The Social Dilemma (2020)
dir. Jeff Orlowski
Rated: PG-13
image: ©2020 Netflix
Within the first ten minutes or so of Jeff Orlowski’s new docudrama The Social Dilemma, the director poses a (seemingly) simple question to his interview subjects. Most of them held, at one time, a top position at one or more tech giant companies: Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. He asks, why is social media – and the internet more broadly – responsible for so many of our current society’s ills? Every single person hesitates before coming up with a response. No one provides the simple, one-word answer: Money. To be more accurate, no one says it that bluntly. In truth, almost the whole of The Social Dilemma is structured around exploring how the ruthless ways these companies monetize people’s attention has caused immeasurable harm to civil society and our mental health.
The ways Orlowski’s picture makes this point might seem sensationalistic and alarmist to some. Less than a month after it’s wide release on streaming platform Netflix, Facebook has already seen fit to issue a statement condemning the film. The statement accuses The Social Dilemma of unfairly scapegoating tech companies for serious societal problems. The fact that Facebook felt the need to attack the film – can’t let people question if they should be using your product – should tell you all you need to know.
The film uses conventional talking-head style interviews alongside a fictional storyline depicting an average American family that dramatizes how social media insidiously makes addicts – and changes the behavior – of its users. Orlowski builds his case meticulously. He starts at the individual level, with his interview subjects describing the psychological tricks that software engineers use to get us hooked on their platforms. We, as individual users, stand no chance against what’s on the other side of the screen: dozens of engineers orchestrating that dopamine hit that comes every time you refresh your feed.
In the narrative sequences, we see the family struggling to get through a dinner while device free. Mom has mandated all phones go in a locking cookie jar during the meal. One of the daughters, Isla, smashes the jar to get at her phone. As a result, she cracks the screen of her brother Ben’s phone. Mom makes a deal with Ben; if he can make it a week without using his phone, she’ll pay to have his screen replaced.
Challenge accepted, but easier said than done.
In a brilliant creative stroke, Orlowski anthropomorphizes the algorithms that work tirelessly to keep users endlessly scrolling and piling up ad revenue for the social media companies. In an inspired bit of casting, Vincent Kartheiser – Is there a better slimeball than Pete Campbell from Mad Men to bring a nefarious A.I. to life? – plays a trio of algorithms who scheme to keep Ben in front of his screen.
Meanwhile, the documentary portion of the movie widens its scope. These tech companies, from Google to Facebook to Instagram to Reddit, in an effort to maximize profits, have harnessed the power of creating a unique version of reality for each one of its users. They tailor our experience by cocooning us in echo chambers, serving up content that reinforces our biases and splinters our shared sense of community. The algorithms – which at this point are basically teaching themselves – recommend more and more extreme content to keep the dopamine flowing.
This business model has led to the proliferation of conspiracy theories and disinformation. The Facebook statement slamming the film makes the case that these things existed long before social media. That completely misses the point – either out of naiveté or as a cynical ploy (spoiler alert, it’s the latter) – that the film is making. Yes, these things have always been a problem, but social media is making them exponentially worse, at the expense of society and for the purpose of making a few very rich people even richer.
One of the most shocking moments in the film comes in a real news clip that features police body camera footage of an arrest. The man being arrested is Edgar Welch, an adherent of the unfounded Pizzagate conspiracy, which posits that Comet Ping Pong, a pizzeria in Washington, D.C., serves as the hub for a Democratic-led child sex-trafficking ring. Welch did what we’ve all done to varying degrees while online: he fell down a rabbit-hole on a topic that interested him.
Welch became obsessed with the conspiracy and with freeing the children being kept in the basement of the pizzeria. Only there is no basement in Comet Ping Pong. Welch found that out when he stormed the business with an AR-15 rifle, firing it inside the restaurant – and consequently terrorizing dozens of children and adults alike – while he “investigated” the situation. The police body camera footage shows the arresting officer asking Welch why he walked in with the weapon. Welch tells him he was trying to free children being held in a trafficking ring. The officer doesn’t understand. “Pizzagate,” another officer explains. “He’s talking about Pizzagate.”
The flourishing of misinformation and disinformation as internet companies serve up the most profitable content has made our very realities separate from one another. A (fake) crime that obsessed a man enough to walk into a restaurant firing a gun had never even been heard of by the person who arrested him.
Orlowski dramatizes this effect with Ben’s slow descent into the fictional “Extreme Center” political movement. Orlowski and his cowriters probably invented this group in an attempt to win over as many viewers as possible. They most likely didn’t want to use a real-life movement like QAnon for Ben to get suckered into joining. These segments, which include Ben going to a rally and getting arrested – along with his other sister, who’s only there to find Ben – are the closest the movie comes to sensationalism. The movie’s other biggest sin is flirting with a “both sides do it” false equivalency argument that muddies the danger caused by the worst actors.
The sister, who is the voice of reason of the fictional storyline and tries to get Ben to curb his social media consumption, is named Cassandra, which is clever, if a little on the nose.
As alarmist as these segments might seem, they can also be read as prophetic. There is a visceral power in seeing an avatar of Ben suspended just above the ground in front of the A.I. triplets, mindlessly staring at multiple social media feeds as the triplets discuss how to keep him hooked. The point is driven home when one of the documentary segment interviewees is asked to imagine where all this political polarization in service of profits might lead. His response: “Civil war.”
The Social Dilemma tries to offer a tiny bit of hope in its final minutes by teasing solutions out of the interviewees. One of the main subjects for these segments, Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist at Google and the founder of the Center for Humane Technology, has a suggestion.
Regulation.
As Harvard professor, social psychologist, and author Shoshana Zuboff notes in the film: we have regulated certain markets out of (legal) existence because they cause harm. Human slavery is one example. Capturing people’s data and attention and selling it to the highest bidder – essentially making us, the users, the product being sold – could be regulated to mitigate the worst effects.
It all comes back around to money. It is imperative for us to end the practice of tech companies manipulating people and allowing the spread of false information for fun and profit. I walked away from The Social Dilemma bereft of the hope that we have the political will or wherewithal to actually do such a thing in our current state. Raise your hand if you disagree.
Why it got 4 stars:
- If you couldn’t tell in the main review, I had a nagging feeling about The Social Dilemma being a bit alarmist and caught up in moral panic. Then I started to think about my own mobile device habits. Yes, these same sorts of issues have been raised with previous forms of entertainment/technologies. Radio, movies, television. But, and the documentary makes a strong case, the issues with social media are an order of magnitude different from anything else. The movie is a troubling window into many of our current problems.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- Orlowski uses a really effective mix of documentary, narrative, and a bit of animation to craft an engrossing experience.
- The best description I’ve ever heard of our fear of technology eclipsing the human mind is voiced by one presenter in the documentary: We’ve all been afraid of technology overtaking human strength, but what we should really be worried about is technology overtaking human weakness.
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
- Netflix. With the release of the next Bond movie being pushed until 2021, and the subsequent decision by two of the largest cinema chains in the country to shut down again, I think it’s going to be a long time before I’m in a (non-drive-in) theater.