The Social Dilemma

The Social Dilemma is a 2020 American docudrama film directed by Jeff Orlowski and written by Orlowski, Davis Coombe, and Vickie Curtis. It explores the rise of social media and the damage it has caused to society, focusing on its exploitation and manipulation of its users for financial gain through surveillance capitalism and data mining. It goes into depth on how social media's design is meant to nurture an addiction, manipulate its use in politics, and spread conspiracy theories such as Pizzagate and aiding groups such as flat-earthers. The film also examines the serious issue of social media's effect on mental health (including the mental health of adolescents and rising teen suicide rates).

The Social Dilemma
Promotional release poster
Directed byJeff Orlowski
Produced byLarissa Rhodes
Written by
  • Davis Coombe
  • Vickie Curtis
  • Jeff Orlowski
Starring
Music byMark A. Crawford
Cinematography
  • John Behrens
  • Jonathan Pope
Edited byDavis Coombe
Production
company
  • Exposure Labs
  • Argent Pictures
  • The Space Program
Distributed byNetflix
Release date
  • January 26, 2020 (2020-01-26) (Sundance)
  • September 9, 2020 (2020-09-09) (United States)
Running time
94 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

The film features interviews with many former employees, executives, and other professionals from top tech companies and social media platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Apple. These interviewees provide their first-hand experiences of working in and around the tech industry. They state that social media platforms and big tech companies have been instrumental in providing positive change for society; they also note that such platforms have also caused problematic social, political, and cultural consequences. These interviews are presented alongside scripted dramatizations of a teenager’s social media addiction and a primer on how a social media algorithm powered by artificial intelligence may work.

The Social Dilemma premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival on January 26, 2020 and was released on Netflix on September 9, 2020.[1]

Cast
Interviewees
Experience and Background
Tristan Harris Former Google Design Ethicist (2013-2016)[2]

Co-Founder and CEO of Apture (2007)[3]

Co-Founder of Center for Humane Technology[4]

Co-Host of Your Undivided Attention with Aza Raskin

Tim Kendall Former Facebook Executive (2006-2010)

Former President of Pinterest

CEO of Moment, an application for mobile devices that tracks screen-time[5]

Jaron Lanier Author of Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (2018)
Roger McNamee Early investor at Facebook[6]

Venture Capitalist

Aza Raskin Employed by Firefox & Mozilla Labs

Co-Founder of Center for Humane Technology[4]

Founder of Massive Health [7]

The inventor of the infinite scroll

Justin Rosenstein Facebook engineer (2007-2008)

Google engineer

Co-Founder of Asana[8]

Shoshana Zuboff Professor Emeritus at Harvard Business School

Author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019)[9]

Jeff Seibert Former executive at Twitter

Serial Tech Entrepreneur

Co-founder of Digits[10]

Chamath Palihapitiya Former Vice President of Growth at Facebook (2007-2011)
Sean Parker Former President at Facebook
Anna Lembke Medical Director of Addiction Medicine at Stanford University
Jonathan Haidt Social Psychologist at New York University (NYU) Stern School of Business

Author of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012)

Sandy Parakilas Former Operations Manager at Facebook (2011-2012)

Former Product Manager at Uber

Cathy O'Neil Data Scientist

Author of Weapons of Math Destruction (2016)[11]

Randima Fernando Former Product Manager at NVIDIA

Former Executive Director at Mindful Schools

Co-Founder of Center For Humane Technology

Joe Toscano Former Experience Design Consultant at Google

Author of Automating Humanity

Bailey Richardson Early Team of Instagram (2012-2014)
Rashida Richardson Adjunct Professor at New York University (NYU) School of Law

Director of Policy Research at AI Now Institute

Guillaume Chaslot Former Engineer at YouTube (2010-2013)

CEO at Intuitive AI

Founder of AlgoTransparency[12]

Renée Diresta Research Manager at Stanford Internet Observatory

Former Head of Policy at Data for Democracy

Cynthia M. Wong Former Senior Internet Researcher at Human Rights Watch
Actors
Character
Skyler Gisondo Ben
Kara Hayward Cassandra
Sophia Hammons Isla
Chris Grundy Step-dad
Barbara Gehring Mother
Vincent Kartheiser Artificial Intelligence
Catalina Garayoa Rebecca

Synopsis

The documentary examines the effect that a handful of companies, including but not limited to Google, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have over the public; it is emphasized that a relatively small number of engineers make decisions that impact billions of people. The documentary examines the current state of social media platforms focusing more specifically on problems in the industry. Jeff Orlowski designed the film to include conversations that tackle concepts in technology such as data mining, technology addiction, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and surveillance capitalism.[13] The film follows a cast of interviewees, most of whom have left their respective companies due to varying ethical concerns that the industry as a whole has lost its way.

