"The Social Dilemma" by Jeff Orlowski

Earlier today I was watching this new Netflix Documentary that I hear all my friends praising about. Its called "The Social Dilemma" by Jeff Orlowski".

If you watch the movie you'll realize that facebook & every other major platform like twitter, youtube etc are in the exact same boat. These sites are designed to keep you clicking and following & reading for as long as possible. Engagement is all their algorithms care about they don't care about your mental health even if you subscribe to 10 mental health subreddits, this site like any other is a parasite trying to siphon off as much of your energy and life as possible.

Anyway, it's a good movie, would suggest it to anyone who sees they are addicted to social media and wants to do something about it or at least try to understand it better. The most interesting part of this movie is how they outline the way in which AI is constructing society by providing different information depending on your location. When we are frustrated and find ourselves begging to understand how particular people in this world can be so mislead and not believe in simple truths (vaccines are good, coronavirus is real, Modi is not qualified to hold his position, etc) this is why. Because everyone has access to different streams of “facts” we do not have accepted truth any longer. And these custom social media feeds also mean we don’t have to even try to understand the other people’s points of view like when there were 5 channels on tv and we all had the same information and could debate it. When asked in the documentary these previous developers and CEO say their fear of where this is headed is to civil war.

This reminds me of Einstein’s quote about AI:

“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should”

On a side note, Netflix itself is a competitor to Facebook (content), Google (Youtube) and also engineering resources. Netflix is too "competing for user's attention" with these tech giants. Netflix too in a way was getting you hooked to the documentary by playing around with tempo and music frequency, that triggers some engaging chemical reaction.