A critique of The Social Dilemma documentary, which seems to exist only to stoke fear and outrage while promoting a distorted view of how social platforms work
The world is more complicated than filmmakers want to believe — I. A dilemma — On Sunday night, after being encouraged … Tweets: @beccalew , @charliebeckett , @tomcoates , @benedictevans , @antoniogm , @triketora , @tomaso_duso , @xamat , @pessimistsarc , @jbintheatx , @jonathanmendez , @tdohz , and @evan_greer Tweets: Becca Lewis / @beccalew : The reason careless errors like this are important is because, as science and technology scholars teach us, tech is not created in a social vacuum. It is built within, and often reifies, power structures. By ignoring that lesson, we keep those power structures in place https://twitter.com/... Charlie Beckett / @charliebeckett : I agree with @CaseyNewton on Social Dilemma: ‘ridiculous...the idea that algorithmic recommendation engines are at the heart of our troubles leaves out vast swathes of the internet that are arguably just as important’ https://www.getrevue.co/... Tom Coates / @tomcoates : I 100% agree with this. It's one of my long standing issues with some of the critics of social media - much of the rhetoric is as conspiratorial and unsubstantiated as the stuff they yell at the platforms for disseminating. https://twitter.com/... Benedict Evans / @benedictevans : There's a certain irony in making a film about how social media is manipulative that uses every trick of old fashioned manipulation in the film-maker's toolkit. @antoniogm : Whenever anyone who *actually* knows how ads work watches one of these preposterous melodramas about Facebook, one is left thinking: “if only it worked even remotely that well....if only....” https://twitter.com/... Tracy Chou / @triketora : “Harris' work on screen time triggered a powerful sea change in the industry, and DiResta's explorations of misinformation have been essential to helping social networks understand themselves. And yet despite all that ... the film is ridiculous?” https://www.theverge.com/... Tomaso Duso / @tomaso_duso : This is an interesting & well informed critique to the “The social dilemma”. The proble with #Facebook algorithmic recommendations is huge but “it leaves out vast swathes of the internet that are just as important as the big social networks”. https://www.theverge.com/... via @Verge Xavier Amatriain / @xamat : The reaction of many “experts” to the Social Dilemma is a clear example of how they equate expertise to dismissing anything in their area that becomes popular or influential. Doesn't help on getting people to trust experts IMO. https://twitter.com/... @pessimistsarc : Correction: people freaked out over the bicycle https://twitter.com/... Jenni Beer / @jbintheatx : You know what I wish *would* go up in flames in 2020? The argument that “[psychological reaction] happens in your brain so you can't do anything about it.” https://www.theverge.com/... Jonathan Mendez / @jonathanmendez : Started watching ‘The Social Dilemma’ and couldn't help but think — if all this algorithmic targeting worked like they imply, then why was the single dumbest form of ad targeting, retargeting, the main system of digital ads the past decade? Tiffany Dohzen / @tdohz : This is a well-written, thoughtful article. Doesn't let FB or other platforms off the hook, but also recognizes the complexities of the challenges they face, the role society plays, and the inanity of making cartoon villains for societal issues. https://www.theverge.com/... Evan Greer / @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)
Context & Ripple Effects
By September 2020, the 'social media is breaking society' narrative had a mass-market flagship in The Social Dilemma, and The Verge's critique — echoed by researchers like Becca Lewis and commentators including Benedict Evans and Renée DiResta in the surrounding tweetstorm — argues the film earns its urgency through careless errors rather than evidence. That puts it on one side of a live argument: later reporting found some researchers concluding the fears about social media harming society are overstated, even as others insist individual-level effects are real.
What makes the critique more than contrarianism is that the documented record cuts both ways — Zuckerberg and others reportedly shelved internal research on Facebook's polarizing effect, so the film's core subject is legitimate even where its dramatization is not. The researchers behind the "crisis discipline" framing occupy exactly the middle ground the film flattens: serious study under uncertainty, not ex-dramatized doom.
First-order effects
- Tech critics, academics, and platform-trust teams now have a shared reference point for pushing back on alarmist framings — Lewis's point that ignoring how tech reifies power structures lets careless errors stand in for analysis.
Second-order effects
- Policy attention follows the loudest narrative, not the evidence base: lawmakers responding to teen-harm concerns concentrated on Facebook while largely ignoring TikTok, the platform most teens actually use.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, platform-harm debates consolidate around contested empirical research rather than documentary storytelling — raising the bar for claims but also giving platforms room to dispute inconvenient findings.
The trend: Tech criticism is shifting from alarmist mass-media storytelling toward contested, evidence-driven research on social media's societal effects.