The Social Dilemma

Documentary – Not Rated

Directed by Jeff Orlowski

Written by Davis Coombe, Vickie Curtis, and Jeff Orlowski

Available on Netflix
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The Social Dilemma is a documentary that delves into how social media (in all it’s flavors) actually functions to keep us all involved in it. What design elements make certain things appealing, and how the function of Artificial Intelligence (AI) plays in to helping tech companies sell the best product of all: your behavior.

Personally, I was shocked at the level of consideration given to making each individual’s social media “feed” uniquely their own. As opposed to presenting or recommending what is trending or interesting to the world at large (which might help expand people’s point’s of view), the AI, by dint of its primary directive of maintaining user interaction in order to promote advertisers’ material, continues to focus, laser-like, on each individual’s history of clicks and interactions.

This has the effect of creating a narrower and narrower set of recommendations for each individual. If this was limited to what shoes someone liked or what movies they liked to watch, that might be somewhat acceptable, but the AI only knows, and continues to strive for, maximum user interaction, which means what also becomes increasingly recommended are news stories, videos, and opinions, to the exclusion of any providing opposing points of view (of any degree).

(Kind of makes the premise of The Circle seem not quite as ridiculous, doesn’t it?)

So then we reach the real nub of it: social media isn’t doing anything wrong, per se… but they are providing a framework which, if massaged correctly, can overwhelm a user with “information” of all sorts, regardless of it’s truth or lack thereof.

So, then, the answer seems so obvious, doesn’t it? Make the platforms determiners of truth.

People have been trying to determine truth (not fact: ask Indiana Jones) for millennia, and truth is always determined by those who control the information.

Are Facebook/Twitter/Instagram to be the arbiters of truth for all mankind, then?

Facts (such as the Earth is round and the sky is blue) are incontrovertible, but what of those “facts” which swing into the realm of opinion? You know, those “facts” which emerge on the political landscape from time to time, like a plague of Cicadas? Those “facts” which separate us from each other because we hold opinions about the information those “facts” are based on?

Should we allow social media to determine which is “right” or “wrong” of things which fall into that category?

I think–I hope–we all know the answer to that question.

In the end, I believe the answer isn’t the purview of the social media corporations, but rather of each individual. It has been said time and again and yet still bears repeating:

Open your eyes. Look beyond your circle of friends. Read the “opposing” news sites. Check the sources (Wikipedia is not a source). Remember that YOU are the ultimate arbiter of what you believe.

Do not surrender that to social media.

Everyone who uses social media should definitely give this a watch. It’s enlightening from an academic standpoint and frightening from a user standpoint.

Everyone will get something out it.

The Social Dilemma features Tristan Harris, Jeff Seibert, Bailery Richardson, Joe Toscano, Sandy Parakila,Guillaume Chaslot, Lynn Fox, Aza Rasking, Alex Roetter….

My Grade: A

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