So here's my dislike in 19 tweets:

a) The Social Dilemma portrays social media as absolute evil, discounting the many positives. Sure, there are countless issues & they are in the news all the time, but at least acknowledge how it's benefitting people in finding community. 1/

For example, Jillian York mentioned how she has a rare kind of disease, and she felt lonely in her journey until she found a community of people on Facebook who had the same condition.

People have found their lost family here. 2/

Women mobilised to create what Aurat March is today. We saw the rise of MeToo through social media, globally. LEAs act only when they are constantly alerted about any incident on social media. That brings me to my second point. 3/

b) TSD completely missed the discussion on harassment, gender based violence that is so very prevalent here. Like I said earlier, Facebook for example, was built to harass women, and it continues to be the best place for that even now. Maybe address that while you're hating?! 4/

c) Then of course, all you see throughout the documentary is white men acting out this heroic speech they must have prepared keeping TED stage in mind. It completely missed how there are more people working on these products than just white tech bros of Silicon Valley. 5/

The production team must have known exactly what they were doing with this - reinforcing the typical culture of tech industry where your labour is only acknowledged if you're a white male. Bonus: you'll get credit for other people's work as well. 6/

d) These white men threw lots of deep quotes backed by their hero complex, talking about how they built this tech, earned lots of money for it, but "oh no! it's being used for disaster. Please stop using it." No, you can't expect people to stop using it. 7/

You can't just go around throwing these fancy speeches and scaring people off the internet by demonising tech. The issues that you see on the internet are the reflection of the society we live in. How about discuss that?! 8/

Oh here's an idea! How about these corporations actively address the problem with the platforms' lack of action against the many issues, instead of ignoring the countless reports that users file, and many that internal teams flags?! 9/

e) Political polarisation that you see online is not because of the internet or social media. These are just the tools to make visible what is already part of the society because of the existing social and economic inequalities. 10/

This polarisation existed even before social media and the internet, and will continue to exist even if someone decides to pull the plugs of the internet, if only it worked this way. 11/

f) Now about misinformation spreading 6x faster than the truth. A recent Buzzfeed report reveals that Facebook ignored the warnings that internal content moderation teams flagged wrt inauthentic behaviour because... 12/

They weren't affecting the US and Europe. ~90% of Facebook users are from the Global South, yet this region isn't Facebook's priority when it comes to content moderation. It suspends accounts of human rights defenders left, right and centre, 13/

but will not take action against misinformation because it isn't affecting profits. In fact, it's adding to that very revenue, because "Senator, we run ads".

So before they quote stats for self-promotion, they should tell their bosses to get to work to solve the problem. 14/

g) Of course the bicycle analogy. Here's how bicycles, as reported by SuperTristanMan, never harmed anyone: https://twitter.com/PessimistsArc/status/1304134132709109761

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h) All those interviewed talked about how they built these products out of their intention to 'help humanity' and 'spread positivity'. No sir, you were motivated by your corporate interests of generating profits. Let's not fool anyone. 16/

i) Fine, I agree that social media is tempting. But no, this is not like drug addiction, where there's a need for clinical intervention. This article superbly addresses this towards the end: https://slate.com/technology/2020/09/social-dilemma-netflix-technology.html

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j) This also points out how the documentary does not give space or address what digital rights activists have been saying for years. Instead brought tech bros to create panic. It's not helping anyone, not the children, not their parents, not society.

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k) Overall, The Social Dilemma is not adding anything new or any value to the discussion. It does not offer solutions to the problem - leaving social media is not a solution.

19/19

Here's a great thread: https://twitter.com/alexhanna/status/1307490755066306561?s=19