Last week I wrote a piece about the lessons I learned after being one year away from social media and this is sort of part 2. Many of my mixed feelings towards it came from reading some scientific articles, watching testimonies of people’s experiences on YouTube, general talks with friends and family, and also from watching these documentaries.
1) Citizenfour (2014)
In this film, journalist and filmmaker, Laura Poitras, tells the story of Edward Snowden, the famous whistleblower who revealed how the American government was heavily surveilling not only people from outside the USA but also as its own citizens. I believe it was after this documentary that people started covering web cameras on their laptops and also being more aware of what they share online. Citizenfour served as inspiration for Snowden, a later fictional movie about his story.
2) The Social Dilemma (2020)
The Social Dilemma focuses on the side effects of social media in our day-to-day lives. Director, Jeff Orlowski, decided to present the theme by exploring two narratives. The first uses the regular documentary language with some psychic specialists and “tech innovators” explaining how a tool, for instance, the like button, was created with a positive intention but turned out to become fatally destructive in more serious cases. The second follows the fictional lane and follows up the story of a few characters and can very explicitly show how a social media algorithm can work. I think in terms of eye-opening effect this is probably the most powerful film on the list.
3) The Great Hack (2019)
The Great Hack brings a more criminal and legal perspective of the subject. Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim, the directors, do a great job explaining how a service that seems to be free is actually highly costly. It exposes a little bit the case of tech-media-marketing companies that take users’ data to manipulate information. And these types of companies normally acquire these data from social media networks that have it because their users are constantly uploading photos and videos and content about their personal lives. It can impact big social events from the presidential election of a country to police profiling at protests. Information is definitely power and can be certainly dangerous.
4) Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened (2017)
To end on a lighter note, there’s Fyre, directed by Chris Smith. This is a very interesting and funny film that proves the following point, and that I have also talked about in last week’s article (read it here): what we see online is most likely not real. This is the story of a very exclusive festival that was endorsed by some celebrities and was massively marketed on social media, which turned out to be completely fake. This is a very atypical case, but it goes to show that when we see people advertising products, for example, that is to be taken with a pinch of salt. But not only that, perfect bodies, perfect skins, perfect lives… they don’t exist.
To conclude
All of this is not to discourage anyone from utilizing these products and services, neither to make anyone stop following their favorite influencers nor even to make people afraid of it using it for a professional reason (I do too). However, it is important to be informed, educated, and critical. Very critical.
And you, how do you use social media? Do you try to protect yourself somehow? Do you think about these things at all?
Let me know in the comments.
Your friend,
Ana
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