‘The Social Dilemma’: Netflix’s documentary and what it means for startups
Summary
However, the ‘dark side’ of social media has also reared its ugly head, exasperating issues such as mental health, bullying, political polarization, fake news and misinformation, and even riots and conflict. It’s the goal, therefore, of social media platforms to take the most addictive elements of human psychology and pair them with deep personalisation technologies, in order to present us with exactly what we want to see, cause us to use up more and more of our time, and sell our attention to advertisers. When you add to the mix the fact that Facebook has found that they can actually affect real-world behaviours and emotions, without users even being aware of it, this all results in real-life (offline) effects such as governments and other organisations weaponising social media to incite political polarisation, conflicts, riots, and even violence. What we also learn through this documentary is that even the people that created these social media platforms are not immune to the negative side effects of these apps, and feel powerless as they watch them not only suck away hours of our personal lives for profit, but on a wider level cause mass conflict and political unrest. While it’s tempting to panic and just delete all of your accounts having watched the documentary, it’s worth remembering that businesses nowadays need to have a presence on social media to maintain visibility in front of customers and partners.