How do you wake up from the Matrix when you don’t know you’re in the Matrix?
When David Fincher’s The Social Network came out in 2010, the world was different. Based on Ben Mezrich’s book The Accidental Billionaires, Aaron Sorkin narrated the origins of Facebook, the social networking site which in many ways began the social media revolution of the 2010s and the legal tussle that involved its founders, Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin. At that time, social networking sites and internet as cyberspace only had a limited influence on human lives and society. A decade later, now, Jeff Orlowski’s The Social Dilemma looks at a different world where social media and internet companies fundamentally transformed the society, thanks to the revolutionary changes and advancements in the field of digital communication and technology. This docu-drama film portrays how the ‘Digital Frankensteins’ created by some people, determine our existence in the age of surveillance capitalism. The film, in its narrative content, mainly focuses on the dangerous consequences of fake news and disinformation campaigns, mental health issues, the algorithm and emerging business models that control and predict human behaviour and activities, the market that trades on human futures, and the deterioration of ethics and fundamental values.
Former employees of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, Pinterest and Uber, who were working as software developers, designers and content creators in these internet companies share their views, criticisms and personal experiences about different issues associated with social media and internet. They begin with one question: how the advancements in the field of technology divided human society? The tagline of the film says, “the technology that connects us also controls us.” How technology and a small number of people working behind it control a larger human society? Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist at Google and co-founder of Center for Humane Technology, says, “never before in history have the decisions of a handful of designers, mostly men, white, living in San Francisco, aged 25-35, working at 3 companies – Google, Apple and Facebook – had so much impact on how millions of people around the world spend their attention” (Bosker 2016). Social media spaces like Facebook or Instagram are now an inevitable part of the lives of millions of people.
In the beginning, Facebook was celebrated as a medium to connect and reconnect with family, friends and acquaintances in social networking space. But now, Facebook intervenes in every aspect of human communication and transactions. The broad reach and accessibility offered by these platforms worked beyond the imagination. The national and local elections held in countries like the U.S, India and Brazil, particularly in the second half of last decade, was heavily driven by social media campaigning which played a decisive role in the electoral outcomes. Internet platforms opened the door for political parties and other interest groups to propagate fake news, distorted narratives, propaganda, and conspiracy theories easily to larger groups of people. Conspiracy theories, like the Pizzagate, or currently trending QAnon, are posing unprecedented challenges to the democratic institutions. Jair Bolsonaro’s primary political weapon during his election campaign was social media. In India, social evils ranging from mob lynching to hate speech are directly or indirectly linked to cyber-army bases maintained by political parties. The Social Dilemma mentions these issues and in the initial scenes and attempts to trace its origins. When Tristan says we have reached the age of fake news and disinformation from the age of information and communication technology, it is a reality that doesn’t need further elaboration in the contemporary socio-political contexts.
Parallel to the conversations with the experts, Orlowski presents a dramatised narrative that portrays the life of a middle-class American family plagued by the horrors of social media and technology. Ben, who got radicalised by the social media posts and videos, ends up participating in street protests and subsequently get arrested. Isla cares about nothing but the comments she receives for her selfies posted on Instagram. These two characters represent the anxieties of Gen Z in the age of social media. A scene that shows the Isla’s desperation to get back to her phone to check the notifications defines the intensity of addiction to a virtual world. We also see students struggling to make real-life conversations with each other ends up depending on smartphones. How about a life without smartphones, at least while having dinner? The film also shares deep concerns about people shrunken to the virtual world, the door to which was opened by internet accessibility and gadgets. The ‘push notifications’ disrupts normal human behaviour and generates unnecessary fear and anxiety that result often results in nervous breakdowns. Various studies observe that to a more significant extent death by suicide, depression and emotional struggles among teenagers, insecurities and the resulting chaos, are the contributions of ‘Digital Frankensteins’.
When the world finds refuge in smartphones, the people around, their relationships, and organic co-existence undergo gradual erosion. Human relationships are redefined by technology through parameters like popularity in social media, or the love and affection expressed through emojis, comments and reaction buttons. When the post that appears on the feed becomes the truth, simultaneously, facts are decomposed in the black holes of history. For internet companies, ethics means a hindrance to their ‘flexible accumulation of capital’. In an era marked by the domination of the internet and social media, human society is polarised and divided more than ever. The film shows how Facebook was detrimental in inciting hate speech narratives that resulted in ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the Rohingya community in Myanmar and the mass exodus of refugees to Bangladesh and South-East Asia. The terrorist organisation ISIS effectively used the internet to spread its ideas and for recruiting followers. The far-right political parties and groups in Europe consolidated supporters through social media propagating neo-fascist, anti-immigrant and racist narratives.
Shoshana Zuboff, author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, and Jaron Lanier who wrote the bestseller Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts, also shared their thoughts and perspectives in the documentary. They argue that social media is fundamentally changing what you do, what you think, and who you are. One of the central themes in The Social Dilemma is ‘surveillance capitalism’. Prof. Zuboff defines surveillance capitalism as “a new economic order that claims human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales; or a parasitic economic logic in which the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new global architecture of behavioural modification” (Zuboff 2019). The internet companies have developed models powered by algorithms which have three goals – engagement, growth and advertising. For that, they need ‘data’. Internet companies collect data demanded by advertisers and sell it for mutual benefits. Aza Raskin says, “Advertisers are the customers, we’re the thing being sold.” In other words, among other things, our fight is against these business models and algorithm that exploit and dictate our behaviour. As Edward Tufte puts it, “there are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’: illegal drugs and software.”
