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So many things wrong with Netflix's The Social Dilemma that I don'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
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 'human tech' 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 'human tech' 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 'OMG social media have all of our data and manipulate our lives'. 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's bad takes on tech documentaries: https://twitter.com/moiragweigel/status/1305477926155104256
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'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 'like' button have brought.
That was their origin.
No matter how much good in the world did the 'like' button have brought.
This great article tackles the techbro conversion narrative head on: https://conversationalist.org/2020/03/05/the-prodigal-techbro/
A review from @verge: Telling people to delete Facebook won'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
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
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
Also +1 to this: https://twitter.com/rainakumra/status/1305659517024088064
