Netflix’s “The Social Dilemma” Exposes Drawbacks of Tech Dependence

The film pulls together the disparate threads of its argument through revealing — and sometimes chilling — insights from former executives at Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.

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These are set against the backdrop of a fictional family addicted to screens filled with manipulative content served up by a ruthless set of algorithms embodied by actor Vincent Kartheiser, best known playing ad exec Pete Campbell in the TV series “Mad Men".

Tristan Harris, a former Google executive who plays a leading role in the film, said he hopes “The Social Dilemma" can wake up society the way Ralph Nader's book “Unsafe At Any Speed" spurred the introduction of seat-belt laws and Al Gore's award-winning 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth" sharpened focus on the climate changes caused by human-generated greenhouse gases.

“What I am really hoping is this film will be the first time we have a shared truth, a shared reality about the breakdown of our shared reality," Harris told The Associated Press in an interview.

Harris, now the president of the Center for Humane Technology, began sharing his disillusionment while he was still working at Google, and some of his posts about the subject caught Orlowski's attention.

The two had known each other while attending Stanford University, paving the way for them to reunite on a film that they both felt was important to finish before this November's US presidential election.

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“I don't want to have false optimism that we would shift the election or swing the election, but I think it's an important part of the conversation," Orlowski said.

“The more we can recognize how this software is invisibly reshaping our society and acknowledge and understand this is a reality we are living in right now, then we can work to improve that." 

(Writers: Michael Liedtke, Amanda Lee Myers)

Source: AP