The documentary begins with an introduction to the array of interviewees, each listing the companies they had previously worked for and their role within each respective company. The cast of actors is then presented with news coverage of social media's adverse effects playing in the background. Each interviewee then goes over their grievances with social media. Between interview commentary, the dramatization side of the documentary provides insight into the inner workings of the technology that powers social media.  

In the documentary, it is stated that social media is a "useful service that does lots of good with a parallel money machine." Social media has many beneficial qualities; a few that are mentioned in the film include the facilitation of interpersonal connection across long distances, acquiring knowledge, and even finding organ donors. However, former employees of social media companies explain how user data can be used to build models to predict user actions and how companies keep user attention to maximize the profit from advertisements. The film then dives into the manipulation techniques used by social media companies to addict their users and the psychology that is leveraged to achieve this end. The film debates that this often leads to increased depression and increased suicide rates among teens and young adults.[14] The documentary also touches upon how user actions on online platforms are watched, tracked, measured, monitored, and recorded. Companies then mine this human-generated capital to increase engagement, growth, and advertising revenue. Orlowski uses the cast of actors to portray this in the dramatization. Ben (played by Skyler Gisondo), the middle child of the family, slowly falls for these manipulation tactics and dives deeper into his social media addiction. Following this, the dangers of artificial intelligence are touched upon once again. The interviewees go on further to explain how computer processing power is advancing exponentially, increasing the capabilities of AI. 

The final point the film touches on is fake news. Tristan Harris refers to it as a "disinformation-for-profit business model" and that companies make more money by allowing "unregulated messages to reach anyone for the best price". The film discusses the dangerous nature of the flow of fake news regarding COVID-19 and propaganda that can be used to influence political campaigns. The documentary also champions Wikipedia for being a neutral landscape that shows all users the exact same information without curating or monetizing it. The documentary concludes with the interviewees casting their fear over artificial intelligence's role in social media and the influence these platforms have on society. In the film, Tristan Harris states “It’s not about the technology being the existential threat, it’s the technology’s ability to bring out the worst in society. And the worst in society being the existential threat.”[2]The interviewees come to the unanimous decision that something must be changed for society to prosper. They claim that social media companies have no fiscal reason to change, one given example of a way to combat this would be to charge taxes on the data that social media companies acquire to incentivize lowering data collection measures.

Countermeasures

As the credits roll, the interviewees recommend taking the following countermeasures to protect oneself against social media:

  • Turn off notifications or reduce the number of notifications you receive
  • Uninstall social media and news apps that are wasting time
  • Use a search engine that does not store search history, like Qwant
  • Use browser extensions to block recommendations
  • Fact-check before sharing, liking, or commenting when the information looks surprising
  • Obtain sources of information with different perspectives, including sources one might disagree with
  • Do not give devices to children; no screen time.
  • Never accept recommended video on YouTube, Facebook or anywhere
  • Try to avoid any clickbait material
  • Keep devices out of the bedroom after a certain time
  • Do not allow social media use until children reach high school

Scientific basis

The documentary explains how an extended amount of media consumption can subtly have a plethora of negative impacts on individuals.[15] Orlowski presents specific data to support this thesis, such as:

