By Richard Mellor in California
The documentary Social Dilemma, which is available on Netflix, is scary to say the least. It’s meant to be scary of course. The folks behind it are former tech industry employees who have come to their senses and now fear the horrific global effects that the smart phone craze and the technology associated with it, are having on society and human behaviour, particularly the youth.
Technically, workers in factories in Cambodia, China and Vietnam are tech industry employees, but the documentary is not their creation. Former CEOs coders, marketers, computer scientists and others who have made lots of money working for Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter and so on, are now warning us of the dangers humanity faces as this technology has the ability to manipulate behaviour like no other.
Trading in human futures
“It’s a marketplace that trades exclusively in human futures” one expert warns. Numerous others warn of a dystopian future, if the social media giants are not reigned in. “If something is a tool, it genuinely is just sitting there, waiting patiently. If something is not a tool it’s demanding things from you….” says a former Google employee and, “….It’s seducing you, it’s manipulating you, it wants things from you. We’ve moved away from a tools-based technology environment, to an addiction and manipulation used technology environment. Social media isn’t a tool waiting to be used. It has its own goals, and it has its own means of pursuing them by using your psychology against you.”
The addictive nature of social media and the algorithms, or whatever it is that we are manipulated by, runs throughout the commentary. But there doesn’t appear to be much self-reflection from these people who have only now realized the dangers of their activity that made them very wealthy individuals. They never intended this, they claim.
The wealthy and powerful
At one point, one of them asks if it should always be that we defer to the wealthy and powerful in society: Yes, is the answer to that one. This is always the case in class society whether the wealthy and powerful are feudal lords, slaveowners or in our case, the owners of capital and the means of producing and distributing society’s needs.
Throughout the documentary, it is stressed that these companies have to make money. Technology is not the existential threat, one expert says, but technology brings out the worst in society and the worst of society is the existential threat. But why this technology brings this out and why, is not really asked or answered. Though this touches on it:
“Algorithms are optimized to some definition of success. So if you can imagine, if a commercial enterprise builds an algorithm, to their definition of success, it’s a commercial interest. It’s usually profit”, says one of the data scientists in the documentary.
The goal is to make money
There you have it. The goal of the investors and major players in the social media business, just like any other business, is to make money, to make a profit. “You have to grow revenue and usage” says another expert.
All of these characters warning us of impending doom stress that it’s OK to make money. They accept that the capitalist mode of production is the only form of social organization; that there is no alternative, TINA, Margaret Thatcher called it. And making money as they mean it, is not the same as earning money through wage labour; they mean profits. So after warning us all of the dangers and how we’re losing our children and that many of the people like them that have created and designed this process don’t allow their children to use social media or strongly restrict it, their solution is taxation, regulations and appealing to the political representatives of the very class that owns and directs the use of the technology we’re taking about.
No serious solutions offered
This is why these sort of exposés, warning us of the dangers we are facing but offering no serious solutions, end up fuelling further helplessness and despair. When have regulations or tax increases changed anything substantially? Didn’t Teddy Roosevelt make efforts to curb monopoly, which is a natural development in the capitalist mode of production? And that was over a century ago. The 1986 tax overhaul, just like all the others, has not stopped or curbed the massive accumulation of capital in the hands of a super elite. They will not tax themselves out of business.
The taking into public ownership of the tech industry, and all the dominant industries that provide the needs of a modern society, is not on the cards for these people. The working class as a social force does not exist for them. People are just consumers. One cannot blame them, in a way, as for the most part the working class is absent in a major way. Certainly, we have no political party that speaks for us. But it would not be difficult for anything thinking person to recognize that the recent social explosions in the US and globally that have arisen in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, have produced some changes that would never have occurred through the courts or legislation introduced by either of the two capitalist parties. Mass movements change things.
Who owns the final product?
In a society based on the capitalist mode of production, technology, just like the product at the end of an auto assembly line, is not owned by those that whose labour power produces it. It is owned by the capitalists who own the means of production and the labour process. They set production in motion not to produce a social need but for profit. In the hands of the ruling class, technology is a tool to increase the exploitation of the worker and increase capital accumulation for the capitalist. Technology, just like any other form of labour-saving tool, has the ability to decrease labour time to the point when we could be working a two-day week. Technology can liberate us, can allow us time to participate in the organization of society and the organization of work. It can literally save the planet. We are not Luddites; we should not reject or abandon technology, our goal is to own it and direct its use.
So Social Dilemma, while an interesting look into the deep dark world of today’s technological jungle, is just another plea for the most ruthless ruling class ever to walk this planet, to be a little kinder. I might be more sympathetic to these guys, were they to be a little humbler and took responsibility for their role in all of this. The documentary will not cheer you up, that’s for sure. It is not meant to empower you.
From the US socialist website, Facts for Working People. The original is here.
December 3, 2020
