I heard about The Social Dilemma for the first time last January, and got curious about it. Last week I finally took some time to enjoy an evening on my couch and watched it. I have to say that at first, I was excited about the idea of a movie shedding lights on the implications of technology in our society, as I believe we don’t talk enough about such aspects.

As I started watching it, I got a feeling of unease. Don’t get me wrong: being a keen user of social media myself, I could easily relate with many of the concerns the documentary was talking about. Still, I had the impression that they tried to manipulate people and play with their fears (yes, exactly what they accuse social media of doing).

The more I watched it, the more this feeling became overwhelming. So I decided to watch it again, pay more attention to its narrative and analyse it.

1. There are plenty of activists, researchers and people who haven’t worked in tech but have been informing the public on these topics.

In the past decade, social scientists and legal experts have entered the dialogue on the use of algorithms and big data to offer a more comprehensive interpretation of the consequences of technology in our society. They have shared their expertise on the theoretical foundations of critical algorithm studies to highlight the need for an emancipatory agenda for law, policy reform, and international development.

Despite the innovative and influential research coming from scholars, activists and many others who don’t have an “ex-Facebook” background but worked extremely hard to shed light on those problems, the documentary mentions none of them.

As a result, people are given just a **partial and sometimes inaccurate perspective **of the current issues. A missed opportunity to enrich the conversation with valuable voices, and show how the debate had been out there long before Tristan Harris joined Google.

#data #facebook #privacy #social-media #data-science