  • A 62% increase in hospitalizations for American females ages 15–19 and a 189% increase in females ages 10–14 due to self harm, beginning in 2010–2011.[16]
    • Johnathan Haidt explains that this spike is due to the great amount of time spent on social media because people have the tendency to check social media as often as they can and the psychological effects it has on the brain. If a user is feeling distressed, media can release dopamine into the brain, and they eventually find themselves dependent upon it.[17] Harris refers to this as a "digital pacifier" in the film. The reliance on technology in this manner can lead to the inability to properly deal with emotions because it alters the development of one's frontal cortex.[17]
    • The release of dopamine makes technology work similar to addictive drugs, such as alcohol or nicotine.[18]
  • A 70% increase in suicide for females ages 15–19 and a 151% increase in females ages 10–14, beginning when social media was first introduced in 2009.[19]
  • There is a phenomenon of patients wanting to receive plastic surgery in order to look more similar to a picture with a filter on it due to 'Snapchat Dysmorphia'. This can lead to a body dysmorphic disorder and the lowering of one's self-esteem.[20]
    • This is because individuals may have a constant feeling that they should take on an appearance similar to the one they have on social media, leading to a spike in individuals diagnosed with depression.[21]
    • Snapchat introduced the first filters in January 2015.[22] Since then, there has been a significant increase in body dysmorphic disorders (BDD), which negatively affects one's mental and physical functionalities.[23]
    • Harris explains that increased media usage can lead children to "compare themselves to unrealistic standards of beauty".
  • The practice of using positive intermittent reinforcement in media development to keep users' attention for longer periods of time. It is mentioned that this psychological practice in media is similar to how slot machines work in Las Vegas, in which the user is unsure if and when something good will happen, so they continue to check their devices in hopes that something new will come.
  • People are highly likely to believe false information on the Internet, such as conspiracy theories, affecting off-screen behavior and lives.
    • False information on Twitter spreads six times faster than true information, according to an MIT study, because people have a greater emotional reaction towards fake news.[24]
    • Pizzagate was a popular conspiracy theory that circulated the internet in 2016 which claimed that politicians were associated with human trafficking, and that Comet Ping Pong was one of the locations where the events took place.[25] This type of phenomenon can have real-world effects that are dangerous to the public.[26]
    • Renée Diresta explains that the algorithms are biased towards false information because as more people show interest in such articles, it is recommended to more people.
    • The documentary also explains that due to false information having high success in grabbing user attention, it produces large amounts of revenue for social media companies. This can be partially attributed to the phenomenon known as clickbait.
  • 64% of the people in extremist groups on facebook, joined these groups because their algorithms lead them there. Algorithms push content that ignites outrage, hate, and amplifies biases within the data that is shown to them.

Critical response

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 87% based on 485 reviews, with an average rating of 7.62/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Clear-eyed and comprehensive, The Social Dilemma presents a sobering analysis of our data-mined present".[27] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 78 out of 100, based on nine critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[28]

The film received numerous positive reviews. ABC News's Mark Kennedy called the film "an eye-opening look into the way social media is designed to create addiction and manipulate our behavior, told by some of the very people who supervised the systems at places like Facebook, Google, and Twitter" and said it will "[make you] immediately want to toss your smartphone into the garbage can ... and then toss the garbage can through the window of a Facebook executive".[29] Variety's Dennis Harvey said the film does a good job of explaining how "what's at risk clearly isn't just profit, or even poorly socialized children, but the empathetic trust that binds societies, as well as the solidity of democratic institutions [which] we're learning can be all-too-effectively undermined by a steady diet of perspective-warping memes".[30] According to IndieWire's David Ehrlich, the film is the "single most lucid, succinct, and profoundly terrifying analysis of social media ever created".[1] A Financial Times review said the film "carefully details the skyrocketing levels of depression among children and teenagers; the flat-earthers and white supremacists; the genocide in Myanmar; the Covid misinformation; [and] the imperiling of objective truth and social disintegration".[31] The New York Times said that the film features "conscientious defectors from companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram [who] explain that the perniciousness of social networking platforms is a feature, not a bug".[32] Venture Beat declared that the film is "a call to arms that strives to provoke a real response from lawmakers, companies, and the public at large before it’s too late." [33] In a review article by Vanity Fair, they state "The Social Dilemma may finally convince you that we’re being watched, manipulated, and misled by unscrupulous platforms and attention-harvesting algorithms."[34]

The film was also criticized for being simplistic and failing to include many longstanding and diverse critics of social media. Adi Robertson of The Verge noted the film offered a "familiar and simplistic assessment of how the internet has changed our lives."[35] Author and digital media researcher Wendy Hui Kyong Chun argued that the film gives an inaccurate portrayal of how social media algorithms work and exaggerates how much control they have over their users.[36] Facebook released a statement on its about page that the film “gives a distorted view of how social media platforms work to create a convenient scapegoat for what are difficult and complex societal problems".[37] Pranav Malhotra of Slate criticizes the film for failing to acknowledge activists and commentators who have long-criticized social media: "It could have also given space to critical internet and media scholars like Safiya Noble, Sarah T. Roberts, and Siva Vaidhyanathan, just to name a few, who continue to write about how broader structural inequalities are reflected in and often amplified by the practices of big technology companies." [38] Mozilla employees Ashley Boyd and Audrey Hingle note the film's lack of "insights from women and people of color who have been important voices on these topics."[39]

