The Social Dilemma: How much do big tech companies know about us?

Netflix’s new documentary, The Social Dilemma, explains how unregulated social platforms are creating a dystopia in the 21st Century.

The year 2020 has been relentless in its disappointment and tragedy as COVID-19 continues to ravage the American population. Our country is still incredibly divided on the effectiveness of masks and the very existence of this virus. Leadership is flagging in some of the most devastated states, and people are questioning even fact-based information. The turn of the decade has seen some of the worst polarization the United States has ever seen, and much of it boils down to where people are going to for their information: social media.

In Netflix‘s The Social Dilemma — a documentary directed by Jeff Orlowski — former engineers, executives, inventors, and employees for social platforms like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram sat down to explain the reality of social media addiction, the manipulative quality of algorithms, and the ways in which the world is teetering toward the end of democracy.

Tristan Harris, formerly Google’s design ethicist and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, describes the business model of these companies as disinformation-for-profit. Social media is used by everyday people, but advertisers are the clients. They are the ones paying to influence what people see across the web, and the algorithms that run these platforms adapt to their needs and set requests.

Over the course of 90 minutes, The Social Dilemma informs the audience about the psychology behind the methods used to capture our attention and direct it to where businesses, information firms, or governments want us to go. It can be something as seemingly innocuous as a sneaker ad or something as harmful as a conspiracy theory rabbit hole.

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To quote Cathy O’Neil, Ph.D., “Algorithms are opinions embedded in code.” They’re not objective but rather subject to the desired goal of their creator(s) who are often concerned with making money. In an effort to do this, they mine our data and collect it in order to create profiles of the kind of consumer we are, what we’re most susceptible to, what our views may be, and what we’re most likely to do on any given day based on the choices we make and on the choices our technology steers us toward.

What makes The Social Dilemma a documentary worth tuning into is its refusal to sugarcoat the truth about the data-mining market, what its lack of regulation is driving us toward as a species, and the participants’ own hand in creating the very products that are surveilling us and profiting off the information we’re freely giving without much thought.

Google keeps our data forever. There are no laws in place prohibiting them from doing so. There are no laws in place capping what information social media companies are allowed to sell to third parties. It is essentially the wild wild west out here with very little oversight, governance, or accountability strong enough to curtail big tech companies from continuing to profit at staggering rates off of our information in ways we’re unaware of and they are not transparent about.

But The Social Dilemma isn’t solely focused on the disparaging present we live in when it comes to surveillance capitalism. Through a mixture of interviews, animation, and scripted drama, the documentary presents our current reality in order to provide its audience with a basic understanding of what these platforms do, how they do it, and how we can work toward safeguarding ourselves and our information.

No one is saying don’t use social media, though author Jaron Lanier certainly encourages deleting all your accounts. They are saying know what information you’re giving out to companies. Pay attention to how long you stay on these platforms and how you use them. Don’t mindlessly think these companies are just providing a service for free without any expectations from you as a user. As the documentary tells us, “If you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product.”

The Social Dilemma is available to stream on Netflix now. If you’d like to learn more about the documentary check out thesocialdilemma.com to find resources on how to curb your social media use and join the movement to regulate and hold these companies accountable.