The Social Dilemma

Jeff Orlowski, who is mostly known for his work in Chasing Coral and Chasing Ice, began production for this documentary in 2018 and concluded it in 2019. When asked where his inspiration came from during the film's panel at Deadline's Contenders Documentary event, Orlowski says that he has "always been curious about big systemic and societal challenges."[8] He came to believe that "invisibly, a handful of designers in Silicon Valley are writing code that is shaping the lives of billions of people around the planet."[9]

Orlowski, in the film's FAQ page, states:[10]

We were drawn to tell the stories of our changing glaciers and changing coral reefs because they were powerful signs of a huge global issue facing humanity: climate change. When we started talking with Tristan Harris and the Center for Humane Technology, we saw a direct parallel between the threat posed by the fossil fuel industry and the threat posed by our technology platforms. Harris calls this "the climate change of culture," an invisible force that is shaping how the world gets its information and understands truth. Our hope has always been to work on big issues, and we now see the "social dilemma" as a problem beneath all our other problems.

The film's graphics, animation, & visual effects were made by Mass FX Media and produced by Netflix.[11]

The film's genre is science & natural docs.

• Tristan Harris, former Google design ethicist,[12] co-founder and CEO of Apture (2007),[13] and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology;[14] co-host of podcast Your Undivided Attention with Aza Raskin[15]
• Tim Kendall, former director of monetization at Facebook,[6] former President of Pinterest, and CEO of Moment (a mobile application that tracks screen time)[16]
• Jaron Lanier, American computer philosophy writer, computer scientist, visual artist, and composer of contemporary classical music; author of Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (2018)[17]
• Roger McNamee, early investor at Facebook,[18] author of Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe (2019), and cofounder of venture capital firm Elevation Partners[19]
• Aza Raskin, former head of user experience at Mozilla Labs and creative lead for Firefox;[20] co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology[14] and founder of Massive Health;[21] inventor of the infinite scroll[22]
• Justin Rosenstein, former Facebook engineering manager,[23] former Google product manager,[24] and co-founder of Asana[25] and One Project
• Shoshana Zuboff, Professor Emeritus at Harvard Business School, author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019)[26]
• Jeff Seibert, former head of product at Twitter,[27] serial tech entrepreneur, and co-founder of Digits[28]
• Anna Lembke, medical director of addiction medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine[29]
• Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist at the New York University Stern School of Business,[30] author of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012) and coauthor of The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (2018)[31]
• Sandy Parakilas, former platform operations manager at Facebook[32] and former product manager at Uber[33][34]
• Cathy O'Neil, data scientist and author of Weapons of Math Destruction (2016)[35]
• Randima Fernando, former product manager at Nvidia, former executive director at Mindful Schools, and co-founder and executive director of Center For Humane Technology[36]
• Joe Toscano, former experience design consultant at Google and author of Automating Humanity (2018)[37]
• Bailey Richardson, early team member of Instagram and partner at People & Company[38]
• Rashida Richardson, assistant professor of law and political science at Northeastern University School of Law[39] and former director of policy research at AI Now Institute[40][41]
• Guillaume Chaslot, former software engineer at Google (YouTube) and founder of AlgoTransparency[42]
• Renée Diresta, technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory[43] and former head of policy at Data for Democracy
• Cynthia M. Wong, former senior Internet researcher at Human Rights Watch[44]
• Alex Roetter, former senior vice president of engineering at Twitter[45]
• Lynn Fox, former director of corporate PR and Mac PR at Apple,[46] former executive of corporate communications at Google[47]

• Skyler Gisondo as "Ben"[48]
• Kara Hayward as "Cassandra"[48]
• Sophia Hammons as "Isla"[48]
• Chris Grundy as "Step-Dad"
• Barbara Gehring as "Mother"[49]
• Vincent Kartheiser as "Artificial Intelligence"[48]
• Catalina Garayoa as "Rebecca"
• Sergio Villarreal as "Luiz"
• Laura Obiols as "Vendetta"
• Vic Alejandro as "Police Officer"

Narrative casting by Jenny Jue[49]

All music is composed by Mark Crawford.

