‘The Social Dilemma’: Viewer discretion advised

Watch this non-documentary, now on Netflix, at your own risk. At the very least go into it with more than a grain of salt. Because—calculatingly, it really seems—the film triggers all the old fears and anxieties about the Internet and social media, pre- and post-Cambridge Analytica, without leaving much hope that solutions are possible.

Not that there aren’t some good and brilliant people in there asking all the questions many have been asking for a long time and saying all the same things that they’ve said elsewhere (you will probably recognize Jaron Lanier, Tristan Harris, Shoshana Zuboff, Roger McNamee and others). It’s just that the cheesy sci-fi-style portrayal of an algorithm as three sociopaths at an instrument panel toying with helpless teenagers doesn’t support their arguments very well. Nor does the dark, scary dramatization of a family’s smartphone struggles. Those parts are pure manipulation. Which is interesting. It’s like using unethical methods to take the moral high ground.

Not all crash test dummies

But there are some great dinner table and classroom talking points in the film if everybody goes in fully informed that it mashes up fact and fiction, leaves you with a gnawing sense of helplessness and paints a very dark picture that represents all social media users as addicts…