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Divya Kala Bhavani, writes on themes such as entertainment, lifestyle, technology and human rights says, Making waves online for its subliminal messaging, ‘The Social Dilemma’ features whistleblowers who worked for the greedy Internet companies accused of ‘tech-xploitation of bio-power’
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| Sophia Hammons as Isla in ‘The Social Dilemma’ on Netflix Photo: Exposure Labs/Netflix |
There is a ‘now you see it, now you don’t’ scene in The Social Dilemma, where former Google design ethicist and product philosopher Tristan Harris does a vanishing coin trick. It comes about 20 minutes into the film but it is quite a metaphor for the entire arc of the documentary. Social media is always going to be a dozen steps ahead of you, even when you think you may have cracked the formula for social networking.
As most of the world continues to be home-bound, Netflix has placed audiences in the ultimate social dilemma by streaming The Social Dilemma, the latest documentary from Jeff Orlowski. In the past six months, the OTT giant has put out a plethora of documentaries on the Internet problem, so what is so different with this one that people all over the world are hyperventilating?...
Enter Foucault
What would social theorist Michel Foucault — an academic about whom I ranted many a time — think of social media now? Interviews with Harris, Rosenstein and Zuboff reveal that audiences need to think about the privatisation of the Internet by large corporations. As a theorist who lived way before even an inkling of the Internet even existed, Foucault believed that the masses are conditioned through language to take on ideological perspectives which may have very little to do with fact. Now with social media, there is the reality of fake news and memes which gain traction through shock value and bias but have prevalent effects on consumers.
Source: The Hindu
