Stephen Rees's blog

You are using social media. WordPress is not mentioned in this movie. Facebook is. So are Twitter, Instagram, Google, …

The movie is a Netflix original.

I just posted this on Twitter

“I have just watched “The Social Dilemma” served to me by Netflix. (Netflix thinks I am someone else, btw.) I think you should watch it too. Because it deals with why social media – like Twitter – is a Real Problem. An existential problem.”

This is getting very post-modern very fast. But at one point during the movie I began to understand why it was so important for me to get off Facebook and Instagram.

I have the impression that I am probably controlling my social media consumption since I seldom accept what is offered to me. Except that I just wanted to watch something different and the last time we watched Netflix is came up with an interesting suggestion. The movie suggests you never accept another recommendation from YouTube.

I do not use Twitter through its webpage or its app, I use Tweetdeck. That changes how tweets get ranked. I just see a time series. No algorithm is deciding which tweets get priority. So it feels a lot more controllable.

I think that I understand what truth is and I have a pretty reliable bs meter. But using Facebook, bad actors has so managed to convince significant numbers of users of manifest falsehoods.

My suggestion is that if you have a Netflix account you watch the movie, because I would like to see the comments thread below start to fill with suggestions about what we can do to make sure the bad guys don’t win.

And since I have stopped worrying about Views on Flickr, I am also going to abandon any concerns I might have had about Favs.

I am now going to get my dopamine fix from a better source.