The Social Dilemma (Netflix)

[BigRedRage]

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 of its users for financial gain through surveillance capitalism and data mining, how its design is meant to nurture an addiction, its use in politics, its effect on mental health (including the mental health of adolescents and rising teen suicide rates), and its role in spreading conspiracy theories such as Pizzagate and aiding groups such as flat-earthers.

The film features interviews with many former employees, executives and other professionals from top tech companies and social media platforms, who provide their first-hand experiences of working in and around the tech industry. Interviewees 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 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 and was released on Netflix on September 9, 2020.[1]

 

[BigRedRage]

I have yet to take the time to watch this but did catch a 3 hour podcast on the Joe Rogan Experience with Tristan Harris. Highly recommend as it is fascinating and even though I do not use social media, it highlighted a lot of reasons to continue not using it and a lot of reasons for what we are seeing in a society of social media users along with huge implications happening because of social media in impoverished countries.

:

Tristan Harris (/trɪsˈtɑːn/) is an American computer scientist, and businessperson. He is the president and a co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology.[2][3] Earlier, he worked as a design ethicist at Google.[4] He received his degree from Stanford, where he studied the ethics of human persuasion.[5]
In 2020, Harris starred in the film [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Dilemma']The Social Dilemma, distributed by Netflix. Harris joined other activists to describe the incentives of social media companies and their impacts on society.[9]

Harris authored “A Call to Minimize Distraction & Respect Users’ Attention” and shared the presentation with a handful of his Google coworkers in February 2013. In that presentation, Harris suggested that Google, Apple and Facebook should “feel an enormous responsibility” to make sure humanity doesn't spend its days buried in a smartphone.[10] The 141-slide deck was eventually viewed by tens of thousands of Google employees and sparked conversations about the company's responsibilities long after he left the company.[10][11] Harris holds several patents from his previous work at Apple, Wikia, Apture, and Google.[12]

Harris left Google in December 2015 to focus on a nonprofit called Time Well Spent, which he co-founded.[1][13] Through Time Well Spent, Harris hoped to mobilize support for an alternative built around core values at tech corporations, chief of which is helping us spend our time well, instead of demanding more of it. Harris asserts that all human minds can be hijacked and the choices they make are not as free as they think they are. [14] The Atlantic stated in their November 2016 issue that “Harris is the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience.”[1]

He coined the phrase "human downgrading" to describe the interconnected system of mutually reinforcing harms – addiction, distraction, isolation, polarization, fake news – that weakens human capacity, caused by technology platforms with the extractive business model to capture human attention.[6]
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[Finito]

Me and my wife watched this, but even before we’ve never let our daughter(16) have social media. Me and my wife don’t even have it. suicide rates among teens has sky rocketed because they just can’t handle it.

It’s crazy interesting and how the algorithm is designed to keep you coming back. Stuff that makes you angry is more likely to bring you back then stuff that makes you happy.

Two people the same age same everything but living in different areas will get two completely different feeds. Like in California type in climate change is and you’ll get “is a problem” but I’m Alabama you’ll get “is a hoax”

It talks about how people fall into these echo chambers and just get fed what they wanna hear all day and how it’s just going to divide us more and more.

it was pretty damn crazy

 

[Finito]

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[BigRedRage]

Me and my wife watched this, but even before we’ve never let our daughter(16) have social media. Me and my wife don’t even have it. suicide rates among teens has sky rocketed because they just can’t handle it.

It’s crazy interesting and how the algorithm is designed to keep you coming back. Stuff that makes you angry is more likely to bring you back then stuff that makes you happy.

Two people the same age same everything but living in different areas will get two completely different feeds. Like in California type in climate change is and you’ll get “is a problem” but I’m Alabama you’ll get “is a hoax”

It talks about how people fall into these echo chambers and just get fed what they wanna hear all day and how it’s just going to divide us more and more.

it was pretty damn crazy

The children growing up using it part is the most disturbing. Look at how messed up everything already is and this thing is in its infancy.

 

[Bada0Bing]

Good show. I know it's a serious issue, but I also found it a bit funny. From now on when I click on a bleacher report alert I'm going to picture 3 guys in the cloud somewhere celebrating and searching for the next thing to send me.

I'd be fine without twitter and I rarely check instagram or the facebook news feed, but I'd miss the facebook groups bigtime. I don't even want to know how many triathlon, hiking, bicycle, etc. groups I'm in, and I'm not sure if I'd survive without strava.

 

[Yuma]

Pair this with watching The Great Hack back to back, and you can see how social media can be the Devil!