Accolades

See also

References
  1. Ehrlich, David (January 29, 2020). "'The Social Dilemma' Review: A Horrifyingly Good Doc About How Social Media Will Kill Us All". IndieWire. Archived from the original on April 17, 2020. Retrieved September 12, 2020.
  2. Orlowski, Jeff (2020-09-09), The Social Dilemma (Documentary, Drama), Tristan Harris, Jeff Seibert, Bailey Richardson, Joe Toscano, Exposure Labs, Argent Pictures, The Space Program, retrieved 2020-10-28
  3. "Center for Humane Technology: Most Innovative Company". Fast Company. Retrieved 2020-10-28.
  4. "About". Tristan Harris. Retrieved 2020-10-28.
  5. "About us". inthemoment.io. Retrieved 2020-10-28.
  6. "Roger McNamee: "It's bigger than Facebook. This is a problem with the entire industry" - The Guardian".
  7. "30 Under 30: Aza Raskin, Massive HealthInc.com".
  8. "Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz unveils new company, Asana". LA Times Blogs - Technology. 2011-11-02. Retrieved 2020-10-28.
  9. "Shoshana Zuboff - SHOSANA ZUBOFF".
  10. "Jeff Seibert - Medium".
  11. "Weapons of Math Destruction". weaponsofmathdestructionbook.com. Retrieved 2020-10-28.
  12. "YouTube: Candidates favored by the algorithm". algotransparency.org. Retrieved 2020-10-28.
  13. "Netflix film dissects a technology-driven 'social dilemma'". AP NEWS. 2020-09-08. Retrieved 2020-10-30.
  14. "Products - Data Briefs - Number 361 - March 2020". www.cdc.gov. 2020-04-07. Retrieved 2020-10-30.
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  16. "FastStats". www.cdc.gov. 2020-08-04. Retrieved 2020-10-28.
  17. "Health Matters: Excessive Screen Time Linked to Anxiety, Depression, ADHD, and Obesity in Children". Mendocino Community Health Clinic, Inc. Retrieved 2020-10-28.
  18. "Addiction Medicine – American Board of Preventive Medicine". Retrieved 2020-10-28.
  19. "Products - Data Briefs - Number 361 - March 2020". www.cdc.gov. 2020-04-07. Retrieved 2020-10-28.
  20. Chiu, Allyson. "Patients are desperate to resemble their doctored selfies. Plastic surgeons alarmed by 'Snapchat dysmorphia.'". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2020-10-28.
  21. "'Snapchat Dysmorphia' Points To A Troubling New Trend In Plastic Surgery". HuffPost. 2018-02-22. Retrieved 2020-10-28.
  22. "Snapchat's History: Evolution Of Snapchat And Timeline (2020)". BuyCustomGeofilters.com. Retrieved 2020-10-28.
  23. Ramphul, Kamleshun; Mejias, Stephanie G (2018). "Is "Snapchat Dysmorphia" a Real Issue?". Cureus. 10 (3): e2263. doi:10.7759/cureus.2263. ISSN 2168-8184. PMC 5933578. PMID 29732270.
  24. "Study: On Twitter, false news travels faster than true stories". MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 2020-10-29.
  25. Aisch, Gregor; Huang, Jon; Kang, Cecilia (2016-12-10). "Dissecting the #PizzaGate Conspiracy Theories (Published 2016)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-10-29.
  26. "'Pizzagate' Gunman Sentenced To 4 Years In Prison". NPR.org. Retrieved 2020-10-30.
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  28. "The Social Dilemma Reviews". Metacritic. Archived from the original on September 20, 2020. Retrieved September 14, 2020.
  29. Kennedy, Mark (September 8, 2020). "Review: Put down that phone, urges doc 'The Social Dilemma'". ABC News. Archived from the original on September 16, 2020. Retrieved September 9, 2020.
  30. Harvey, Dennis (January 31, 2020). "'The Social Dilemma': Film Review". Variety. Archived from the original on September 13, 2020. Retrieved September 9, 2020.
  31. Danny Leigh (September 9, 2020). "The Social Dilemma — this is how the world ends". www.ft.com. Archived from the original on September 14, 2020. Retrieved September 10, 2020.
  32. Girish, Devika (September 9, 2020). "'The Social Dilemma' Review: Unplug and Run". The New York Times. Archived from the original on September 9, 2020. Retrieved September 9, 2020.
  33. "The Social Dilemma: How digital platforms pose an existential threat to society". VentureBeat. 2020-09-02. Retrieved 2020-12-08.
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  38. Malhotra, Pranav (8 December 2020). "The Social Dilemma Fails to Tackle the Real Issues in Tech". Retrieved 8 December 2020.
  39. Boyd, Ashley; Hingle, Audrey. "You watched 'The Social Dilemma.' Read these 11 books next". Fast Company. Retrieved 8 December 2020.
  40. 'Nomadland' chosen as 2020's best movie by Chicago film critics - Chicago Sun-Times
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