The Social Dilemma: a simplistic but necessary warning

Several people have already asked me for my opinion on the Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma”, so I might as well share my views with the wider world.

When I saw it, several weeks ago, it seemed to me to simplify too many things, that it painted the picture with broad brush strokes, that it clearly anticipated the conclusion to events. The imagery and music were almost worthy of a thriller, and overall, I felt that the film overplayed its hand a little.

All of which made me reluctant to write about it. But then I remembered that this is a topic I write about all the time, and that maybe I needed to be a little more open-minded and see things from the perspective of the general reader. It is one thing to see Jaron Lanier or Tristan Harris and listen to their ideas for the first time, and quite another when you have been reading about them in articles, watching them on videos and quoting them assiduously and when you quote them in your presentations. The fact that people who have worked at Facebook — or, like me, have spent years studying the company — speak the most harshly about Mark Zuckerberg’s empire should be a cause for concern.

The dopamine effect of using social networks is well known, as I have pointed out in class on countless occasions. Can we get hooked on it? This is not a drug addiction, that hypothesis is simply absurd, but it does generate patterns of use that, if not subjected to education and moderation, can be negative or distract us from other activities. This kind of behavior is not exclusive to social networks: many other human activities generate them, but we have never faced the combination of dopamine and an algorithm designed to intensify our biases, to reinforce our beliefs, to keep us glued longer to a screen, exposing us to more advertising. Combine this with a company that ignores the rules, has no ethical code and that simply apologizing is enough, and you have an explosive combination.

If you’ve been writing for a long time about the problems posed by social networks, and in particular, about how dangerous Facebook has become, it’s hard to say anything original about a documentary that has been sold as “if you hate social media, you’ll love this documentary”. Should we rethink our relationships with Facebook or Instagram? Of course: I’ve been doing so for a while. But it’s not as easy as saying “get out of social networks”.

What’s more, many people need those networks: it’s their way of knowing what their family or their friends are doing. It gives them opportunities to talk to them, to congratulate them, to share vacation snaps. Abandoning Facebook is not that simple. But you can minimize your exposure and reduce the danger.

In the early days, Facebook was a permanently open tab on my browser and an icon on my cell phone that was constantly throwing notifications at me. Now, I just enter Facebook to paste the title and link of my latest piece, and I have uninstalled it from my mobile. I limit my use to the minimum, and I recommend everyone to do the same: remove notifications from Facebook or Instagram on your smartphone, remove its access to location, camera, microphone and everything else you can think of, and proceed on the basis that this is a dangerous company that will lie and sell your information to the highest bidder.

Above all, don’t use Facebook for news, because you will find yourself targeted by misinformation campaigns intended to convince you that everything you think is the same as your friends and to reinforce your biases so that you feel comfortable and stay online longer. I very much agree with something that has been written recently: this is one of the most disastrous companies for the world in its entire history.

Social networks are not bad of and in themselves. They represent a breakthrough in the way we communicate and relate, an open channel to share things, learn from our friends, and for so many other uses. The problem is unethical business models that reduce people to exploitable commodities.

This is what has led thousands of companies around the world to pay for highly targeted advertising, and which has seen Facebook indulge in just about every kind of wrongdoing, whether that’s facilitating genocide, manipulating elections, exploiting division and tension of all kinds, while bringing out the worst in human beings: racism, bigotry, machismo, Nazism, conspiracy theories… whatever your taste, you’ll find it catered to on Facebook, because the company has seen a business opportunity in spreading hate and allowing some groups to leverage their power to spread fake profiles, fake news, coordinated campaigns, hyper-segmented advertising… But, I repeat, social networks, as such, are not bad. There is hope. We will see others, and they will be much better.

Do we have to rethink social media? Of course we do. As a society, we have accepted a situation that has normalized the unacceptable, and the company that defends an unethical business model is now readying itself against regulation. As long as we are unable to drastically limit Facebook’s activities, democracy will be in danger.

If you haven’t seen The Social Dilemma, don’t miss it. But above all, the most important thing: do something. Don’t limit yourself to watching a documentary. Also, read books and articles on the subject, follow the news, and get a good understanding of how the tools you use work, be it Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or whatever. Don’t work for them; make them work for you. Find out what you are to these companies, what they do with you and the techniques they use. And be afraid. Be very afraid.

(En espa?ol, aquí)

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