The Social Dilemma
Heading Towards a Digital Zombie Apocalypse
I likely wouldn’t have watched Netflix’s feature film The Social Dilemma, if not for Facebook complaining about it. (Didn’t think about that, did you, Facebook?)
Having a background in software and being aware of most of the pitfalls described in the documentary, what impacted me the most was a sentiment expressing how in the world of modern business, things (like trees or whales) often have more value to us dead than alive.
That sentiment is all the more touching because most of us never really think about it.
(If you are wondering what trees and whales are doing in a film about social media, it is an analogy to social media business keeping you glued to screens for their profit, keeping you away from enjoying the full richness of life.)
While much of the blame has been pushed on social media companies like Facebook and Twitter, they are not necessarily the villains of this story. The main goal of any business is to make profits. Social media companies have learned that keeping you glued to screens watching advertisements is the best way for them to do that. If the result of that is to make you no different from a cow on a modern farm, that’s too bad. Businesses do not deal with morals and ethics, only with profits. Thus, we need and have government and regulations, but they have not kept up with the pace of technology.
There are some complex issues with social media like digital privacy, and consent for data collection and dispersal, but for this article, the topic is the very ethicality of doing business. I am not singling out social media or any specific company in that domain; all corporates are complicit, but the example of social media is perhaps most widely discussed and easiest to grasp.
At what point does the Matrix take over?
Regulations or otherwise, should a business take responsibility for the consequences of its products and services? Of course. After all, a business is simply a group of people working together to solve a problem or fill a need of the society they live in. Doing business at the cost of one or more elements of that society creates problems rather than solving them. That is the case with social media companies that collect and sell your data to others and selectively push content on you to increase your screen time for their profits. That the content may not be useful to you, and may even be harmful to both individuals and society, is not the concern of the algorithms they employ. And therein lies the rub. The decisions made to select filtered content to display are not taken by humans, but by clever algorithms. The more data they collect, the more brutally efficient they become. The line between ‘you know what content you want’ and ‘you think you know what content you want’ has already blurred. At what point does the Matrix take over?
CEOs of big tech companies have recently faced tough questions from multiple governments. Question about how they do business and if they feel like they have a role to play in protecting the society that helped them succeed. And like the current president of the United States of America when asked if he could have handled the pandemic response better, they have said, “I don’t take responsibility at all.”
Yet, they are not the villains of this story. They are certainly responsible and should be held accountable, but they are not solely culpable for our current situation. Like President Trump, these CEOs and their companies are merely symptomatic of a different kind of disease that has plagued our society for ages. Companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram provided us with a platform to connect with people, share ideas, thoughts, and beliefs, and communicate with a whole host of people we may never otherwise have had any interaction with. They didn’t ask people to troll others or say nasty things to each other from the relative protection of their digital anonymity, nor did they somehow induce such thoughts in people. What social media has exposed is an ugly side of human nature at a scale not possible in the past. Had the founder of Facebook started the company to deliberately exploit this behaviour, I would have titled this article, Zuckerberg is Satan, and I unwittingly sold him my soul.
We just don’t care anymore.
No. The affliction we suffer is one of not caring anymore. Not caring about others’ feelings. Not caring about their beliefs. Not caring about having polite, inclusive, non-confrontational debates about issues, while claiming all entitlement and shrugging off all responsibility. Not caring about the welfare of the society we live in so long as our needs are met. Not caring about the environment that supports us. Thus a tree is more useful dead than alive, no matter that the roots keep the soil from being washed away, or the branches protect nesting birds, or the leaves feed the worms, or the fruits and seeds nourish animals, no matter that the tree is gone along with the entire ecosystem it supports. How long before this apathy extends to other things in your life, like your parents: that they are more useful to you dead than alive, as long as they leave you their estate?
Is that the legacy you wish to leave behind in the pursuit of vindictive pleasures via this headlong rush towards emotional and spiritual oblivion? A collective tombstone for humanity that reads, “Didn’t give a flying fuck.”
Zuckerberg may not be Satan, but he’s still a goat: a scapegoat. But punishing this opprobrious offender or his CEO buddies as a show of our collective willingness for betterment does not make things better. The trolls that took pleasure in watching him sweat in front of aggressive politicians will convince themselves that this was their moral victory over the evil corporates and carry on hurling abuse from the ramparts of their digital fortress. To be fair, these people are slaves to the algorithms that reward any behaviour that keeps eyes glued to the screen just as much as they are slaves to their base nature, but they are still the real villains, and their lot is active not just in the Petri dish of social media but in all walks of life.
My message is simple, if not easy: be kind. Be kind not only to yourself but to other humans, to other creatures that inhabit our world, and to our environment. And the first place to start is watching what you say on social media. Trolling trains your mind to think that way, and extends to other areas of your life whether you realise it or not. Instead, put in a kind word where possible, or just refrain from responding if you can’t think of anything constructive to say. Or maybe just step away from it entirely. Take back control of your life from the algorithms turning you into digital zombies and you may find yourself reborn to enjoy other experiences that life has to offer.
Currently, social media platforms try to self-regulate by blocking or deleting harmful content. Will they do so even if it costs them some revenue in the short-run? Likely not, based on Facebook’s indisposition (and partial inability, owing to the way their algorithms are designed) to stop the spread of lies through ads on their platform¹.
Whether social media platforms should police what you say can be debated from both sides and on the fence, but the truth of the matter is that companies are responsible for the consequences of their products. But they are not the only ones. We are all responsible, and we are all culpable. When we let their algorithms run our lives, we are no better than animals at a slaughterhouse. It is time to hold ourselves accountable and take action before we, in our lifetimes, become more useful to our world dead than alive.
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