My Thoughts on The Social Dilemma
The Social Dilemma is the Supersize Me of our generation, and it couldn't have come at a better time. That's not to say its without its flaws, though. The docu-drama does a great job of illustrating how our brains respond to social media addiction, despite its cringy storyline with the fictional family. It doesn't do such a good job of challenging the audience to act. It had a solid 90 minutes of dissecting how social media is a poison to ourselves and society, then it just talked about how there are good things about the internet for 6 minutes. What the hell?? I was expecting a real call to action, something that really hits home after such a brutal takedown.
Maybe the logic is they're trying to just dip their toes in the water and see what they can actually get away with. I can understand that. Facebook obviously is furious with the docu-drama, and they even reponded to it by name [1]. However, I'm not sure this is the case after thinking about the platform they published on: Netflix. It's about time we have some public FAANG infighting, and it's in Netflix's best interests to make sure Facebook gets neutered. So why not go for the killing blow?
The people in the documentary act like they don't know what has to be done, but they do mention this notion of the "Old Internet" that was pure and useful instead of addictive and corporate. And while they do say there's no putting the genie back in the lamp, the "Old Internet" never really left. It was just replaced with user-friendly, feature-hellish, all-in-one applications. You can still host your own website, use that website to provide information to people (i.e. a fucking blog), share your ideas on decentralized platforms (IRCs, PeerTube, Mastodon, etc.), host your own email server, and the list goes on and on. FAANG isn't taking the ability to be free away from us.
So what happened? Well we entered a contract where we gave up privacy for convenience. None of us read the fine print and thought we were getting cool spaces to share our family pictures, memes, and life experiences with each other. The problem is the fine print wasn't in the contract, it was embedded within our society. Just as corporations invaded cable television with their millions, they invaded the internet's public spaces with their billions to serve us ads. Facebook and friends can't say no to billions because they can't make money any other way, so we ended up here.
Welcome to Hell: Here's how to get Comfortable
We're at the mercy of Zuck, so what can we do? This is my call to action.
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Keep a blog - The unfortunate truth is if you're reading this you already have a blog. I mean why else would you be reading someone else's blog, right? Keeping a blog is a great way to get Zuck's talons off of you. You're sharing your ideas on a place that (probably) doesn't make him money. Encourage your friends to make blogs. If they're not tech savvy, then help them dammit! Rome wasn't built without your help.
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Remove social media from your phone - Social media was one thing when there were just PCs, but with smartphones that dopamine rush is just a swipe and a tap away. If you don't want to delete your accounts cold turkey this is a good first step. If Facebook Messenger is your primary messaging application, maybe convince your group chats to move to another platform.
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Use federated social media - PeerTube, Mastodon, you know what's up.
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Use Firefox and DuckDuckGo - Brave is also reasonable. No Google isn't a better search engine than DDG, your dumb ass just doesn't know how to use a search engine properly
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Use a news aggregator that isn't fucking Reddit - Reddit is a cesspool of garbage. It's curated by a corporation, not by the users. I use Reddit for specialized communities, not reliable sources.
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Incorporate FOSS into your life - The Free Software Movement is the ultimate enemy of capitalism and corporations. We all use some propritary software, but the less you use, the better.
Further Reading
[1]. What The Social Dilemma Gets Wrong - Facebooks pitiful response