Through the use of "human-produced" and mechanical sounds, as Mark Crawford described in The Social Dilemma interview, he displayed the alarming impacts of social media through this soundtrack.[50] There was an overall emphasis on the concept of "dilemma" pertaining to the documentary throughout each song.[50]

The Social Dilemma received generally positive reviews. The mostly positive analyses of The Social Dilemma conclude that the film is thorough and scales down abstract concepts to an accessible level, however, negative critics emphasize that the dramatized screenplay reduces the impact of the film's messaging. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 85% based on 66 reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Clear-eyed and comprehensive, The Social Dilemma presents a sobering analysis of our data-mined present."[55] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 78 out of 100, based on nine critics, indicating "generally favourable reviews".[56]

The film is commonly praised for its portrayal of how severe the addictive effects of social media can be, and, by featuring industry insiders, exposing to a wide audience the strategies to increase usage and data extraction at play by tech companies. ABC News's Mark Kennedy called the film "an eye-opening look into the way social media is designed to create addiction and manipulate our behaviour, told by some of the very people who supervised the systems at places like Facebook, Google, and Twitter".[57] Nell Minow of RogerEbert.com noted that the film "asks fundamental and existential questions" of humanity's potential self-destruction through its own use of computer technology, and praised its "exceptional" use of confessions from leaders and key players in the social media industry.[58]

Other critics pointed out the shocking piece of information that the film brings forth about how strategic social media companies are in terms of keeping its users on their apps for as long as possible. Devika Girish from The New York Times, states that “The Social Dilemma” is remarkably effective in sounding the alarm about the incursion of data mining and manipulative technology into our social lives and beyond.[59]” In a rare defence of the film’s oft-denounced dramatizations, John Naughton of The Guardian comments on the fictional side of the movie which shows a “normal” American family being dragged down the rabbit hole that is the internet and our phones. Naughton states that “the fictional strand is necessary because the biggest difficulty facing critics of an industry that treats users as lab rats is that of explaining to the rats what’s happening to them while they are continually diverted by the treats (in this case dopamine highs) being delivered by the smartphones that the experimenters control.” [60]

Elizabeth Pankova adds a new insight to the reviews, she mentions that "none of the information in the film is particularly new" but in her opinion what makes The Social Dilemma remarkable and distinguishable is "the purveyors of this information: the remorseful, self-aware warriors turned conscientious objectors of Silicon Valley."[61]

However, most critics often cite the dramatic reenactments featured in the film as the main source of discontent. Girish Devika from The New York Times points out that the fictional narrative Orlowski implemented to illustrate the documentary's main points about social media's influence on one's mental health.

Nell Minow of RogerEbert.com stated that "even the wonderfully talented Skyler Gisondo cannot make a sequence work where he plays a teenager seduced by extremist disinformation, and the scenes with Vincent Kartheiser embodying the formulas that fight our efforts to pay attention to anything outside of the online world are just silly."[62] Casey Newton of The Verge argued that the dramatized segments of the film are "ridiculous[.] And the ominous piano score that persuades every scene, rather than ratcheting up the tension, gives it all the feeling of camp."[63] The film was also criticized for being simplistic, and not including longstanding assessments of social media. Pranav Malhotra of Slate stated that the film "plays up well-worn dystopian narratives surrounding technology," and "depend[s] on tired (and not helpful) tropes about technology as the sole cause of harm, especially to children." He also criticized the film for failing to acknowledge activists and commentators who have long-criticized social media, saying that "it could have also given space to critical internet and media scholars like Safiya Noble, Sarah T. Roberts, and Siva Vaidhyanathan, just to name a few, who continue to write about how broader structural inequalities are reflected in and often amplified the practices of big technology companies."[64] The review concludes by admonishing the "uncritical" presentation of another dystopian narrative lacking nuance.

In response to the reviews and criticisms that Social Dilemma received, Jeff Orlowski the director of the documentary mentioned that his documentary was  “an insider’s perspective” of Silicon Valley as a Stanford University graduate.

In his Interview in CPH:DOX he mentioned that “I think that countless filmmakers and especially documentary makers are looking for impact through their work.”. He later added “Often, what filmmakers don’t have access to is resources or teams to be able to do campaigns with their films.”[65]

Facebook released a statement on its about page that the film "gives a distorted view of how social media platforms work to create a convenient scapegoat for what are difficult and complex societal problems".[66]

CNBC reported that social media users are doubting if they should continue using Facebook or Instagram, after watching The Social Dilemma. However, when Facebook was asked about the possibility of decline in its users, Facebook refused to answer or give any comments on the subject.[67]

Mozilla employees Ashley Boyd and Audrey Hingle note that while the "making, release and popularity of The Social Dilemma represents a major milestone towards [the goal of] building a movement of internet users who understand social media's impact and who demand better from platforms", the film would have benefited from featuring more diverse voices.[68]