The latest Netflix hype show is a docudrama (this word makes me uncomfortable) about the iron grip of social media in our lives. The film’s bottom line is -suprise, surprise, that social media are mostly responsible for everything that’s wrong in the world: teenage suicides, conspiracy lunatics, Trump,
I’m joking about the last one, but they could have built a solid case
The film is in some ways problematic (things they got wrong), makes a few good points right (things they get kinda right), and finally does help (a bit) the whole social media discussion (things they got right)
Things they got wrong
1
The advertising-supported business model is presented as a radical idea. The infamous mantra “If you are not paying for the product, you are the product” is inherently flawed: you do pay. With your time. Yet again this is not a novelty, radio and TV worked like this since day one. Do you pay for your Buzzfeed articles?
I don’t know, do people pay for this?
And judging by the state of online publishers, the audience is willing to take that bargain (watching ads for the opportunity to get the content for free). Platforms like Netflix or Spotify turned this model upside down by pushing a subscription-based one which is why advertising in Netflix is frowned upon (they do it nonetheless).
2
Talking heads, the “whistleblowers”, the ones who saw the light, make the most interesting part of this film mainly because they helped build the machine. The thing is, we are biased in treating those people as “the ones that got away” which may be true. What also might be true is that these people have their own agenda. And if one is going to be skeptical about FB’s C-level motives (and they’d be right to do that) one has to be skeptical about each interviewee’s motives as well. Appearing in the film, Tim Kendall (ex-Pinterest CEO) stayed on Pinterest for 5 years, Tristan Harris (Humane co-founder) stayed at Google for 4 years and 3 months, Justin Rosenstein stayed at Google for 4 years and then another 1 year on Facebook before co-founding Asana. Those are really smart people, coming from the world’s top universities. They should not be treated -and they definitely are not- naive children.
The things that SD got kinda right
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FB’s mission statement mission is “...to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” And that, they have achieved, at least online. But where SD sees a problem of FB, what if the problem is the building of online communities in general? What if, the problem itself is interconnectedness (a huge word) and not a specific platform?
As noted in this Verge article, it’s hardly FB: it’s the whole internet that is to blame
Radicalization doesn’t just happen on Facebook and YouTube either. Many of the deadliest far-right killers were apparently incubated on small forums: Christchurch mosque killer Brenton Tarrant on 8chan; Oregon mass shooter Chris Harper-Mercer on 4chan; Tree of Life Synagogue killer Robert Bowers on Gab; and Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik on white supremacist sites including Stormfront, a 23-year-old hate site credited with inspiring scores of murders.
These sites aren’t primarily driven by algorithms or profit motives. Instead, they twist and exploit the open internet’s positive ability to connect like-minded people. When harmful content surfaces on them, it raises complex moderation questions for domain hosts and web infrastructure providers — a separate set of powerful companies that have completely different business models from Facebook.
2
Teenage depression is correlated to social media use in multiple studies, that have become more and more available in recent years. In this study, the researchers note that
Between 2011 and 2018, rates of depression, self-harm, and suicide attempts increased substantially among U.S. adolescents. The most probable cause(s) of these trends likely 1) began or accelerated during these years, 2) affected a large number of people, 3) impacted everyday life, and 4) were associated with depression. In several large studies, heavy users of technology are twice as likely as light users to be depressed or have low well-being. Cohort declines in face-to-face social interaction may also impact even non-users of digital media. Thus, although technology use is not the cause of most depression, increased time spent on technology and the technological environment may be causes of the sudden increase in depression since 2011.
The correlation has become evident but is there a causation link? Does social media use cause this? Is this part of a bigger problem that social media amplify? We should be discussing this more.
The things that they got right (this list is short)
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Facebook targeting is one of the most sophisticated achievements of the human mind. Albeit represented in a caricatured manner, the algorithm being able to deduce what the user wants to buy and hitting them with relevant ads, with such precision that a large part of their userbase is convinced that FB is eavesdropping on them, is one of the biggest engineering feats.
As noted by Jeff Hammerbacher back in 2011
The Best Minds of My Generation Are Thinking About How To Make People Click Ads
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Another thing that SD got right is the power amassed by FB. With some much of the public discourse happening online, it is true, that a single FB employee’s omission can alter the discourse, as noted by Sophie Zhang (again in this Verge article)
But having this much power, it is confusing: why is anyone asking from a social network to be the arbiter of truth, conceding even more power to them, by fact-checking politicians?
3
But what this movie definitely did right was this: it opened up -or reinitiated- a much-needed conversation, on a bigger scale -that us until, the news cycle catches up with us and we move on to the next issue, not even the pandemic could escape that. People are finally starting to pose the one question that matters: are we better or worse being connected? I know that this is a hard YES for me, but i’d like to hear your thoughts on that (email them).
Why is there a Black Mirror and not a White Mirror, with all the utopian features that humanity’s future is going to have?
And now, to the non-obvious ones
This film, is given from the perspective of an US upper-middle class family and that’s exactly what this is! But in terms of social media users, this is just a fraction of their userbase. FB sits at 2.7 billion (¯\_(ツ)_/¯) users globally where upper middle class is a small fraction of it. I’d like to see that movie from the eyes of a Bangladeshi, or a Brazilian family. Do they experience the same problems? Do they face the same agonies? How did social media change their lives?
Also, Netflix is a platform that has approx. 200 million subscribers: that’s an order of magnitude lower than FB or YouTube but this still is a significant number. Netflix’s recommendation algorithm guides users to what they should see next based on their taste. I’ve seen the landing page of Netflix for some of my friends and it definitely looks different than mine. But if Netflix wanted to push 200M people towards a certain show, that had a specific agenda, what would stop them?
I’ve actually asked this question to an employee on Netflix during a visit to the company’s HQ in Los Gatos, CA and his answer was “nothing, it would just not be good for our business”.
So, if one is scared that FB controls us the way SD implies that it does -that is with 3 identical puppeteers inside a control room- why don’t one starts being wary of other platforms as well?
Tweet of the week
People are exiting Silicon Valley (or so it seems). Rent prices are down, in this post-first-phase-of-Covid-19 time, so anyone thinking of moving in, now’s the time.
The big tech hubs are what they are for a reason. And remote cannot replace that.
But let’s look at that on another newsletter.
Thanks for taking the time. And please, feel free to share this with your friends.