Anyone watched The Social Delimma on Netflix?
2It’s a documentary about social media, presents a kind of unified theory of national derangement. I thought it was good, in that I think everyone should internalize the moderately complex ideas that it presents – what social media is, approximately what it is for and approximately how it works (and why that’s bad). Makes one case (of several) for regulation.
It is a documentary, so if you hate propaganda as much as I do, you may want to have an empty trash can nearby while watching it, just to be on the safe side. Like all documentaries, it wants to tell an engaging, persuasive story, in a cinematic format, and then it’s off to the races: the format and the medium is inherently manipulative. That’s what people seem to demand… which is very on topic for the documentary itself. I do think, all that said, that the movie is largely honest and accurate.
Please consider watching it. I think it’s important. That’s the closest I can get to a recommendation without going Jehovah’s Witness on everybody.
If you’ve seen it, what did you think?
- 4 comments, 2 replies
- Comment
I have not seen this, and added it to my watch list. Thank you for the recommendation.
I detached from popular social media several years ago. At that time the list included Facebook, MySpace (yes, and I wasn’t even a 13 year old), Twitter, and Snapchat. I continue to participate in BBS style forums like the meh community. Perhaps I’m foolish in believing it is somehow different, but these forums are certainly less invasive than MMOSM (massively multiuser online social media; TM, Copyright rouottaurmind 2020).
I liked it! Pretty good and informative. Also made me extra glad I don’t have kids.
At the moment, the design of most v large social media seems to be such that inflammatory information (true, false, misleading, “spun”, whatever) will be amplified, promoted, and encouraged;
And the company operating the media will be tempted to provide more material that generates “user outrage” because that tends to make the given social media use “sticky” and addictive to users;
and “civil” and “reasonable” voices will often be drowned out or overwhelmed (unless. v famous or unless within a smallish groups willing to listen to something other than the group members’ own outrage triggers and bias confirmations.)
I finally got onto FB because some family requested it, and enjoyed my family interactions there.
but haven’t logged in for years; due to my disgust at FB’s many harmful-to-users-activities that FB would have preferred never become publicly known.
I don’t use Twitter due to the noise whenever I’ve given them a try. Never used any other social media for more than a 1day tryout or similar.
Small groups can retain their civility and their “group sanity”; esp as there is less point for some Corp to desire to use small groups for $ profit from the extra activity generated by creation/promotion of large, outrage- or propaganda-addicted “thought mobs”.
And our species are somewhat more likely to be civil and respectful and willing to listen within small groups of persons who each have the option for regular and personal presence, as opposed to within groups so large that we don’t know or care who we’re interacting with, because there no or few continuing individual relationships.
I’m sure it’s overly simplified/dramatized but the portrayal of how the algorithms in use are there to drive engagement, addiction, and sell your eyeballs and behavior to the highest bidder were eye opening if you haven’t put much thought into it.
The testimonials from the people that built these things are pretty damning on their own.
@djslack That was maybe my second-biggest takeaway. It was surprising to see them openly owning up to their bad decision-making. The one guy I think said verbatim, “… we did it anyway.” Then at the end they’re all saying how they’d try to keep their kids off it.
It was also really gratifying to see the model of user attention represented from the company’s perspective. Anyone who pays attention knows that is how it works, but most people won’t be motivated to invest the time to understand that, or to be aware those mechanisms exist in the first place.
Then I thought it did a good job describing how participation in a bubble can be unintentional.
I’d hope that if everyone would get even a modest familiarity with this stuff, that’d give politicians room to do the right thing and
throttle Facebook withinregulate social tech companies.@InnocuousFarmer
This is a thought I had in my head but failed to convert to words well. You said it far better than I would. I thought the dramatizations of that probably do a good job of exposing that system to people who would never think about it at all.