Social dilemma

Netflix premiered this week the documentary “The Social Dilemma”, and I invite you to watch it if you are subscribed to the on-demand streaming service. If you are a regular reader of this space, you may have noticed that I often write about the flip side of today’s social networks and information technology.

This documentary directed by Jeff Orlowski stresses the same message, and carries a dire warning of the real-life consequences of artificial intelligence (AI) or algorithms, the engine that drives online social networks.

You may think that you are outside the control of this engine. If you can’t stop looking at your smartphone, then you are mistaken. You are actually among two billion people under the spell right now of the software engineering features that run our email, search pages, social media, and other apps.

The revelation of Silicon Valley tech insiders, specifically by those who saw the danger and sounded the alarm at the expense of their promising career, is what makes this film compelling. These are young and middle-aged technology pioneers who helped create today’s information technology system as we know it and now fear what they created.

Personally, I first saw this danger in 2015 when an erstwhile innocent social media page managed by an anonymous group of college students morphed into a toxic environment of personal attacks, sarcasm, and emotional denunciations on matters related to student political parties, the campus administration, as well as on local and national issues. Gone were the meaningful debates and discussions mostly experienced in physical forums where you see real people exchanging views.

So I campaigned in class to bring back the traditional values and etiquette that make the communication process worth our time. I spoke patiently and in measured words against that particular social media page both in my own social media feed and in the classroom, pointing out the consequences of its lack of accountability.

I knew that my students had already developed some affinity with that page because it also offered some fun talk and trivia people their generation can relate to. I warned them to be aware of the “jab jab jab, right hook” technique of online influencers where they lure you with something entertaining and inconsequential before clinching you with the real message (the right hook).

This experience taught me the power of communicating thoughtfully not only through words but also through one’s social capital, in this case through the professional relationships I had cultivated with my students inside and outside of the classroom. Somehow I succeeded in my campaign because that social media page slowly lost its popularity over the succeeding months, and it died a year or two later.

To be fair, the youngster behind that page probably started with good and harmless intentions. There was no harm in sharing anecdotes about life in the campus and feelings about unrequited love. Thousands of other social media pages out there likewise started with good intentions. But to echo the words of a resource person in “Social Dilemma”, “these things, you release them, and they take on a life of their own. And how they’re used is pretty different than how you expected.”

The film also held a spotlight on Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist of Google, and now co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology. Harris wishes that more people could understand how social network technology works because “it shouldn’t be something that only the tech industry knows. It should be something that everybody knows.”

While social media is playing with our minds, the consequences to us personally and to society are real. Cynthia M. Wong, former senior internet research of Human Rights Watch, said that some of the most troubling implications of governments and other bad actors weaponizing social media is that it has led to real, offline harm. She cited as an example what happened in Myanmar where hate speech manipulated public opinion and incited mass killings against the minority Rohingya Muslims.

For clueless, or should I say callous, tech geniuses like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the solution is to develop more AI technology to police against any abuse online. No. The solution is to put humanity first in the design of systems and products. Society is being crowded with more and more depressed people because we have allowed technology to take over our lives in the altar of unbridled capitalism.

Let technology be our tool, not our terminator.