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So many things wrong with Netflix& #39;s The Social Dilemma that I don& #39;t know where to start from.
Adopting tech bros narrative. Lack of diversity. Moral panic and bad tropes everywhere. US-centric narrative. Ignoring the role of media and propaganda, and other systemic issues.
Adopting tech bros narrative. Lack of diversity. Moral panic and bad tropes everywhere. US-centric narrative. Ignoring the role of media and propaganda, and other systemic issues.
Here are some examples of the many shortcomings of The Social Dilemma: https://twitter.com/Pranavmalhotra8/status/1305226355529797633">https://twitter.com/Pranavmal...
A couple more takeaways:
- You can and should interview former Silicon Valley executives to produce a documentary about social media. But to make them accountable, not to promote their & #39;human tech& #39; pitches.
- You can and should interview former Silicon Valley executives to produce a documentary about social media. But to make them accountable, not to promote their & #39;human tech& #39; pitches.
- The documentary is more likely to drive scared moms to restrict their kids social media than to drive meaningful change. Moral panic only can drive ineffective (and uninformed) individual responses.
- So much narrative about & #39;OMG social media have all of our data and manipulate our lives& #39;. Only partially true. More scary is that companies infer a lot of data that can be wildly inaccurate and still make decisions on that basis.
More about Netflix& #39;s bad takes on tech documentaries: https://twitter.com/moiragweigel/status/1305477926155104256">https://twitter.com/moiragwei...
All in all, the social dilemma is a slightly better version of "The great hack", which was mostly focused on Cambridge Analytica and gave a platform to a questionable former employee. Now they gave a (even bigger) platform to tech bros reconverted to tech ethicists.
Also let& #39;s not forget that Facebook evolved from a website that was all about rating women for their looks.
That was their origin.
No matter how much good in the world did the & #39;like& #39; button have brought.
That was their origin.
No matter how much good in the world did the & #39;like& #39; button have brought.
This great article tackles the techbro conversion narrative head on: https://conversationalist.org/2020/03/05/the-prodigal-techbro/">https://conversationalist.org/2020/03/0...
A review from @verge: Telling people to delete Facebook won& #39;t fix the Internet.
It criticizes the conflation of differerent platforms and question that all of the problems outlined in the doc comes from them. https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/4/21419993/the-social-dilemma-jeff-orlowski-netflix-movie-review-social-media-algorithms">https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/4/...
It criticizes the conflation of differerent platforms and question that all of the problems outlined in the doc comes from them. https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/4/21419993/the-social-dilemma-jeff-orlowski-netflix-movie-review-social-media-algorithms">https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/4/...
An interesting thread (from 2 years ago) about the same issue of whose narrative ends up getting traction on these issues: https://twitter.com/anildash/status/963411291372228610">https://twitter.com/anildash/...
Also +1 to this: https://twitter.com/rainakumra/status/1305659517024088064">https://twitter.com/rainakumr...