The in-depth discussions on surveillance technology and data mining through the internet was eye-opening. But the second part of the word, that is, ‘capitalism’ plays a crucial role here. Zuboff explains in her book,
Surveillance capitalism unilaterally claims human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data. Although some of these data are applied to product or service improvement, the rest are declared as a proprietary behavioral surplus, fed into advanced manufacturing processes known as “machine intelligence,” and fabricated into prediction products that anticipate what you will do now, soon, and later. Finally, these prediction products are traded in a new kind of marketplace for behavioral predictions that I call behavioral futures markets. Surveillance capitalists have grown immensely wealthy from these trading operations, for many companies are eager to lay bets on our future behavior (Zuboff 2019).
Internet companies are the wealthiest corporations in the world. Their survival depends on ‘trading human futures’. And it goes without saying that once these companies secure a considerable amount of power and influence in the socio-economic realm, naturally it marks the beginning of their alliance with the government in power or dominant political force. We are still controlled by the dominant class-corporate-state axis, which only gets updated, never disrupted. The data collected from ‘users’ is a political weapon for the state to divide the people. We are witnessing the growth of surveillance regimes across the world with the consent of people cultivated through ‘national security narratives’ and with the support of internet companies and other major corporations. As anticipated, the measures and restrictions adopted during Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the speed of the development of surveillance infrastructure.
Governments primarily use social media to distract the attention of the public from serious issues and criticisms. It helps them to safeguard their self-interests and propagate appropriate false narratives. Covid-19 lockdown period is a textbook example of how fake news and disinformation can mislead society. Even authentic and credible media fall into the trap of fake news in a highly competitive environment driven by ‘report first policy’. The ‘WhatsApp universities’ ensure the visibility and reach of fake news that works in favour of the political majority. In the film, Tristan mentions an MIT study which found that “fake news on Twitter spread six times faster than true news.” As Roger McNamee, venture capitalist and early investor on Facebook puts it “if you want to control the population of your country, there has never been a tool as effective as Facebook.”
Jeff Orlowski previously directed the Emmy Award-winning documentary Chasing Ice and Chasing Coral, both dealt with climate change. Social media was the primary tool used by ‘climate change deniers’ who depicted environmental activism as a hoax and spread conspiracy theories to back their false narratives. Companies like Koch Brothers and Exxon Mobil who contribute millions to the ‘research fund’ that deny climate change have also found social media to be a useful companion. Roger McNamee cautions, “One of the problems with Facebook is that, as a tool of persuasion, it may be the greatest thing ever created. Now imagine, what that means in the hands of a dictator or an authoritarian.” What terrifies us more is the fact that at present we don’t even have to imagine that. According to Tristan, social media is a “simultaneous utopia and dystopia.’
Now the question is who can stop these Digital Frankensteins? Why is it important to think about technologies that aid human development, not the ones that fade the progress we made? Towards the end of the film, the speakers share their suggestions on how to engage with technology. They argue that immediate attention should be on reconfiguring the existing technologies, social media, cyberspace, and internet usage on the lines of “technology for humane development.” Impose taxes to restrict data mining by internet companies, use social media as a platform to fight against its ills, formulating laws to control cyber-motivated and cyber-aided crimes, taxing data accession, social media curfew to reduce the internet usage among teenagers, so on and so forth, are some of the suggestions proposed by the speakers. Putting an end to disinformation for-profit business models, reducing offline violence initiated by online activities, monitoring and restricting hate speech campaigns, and importantly criminalising cyber abuses, are the first steps towards the future envisaged in Orlowski’s documentary.
Even though the film sheds light on various aspects of social media generated chaos in the society, it doesn’t discuss much the historical-economic context in which these companies emerged. The logic of neoliberalism also guides internet companies. All these companies effectively exploited the loopholes and opportunities provided by the same system. A resistance without questioning the foundations of the system in which these companies are built upon can’t be the way forward. To earn huge profits and accumulate capital, historically, the idea was to explore, extract and exploit the natural resources. The only difference, at present, is that human beings are the resources for the corporations. If we don’t problematise and question these notions that drive the neoliberal system, the ‘dilemma’ will continue forever. In the last decade, the contribution of this system to our society was economic insecurities. People who were struggling to survive within that atmosphere was exploited by the internet companies who asks ‘how are you feeling today’ or ‘write something…” When Covid-19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill, it was the internet companies which earned huge profits. I hope these realities will reflect on the discussions sparked by The Social Dilemma. It is a must-watch documentary film and a timely reminder to reflect on our ways of communication, engagement and existence in the technology-driven world.
References
Bosker, Bianca (2016): “The Binge Breaker,” The Atlantic, Accessed on October 20, 2020. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/11/the-binge-breaker/501122/
Issac, Mike (2020): “The Economy is Reeling, The Tech Giants Spy Oppurtunity,” The New York Times, June 13. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/13/technology/facebook-amazon-apple-google-microsoft-tech-pandemic-opportunity.html
Kavenna, Joanna (2019): “Interview with Shoshana Zuboff: Surveillance Capitalism is an assault on human autonomy,” The Guardian, October 4. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/04/shoshana-zuboff-surveillance-capitalism-assault-human-automomy-digital-privacy
Zuboff, Shoshana (2019): The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, New York: Hachete Books
