about the problem that the documentary can cause by targeting ‘ignorant’ people. Note, I think that this exact message is relevant for all information we absorb. Whether we consider watching a documentary on Netflix, read a news article on or comment on other people via a social media platform, we should always ‘fact-check’ before we take actions or make decisions. This might be an uncomfortable opinion, but I do think we are heading there and it might even be Orlowski’s (vaguely described) solution. I have to say that I really enjoyed reading your blog and I guess there are many sides and perspectives to this story. Thank you!
Thank you for sharing your opinion.
I have not seen The Social Dilemma, so cannot comment on the perspective it provides, but I always this type of movies as sort of realistic horror movies. Surely, there is truth in what is being portrayed. But what is being portrayed is a choice of the creators.
Internet has brought all the parts of the world closer together, and at the same time, it’s hard to know what sources are to be trusted. But are really people now more misguided than ever? Is it really that different from the times when the media was limited to newspapers and radios, and maybe TV? Controlling the news was always the way to control the mass opinions. Is the current generation really more depressed and self-cautious? Or are there just more people being tested more accurately?
The scariest part about the internet is that you never know who is watching you, and for what purpose. And I do believe that it is leading us to the dystopia. But not because of the internet itself, or the tools that allow to harvest data bigger than ever before, but because we, humans, always push the limits to see how much further we can go.
I watched the Social dilemma and had some doubts as well! I watched it as it’s a high rating documentary and I indeed love the way it tells the stories, however, I found that I already known the ideas that they are trying to convey just as you did. Yes, social media is manipulating our lives, and it’s addicting and would have bad impacts on humans especially teenagers. I think what the documentary did well is only that it unveils a lot of things in details and make us more conscious about what we are facing. But what I really need is a solution towards this problem. Delete them couldn’t be the answer as there are so many people using them every day, and it certainly helps us in a lot of positive ways. Without the help from these technologies, we cannot live the lives that we have right now, so we shouldn’t deny the benefits that we get from the improvement of the technologies. I think besides the government should set some regulations to the companies of social media, what’s more important is people should educate themselves and the young generation well on how to use these devices and applications on the right way. I think technology is always improving, and the improvement certainly brings good and bad effects, if we already know how it works, what we need to do is to work together to manipulate the tools, instead of letting them manipulate us.
Hi Gianna, thank you for sharing your honest opinion on what is probably one of the more controversial documentaries of this year.
I must say I was a bit less sceptical of the message Orlowski was trying to get across, but I see where you are coming from. In the documentary, some solutions of how to tackle the problem of the increasing power of algorithms and social media were presented. I agree with you that these solutions (e.g. setting a time limit on social media for children) were only trivial and do not tackle the problem itself of the power of these tech companies.
However, wouldn’t you agree that writing and designing algorithms that are designed to constantly redirect users’ attention to social media is at least somewhat unethical? Especially if it is widely known that negative externalities of social media have significant societal consequences. In my opinion, there is only one concrete solution to the problem presented in the documentary, which is increased and more novel legislation.
Hi Gianna!
Interesting blog! I am indeed one of the people who did find this documentary quite the revelation. Although I agree it is very Hollywood-ish and that the purpose is to ‘scare the absolute shit out of you’, I think it was very insightful to get more information on the topic. Most of us already knew the downsides of social media, but the documentary did provide me with deeper understanding on algorithmic recommendation and its effects. I actually wrote a blog on this myself just now. The most meaningful message I took from the documentary is its influence on polarizing societies. I notice this happening around me daily with colleges, friends and family member. People who get influenced by fake news, conspiracy theories, extreme ideologies and have a distrust in the media and other authorities. Especially during this pandemic. I believe that social media plays a large role in distributing and tailoring this information to people who are susceptible of believing the information, which I believe is dangerous. Therefore, I believe that this documentary (although a bit over-the-top) provides a good wake up call and thinking material for future leaders in the tech industry and social media users in general. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Gianna, thank you for posting this intriguing blog! I also watched the documentary and was very amazed by it. Actually, I already knew the content of this documentary. However, I still was suprised by it. And I think that is also the problem here. We all know it, but we cannot help ourselves because we are fundamentally wired to be socially connected. We are humans and we differed from other human-species because we are social people. So, that is what makes this scary. Yes, it is probably shown to look more scary. But still, I am a sober persoon and already knew what was going on, and I was still shocked by it.
Regarding the superficiality of the documentary, I disagree with you there. I think there is a much more fundamental issue that you can get out of it. Honestly, it is amazingly brilliant of these companies (Facebook, Google) to use our brains against us to make money. From a business standpoint this is just really smart of them. Moreover, almost all business participate in this business model. Advertisements is one of the greatest earners in business. So, every company that advertises on the platforms of Google and Facebook actively make money of our weakness of social interaction. It is so efficient in making profit. And that is what the shareholders want! So, to change this, our economic model has to change. However, our economy is based on capitalism. Hence, that would means our view on economic markets is wrong. So, if you think about it, this documentary actually says more than “social media is scary, watch out”.
Thank you for the post and your opinion! I share the same view point..the movie, according to me, dint share any new insights, especially if someone has seen The Great Hack on Netflix which is about Cambridge Analytica’s role in US election.. that one is more scary! This movie seemed more like a consolation, a way for the industry to tell us that they dint want this to happen and they are sorry about it. As you rightly said they dint give a proper solution. In the end the main guy who has been pushing for reform (at least as mentioned in the movie) says that the companies have to take responsibility and undo the unethical activities..however I don’t think that is the solution. Here is my reasoning, right now we use Facebook/Instagram inspite of knowing this issue so even if the fb group reduces this addictive mechanism and starts ‘caring’ for their users, a new platform will take its place and will use all those mechanisms and maybe more (innovation never stops) and we – users – will get attracted to it. Hence fb will lose the customer base and the new platform will become the attraction for the advertisers as well (network effects). Hence regulation at company level is not the solution, we need regulation at the national level at least. This is where the problem lies, our governmental organisations are not equipped to understand this technology and business. Other than Europe’s GDPR and California’s regulation act, none of the countries are ready to take this issue head on.