‘The Social Dilemma’ raises troubling issues
New Netflix docudrama is an unsettling look at how closely we are tracked online
For most of the past week, docudrama The Social Dilemma has featured among the most viewed Netflix offerings in SA.
That is both unexpected and refreshing. It is interesting that a country which devours as much social media as it does, is so keen to learn about the perils of platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
Certainly South Africans have been no less immune to the dopamine hit that comes with likes and shares than people in other parts of the world.
Take any Facebook group and you’ll find people asking their fellow members where they can find a plumber or dog parlour, even though a simple Google search would answer that question in half the time.
It’s all about online affirmation of their existence; technology being used as a social lubricant to boost the ego.
These individuals aside, it could be that South Africans have grown weary of divisiveness through years of lies and corruption and are picking up on the fact that social media isn’t helping.
Twitter, for example, has become a cesspool of political hatred in recent years. Maybe that’s why The Social Dilemma has proved such a hit.
Whatever the case, the film deserves to rank where it does.
The platforms, Google among them, are out of control, no matter how much Silicon
Valley billionaires try to convince the world otherwise.
What makes the documentary so powerful is that it is people who previously worked at these companies who warn of their true motive, which is to make money by turning users into the product.
Yes, there is an element of fearmongering in the way the film is presented, but that doesn’t make what is said any less true.
Tristan Harris, a former Google employee, turned his back on the tech industry after realising that the search engine and e-mail juggernaut no longer cared for how those using it were affected.
Today, he delivers seminars and spreads awareness about the dangers of algorithmbased technologies, essentially describing humans as being fed into a profitmaking machine.
Every day social media users may not be aware, but these companies deliberately employ what are called “growth hackers”, workers whose sole purpose is to tap into the psychology that will compel somebody to act, in this instance engaging with a piece of content and spending as much screen time with it as possible.
Harris explains how Facebook took full advantage of photo tagging to lure users to the platform.
As soon as someone is tagged, they are notified via a sound or visual alert on their device, even if they are not using it at the time. This prompts them to stop what they are doing to look at Facebook, which of course is the desired outcome.
More screen time equates to more money, as Facebook is then able to charge advertisers more as they have now been presented what is essentially a captive audience.
One of the biggest failures of social media has been the proliferation of fake news, which infamously has influenced elections and given rise to ludicrous conspiracy theories that should never have seen the light of day to begin with.
The problem lies with the algorithms which have succeeded in changing human behaviour, as tragic as that may be.
As AI tailors news feeds to an individual’s tastes, so that person becomes distanced from others whose viewpoints differ. Hence you end up with a situation where like-minded groups are much further removed from others, and bridging the divide in society becomes harder.
One need only look at the standoff between Republicans and Democrats in the US to understand this.
So says veteran venture capitalist Roger McNamee: “If everyone is entitled to their own facts, there really is no need for people to come together to compromise.
“We need to have some shared understanding of reality. Otherwise we aren’t a country.”
Hopefully that is a message that will resonate strongly in all the nations of the world.