The Social Dilemma (2020)
Good Lord almighty! It would be saddening to contemplate that anyone who has seen this revealing shocking documentary would ever return to frequent use (or any use at all) of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, YouTube, and any other widespread social networking platform.
The average user believes that, while these big tech corporations harvest their user's activity so as to more cunningly target them with advertising, they don't see much harm in that, so they put it out of their minds. Many understand that, "If it's for free, then YOU are the product", and all that.
But in fact these nefarious all-seeing, all-knowing, unregulated tech giants are increasingly figuring out and plying brutally efficient ways to influence the user's opinions, and to control their user's thoughts.
10 or 12 high placed former employees of the social media behemoths, along with experts in AI, virtual reality, communications, algorithms, and psychology effectively lay out how the public is being addicted, lead and brainwashed to do the network's bidding. It's going way beyond selling advertising.
The most affected are Gen Z'ers and beyond, but millennials, Boomers, and even seniors are not immune. The more time one spends each day on their Android or I-phone, the more one is completely surreptitiously being controlled. I personally have never used social media because I always believed it to be idiotic and dangerous. But yet every time I've clicked on a YouTube video, or ordered an item through Amazon, it has contributed to a cyber dossier which plots and digests my movements in order to use them in attempts to manipulate me.
I remarked to my wife that this documentary should be shown in every public school so as to reveal to the younger generations what is being foisted upon them. My wife said, "It wouldn't make any difference. They don't care." That's a sad thought, and it's likely true. I came to the sad realization that when people have become accustomed to the surveillance state, when caution is bred out of them, that is likely the last remaining step toward totalitarianism, socialism.
Encouragingly people from both the left and right are starting to ring the alarm bells. The big tech companies have become de facto governments, with no one but themselves to chart their courses. They will never police themselves. Despite my libertarian leanings it seems to me that the only way to stop this secret population control is through governmental fines and regulation both at the state and federal levels. These cyber behemoths must be limited in their attempts to control and profit from the unaware public. Transparent competition should be allowed and encouraged to flourish. Government has broken up far less harmful entities in the past. It's now past time to thoroughly scrutinize the social media giants.
Doc's rating: 9/10