Thread by @evan_greer

One of my problems with "The Social Dilemma" is that it makes the same mistake a lot of tech observers are making: it treats social media as if its cigarettes -- something that's addictive and bad with no value at all. The Internet is more like sex, drugs and rock & roll (thread)

Done wrong, it can be harmful, unhealthy, addictive, violating and corrosive. But done right it can be liberating, mind-expanding, transformative, and fun as hell. The problem with ignoring this is that it leads us toward "solutions" to Big Tech that do more harm than good.

We can't, and shouldn't, call for regulation of social media companies without acknowledging the fact that the Internet, and specifically the ability for user-generated content on the Internet to go viral, has transformed and revolutionized our society in profoundly good ways.

Social media has given more people a voice in our democracy than ever before in history. It's led to a rapid mainstreaming of historically marginalized voices and ideas. There are some extreme examples where this is really bad, but I would argue on the whole that its really good.

It's true social media has allowed hateful ideologies and lies to proliferate & harmful fringe ideas to gain mainstream attention. But it's also helped mainstream really good ideas (like defunding police & abolishing ICE) that were previously WAY outside the overton window.

The Social Dilemma wants us to believe the world is a worse place for, say, teenage girls now that Tik Tok & Instagram exist than it was before. I'm pretty sure that's not true. It's definitely not true for trans and gender nonconforming youth in rural areas, for example.

None of this is to say that there aren't HUGE problems with Big Tech social media companies like Facebook and Google. There are. In fact, their business models are fundamentally incompatible with basic human rights and democracy. But no one wants to address the business model.

Over & over we see narratives like this about how social media is harmful and addictive, and then the "solutions" we are offered basically fall into two categories: individual choice (limit your & your kids screentime) or corporate pressure campaigns (beg FB to censor more stuff)

The reality is that the harms we are seeing amplified by social media are systemic. Facebook didn't create conspiracy theories any more than video games created violence. We can and should demand policies that address the harms done by surveillance capitalist business models.

Things like banning microtargeted advertising and nontransparent algorithmic amplification that's maximized for engagement (Facebook's so-called "rage machine" that artificially makes some of the worst stuff on the Internet go viral.) And strong Federal data privacy legislation.

But the reality is that since the Internet was created, there have been powerful elites who are terrified by the way it democratizes communications infrastructure, our economy, and politics, and who would love nothing more than to lock it down and turn the Internet into Cable TV.

If we fall into the trap of framing the Internet as cigarettes, rather than recognizing its complexity as more like sex, drugs, and rock and roll, then we're playing into the hands of those who would love to see our voices censored and a return to traditional power structures.

And perhaps more importantly, we'll never actually address the very real harms caused by surveillance capitalism, because we'll be missing the point and asking the wrong questions over and over again.

I started this thread with “one of my problems” because this one was on my mind and I wanted to fire it off, but there are SO. MANY. OTHER. PROBLEMS. with this film and the school of thought it amplifies, perhaps the biggest being this one, which many of the others stem from

https://twitter.com/sgbuggs/status/1306721596288180245