📹 The Social Dilemma

The 8 Principles to Follow in a Post- Social Dilemma World

Netflix’s The Social Dilemma waxed poetic about the insidious ways that social media has wrestled control from our lives, turning us into screen addicted, polarized versions of ourselves by using our data and our psychologies against us.

Concerns about social media have been around for several years now, but The Social Dilemma has captured our societal angst more than other attempts in recent memory. We can (ironically) see this with a small sample of tweets:

The Social Dilemma took its time explaining the dangers of social media and the existential threat that society faces if we do not begin addressing those dangers. However, outside of the last few minutes, it did little justice to how to address those dangers. Even within those few minutes that were spent addressing solutions, they were heavily focused on what an individual could do right now to address the issues and much less focused on systemic changes. Having immediately actionable steps for individuals is helpful, but it is broader systemic changes that will prevent the existential crisis described in the documentary.

The Social Dilemma was created in partnership with the Center for Humane Technology (CHT). To understand what those changes might look like, we explored CHT’s Policy Principles. They list 8 principles to be followed across “a broad array” of regulatory bodies.

The policy or proposal should…

1. Put people first
   … privilege the rights and interests of people over corporations
2. Avoid “atomizing” solutions
   … where possible, prioritize social and collective approaches over “atomizing” solutions.
3. Confront power
   … seek to identify and correct power asymmetries and imbalances.
4. Address root causes
   … go beyond symptoms to address the root causes of the problem or challenge at hand.
5. Presume harm
   … presume that all technologies, and their applications, are capable of inflicting a variety of harms and seek to identify those harms.
6. Compel caution
   … require a precautionary approach to technology development and deployment.
7. Embrace complexity
   … reflect the complexity of a problem or challenge by advancing comprehensive and contextualized solutions.
8. Seek sustainability
   … privilege sustainable, regenerative solutions over self-terminating, quick-fixes.

Let’s examine three of these principles further:

Avoid “atomizing” solutions

What is an “atomizing” solution? CHT points to an example familiar to all of us: consenting to Terms of Service. How is this “atomizing”? It forces us to negotiate our rights with an organization at an individual level as opposed to at a population level. With this approach, each of us is required to be an expert on our rights, putting the onus on the consumer. Further, while this model focuses on the rights of the individual, it ignores societal harm. Each decision cannot live in a vacuum.

According to CHT, a “non-atomizing alternative would impose minimum standards that benefit everyone equally such that the choices of one individual do not undermine the rights or protections of others.” In effect, the CHT approach is calling for a Bill of Data Rights.

Compel caution

How do you regulate technologies that do not exist yet? That is a fundamental question that regulators need to answer. The approach espoused by CHT focuses on the need for a precautionary approach to new technology. These approaches could “include undertaking an array of cost-benefit analyses and impact assessments … as well as harm reduction measures, among others.”

We are beginning to see such caution in action for specific technologies in some municipalities. In particular, CHT highlights facial recognition technology. Already, there have been bills passed to ban facial recognition for policing, particularly in California. A similar bill has been proposed in the US Senate putting a moratorium in place on facial recognition for federal law enforcement.

Seek sustainability

Policy solutions cannot be focused on quick fixes, but must instead focus on the underlying issue. If policy solutions focus on quick fixes, then they will be outpaced by the speed of technical innovation. If we simply ban a technology, a new solution will arise to replace it. The example highlighted by CHT is focused on third-party cookies. If third-party cookies were banned, then other techniques could be used in order to track users across the web. Many of these solutions have the potential to be more harmful than third-party cookies. In this vein, policy should be focused on the root causes of the issues in an effort to get ahead of the technological innovation curve.