My wife and I have a conversation so much that the sentences are probably embedded in our walls by now. How do seemingly rational people believe such incredible nonsense in the age of Trump? How did we become a world where people believe COVID is a hoax (despite killing 192,000 people as of today), vaccines are billionaire plots to implant microchips, human trafficking rings are run out of DC pizza parlors, and the Kardashians are truly people who exist? How is it that we’ve become a country where reality is no longer defined by facts? Is it Fox News? OANN? Facebook? Twitter?
Enter The Social Dilemma, a great new documentary on Netflix, which describes how social media and the internet at large shapes our viewpoints and reinforces our thinking, regardless of whether it’s based in fact or not.
The Social Dilemma intersperses interviews with numerous tech founders, innovators, programmers, and computer pioneers with the story of a fictional teenage boy who falls down a social media rabbit hole. He soon becomes alienated from friends and family while being drawn to extremist points of view. Driving his behavior are internet algorithms, represented by men who call the shots on social media and the internet. The men discuss what he's doing, what they can do to keep him engaged, and how to bring him back to his phone when he briefly makes a bet with his mom that he can go without his phone for a week. All the while they are looking for the ads they can push his way to maximize profits.
This fictional narrative is surprisingly effective at demonstrating how social media works to shape and reinforce world views, showing the ways in which our apps, websites, and phones are being used to figure out what we respond to and feed us more and more of the same, all in the name of selling our information and time to other companies.
Watching the movie, it becomes clear how someone who isn't savvy in identifying reliability of sources, questioning data, or evaluating the quality of information being presented can get sucked into a continuous feed of increasing insanity.
Let's say one friend posts a scientifically accurate video about why vaccines are necessary and another friend posts an alarmist one about how they cause autism that includes lots of compelling misinformation. You watch the first one for 10 seconds and stop it. You watch the second one for its entire length as you're drawn in by the information and presentation. The website measures your reaction to both in as many ways as it can and feeds you more content based on the time spent and your reaction. Next an app you use accesses this information and you see a tweet with a second video about how the HPV vaccine is killing teenagers. You got this one because people who liked that first video also engaged with this tweet. You watch video for most of its length. So the algorithms feed you another video that people just like you engage with. Maybe this one is about how Bill Gates is implanting microchips to control people via his global vaccination push. You watch that all the way through. Each time you provide information that you are interested in this type of content, you tend to get more of it, which in time shapes your reality that information you aren't engaging with must be false.
This isn't limited to just individual websites. Ever wonder why so many websites offer you the option of Google or Facebook to login? Each one offers the algorithms behind these companies more information about you and what you respond to, and uses that to further feed you content that reinforces what you respond to. And each decision you make provides them a bit more data to ensure you stay engaged.
The problem is that nobody is policing the information you're fed except you. These algorithms are just as happy to feed you videos on how climate change is a hoax created by Bob from Big Oil as they are sending you lengthy research studies written by respected climate scientists. As long as you're watching, clicking, interacting, and sharing that information, more of the same will be coming your way. Should you abruptly shift what you view or watch, the algorithms will eventually adjust to show you new content aimed at your new interests.
It's scary to watch, and the presentation makes even those of us who were aware of the intrusive mechanics of social media want to log off and move off the grid to a cabin in Montana.
If you need an excuse to lay off the Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook for awhile, I highly recommend The Social Dilemma
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