The Social Dilemma: Is Orwell’s 1984 Dystopia Already here?
I read George Orwell’s 1984 two years ago. It is a political statement about a dystopian surveillance state where every word is monitored, history is manipulated or deleted altogether, and individuals can be “unpersons” for holding views disliked by those in power.
When I watched the Social Dilemma (and also the Great hack) recently, I kept thinking about this book. Although this book is about politics and using it in technological context is a bit far-fetched, Orwell’s clever neologisms like newspeak, doublethink and thoughtcrime adequately describe the ubiquitous surveillance technology infiltrating our life. We have come to accept the “Big Brother’s Watch” which has a magician-like spell on us, that we know can be harmful. What are we doing about it?
As a preliminary, I urge you to watch these documentaries if you haven’t. Then please reflect upon your social media practices. And finally do something about it.
As a corollary to the second task, I want to note down the key takeaways from the unnerving documentary and some best practices that I have adopted as a result.
Top 7 Takeaways: The Social Dilemma
One. The Big Brother is Watching You. In 1984, the state uses “telescreens” to deliver information and surveil public and private places. Today, smartphones act as both our window to the world and the means through which a handful of private data companies keep a tab on our every action. Yet, our world surpasses Orwell’s imagination in which every device from our smartwatch to our refrigerator is connected to the internet, streaming a real-time documentary of our lives to these private data empires.
Two. If there’s no product, you are the product. In 1984, the ultimate goal of the extensive surveillance is to sustain and entrench the power of the state. In our world, the entire business models of these BigTech companies like Facebook and Google are built on drawing our attention and manipulating the way we think and even behave. Jeff Orlowski, the Social Dilemma’s director, points out, “Our social media platforms are powered by a surveillance-based business model designed to mine, manipulate, and extract our human experiences at any cost, causing a breakdown of our information ecosystem and shared sense of truth worldwide.” Did you ever wonder your attention is being sold without your knowledge in markets you have no idea about?
Three. Your Truth or My Truth? In 1984, the government manipulates history and censors news to nudge each citizen towards a desired state. In our world, the data we push everyday onto social-media platforms is being used to build vast behavioral and interest profiles on each individual user, which is then used to push back customized content to the users and nudge them towards more monetizable behaviors. As a result, our individual feeds have become echo chambers — reinstating our worldview over and over at the expense of the objective truth. Imagine having a customized Wikipedia page on every topic. What to believe anymore?
Four. The technology that Connects us also Polarizes, Isolates and Depresses us. We don’t feel an existential threat while scrolling down our feeds, do we? But the consequences become more visible when we as a society are more divided, lonely and depressed. In an recent report, Facebook asserted that 64% of the people who joined extremist groups on Facebook did so because the algorithms steered them there. Tristan Harris, formerly a design Ethicist at Google, says, “When you look around you it feels like the world is going crazy. Is this normal or have we all fallen under some spell?”
Five. AI is not winning over our Strengths, it’s targeting our Weaknesses. When we imagine AI taking over society, we can surely get back to Big Brother from 1984, a symbol of external, omnipotent oppression. There is no scarcity of articles that debate over when will AI surpass what are considered the greatest strengths of humankind—human consciousness and imagination. But we all miss the point here. AI has already surpassed the biggest human weakness — our need for social validation and gratification. People have come to love their oppression, to adore technologies that undo their freedom to think.
Dystopian technology will not strong-arm us. Instead, we’ll unwittingly submit ourselves to a devil’s bargain: freely trade our subconscious preferences for memes, our social cohesion for instant connection, and the truth for what we want to hear.” — The Guardian
Six. The Juxtaposition of Utopia Next to Dystopia. I have had a difficult time accepting that technology is evil. The amount of benefits we enjoy are unparalleled. We can access any information (and even anything) from our smartphones, we can connect to people from all over the world and learn from each other…the list is endless. How can this be dystopia? It’s not. Except, the same technology is wrecking havoc on democracy, mental health and world peace. The juxtaposition is cruel!
Seven. What will a Solution look like? The documentary emphasizes that any solution that can tackle this problem, will have to align with the financial incentives these companies operate on. The first step is to bring strict regulations in place. Unlike mobile companies and financial companies, social media companies have just begun facing backlash from anti-trust laws (The case of Cambridge Analytica, for example). There need to be more action and faster.
What can we do?
After watching the documentary, I posted a question story on Instagram (I know it’s very ironical in this context), asking my followers about the changes they adopted after watching the documentary. Most replied that they went “tried” to run away and live a completely social media-free life. But since they replied to my story, I am guessing they failed! The fact is, we cannot become social media-free. If you are in a profession (an artist or creator of any kind) that demands projecting your work to the public, you need to be where people are. Moreover, if all the good people leave social media, we will be left with those who would only worsen the problem. The solution is therefore to be aware of the working of these platforms and develop good habits in the short-term and urge our leaders for robust long-term action.
Here are some best-practices that I found useful to lessen my usage and be selective about the content I consume:
Disable Notifications from all non-essential apps. I mean all. Except for selective messages on WhatsApp, high-priority emails and reminders, nothing else grabs my attention on my phone. I’ve never looked back.
Block all recommendations to avoid irrelevant content. YouTube is a rabbit-hole. The algorithms are really good to show you videos that you never knew you needed. Use plugins so that you just see what you want to see.
Delete Social Media Mobile Apps. This sounds drastic but all these apps have web version that work just fine. By deleting them from your phone, you will at least add one layer of inertia.
With all these measures too I sometimes feel overwhelmed with content, I plan to experiment with a few more measures:
- Monitor my screen time.
- Find a way to disable likes/comments from Instagram and Facebook (Please let me know if you know a way)
- Read news articles only from paid subscriptions/ certified handles.
After reading this, you will continue to use social media. And I will too. But if we don’t take some time to build good habits now, we will wake up in 1984 someday and think how did we reach there.
