Watching “Social Dilemma.”

I’m maybe 30 seconds in and....uhhh the “force for good thing” is already too much.

“There’s no one bad guy.”

Correct. There are many bad guys.

Read this, y’all. https://twitter.com/libshipwreck/status/1306623944301178880

“We lost our way.”

It’s striking that the myth of the individual genius that is at the problematic root of how many people think of tech is also the problematic root of this doc that is supposed to unravel this stuff for the audience.

It looks like the reason they included those dramatic interludes is so they could say they had a Black person on screen.

We are not “pouring out” data, my dude.

“Bicycles”

For folks who keep telling us how smart they are, their understanding of “tools” is remarkably shallow.

34 minute mark, and what they keep stressing is “addiction” but no mention of rampant white supremacy, disinformation, enabling authoritarians or promoting genocide.

Perhaps from a storytelling angle this makes "sense," but this again surfaces the problem of who the film chooses to center. It centers the "creators" rather than the people harmed.

There's actually a Black woman in the soundtrack of "Social Dilemma" before there's a Black woman on screen.

So Harris just said "it's not like anybody wants this to happen, it's just what the recommendation system is doing."

One hour in. "Disinformation."

One hour seven minutes in is first mention of Myanmar.

This mofo really just said "two sides" and then they overlayed images of a car crashing into protestors.

So, after all that, we get clips of politicians telling us "tribalism is ruining us" and "we stopped being friends with people because of who they voted for" and now I know everything I need to know about the people who made this movie.

The focus at the end is on "knowing what is true" but most of the speakers and the director don't even have the courage to do that on film and are content to ramble on about "both sides."

Dude just cited Uber as part of the "utopia" that runs along our current "dystopia." If this is Silicon Valley's conscience, that explains a whole bunch.

"We created the like button to spread positivity." Infinite fucking eyeroll.

I see all these bros say nobody is bad or evil, it's just the business model and like...

This bro just cited the phone company as a positive example of a business that does right by people and their data.

Another way this film suffers: so many of the people interviewed think this is the first time in history that companies have been built on extracting value from humans to the detriment of their health and safety. Nah, dude--it's just the first time you think it's affecting you.

"The idea of humane technology is where Silicon Valley got its start."

Read this, y'all. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674032927

So at the root, all of these folks are reformers. None of them will explicitly say that some of these technologies should not exist.

We need more people saying that, and their unwillingness to do so is part of the reason I don't find their ideas useful or compelling.

Notice how all their solutions are pretty much nibbling at the edges. Few of them say that these platforms, operating at scale, cannot be reformed. (they cannot)