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Comment by vsareto | Hacker News Reader

>Watch “The Social Dilemma” on Netflix

I'm sorry, but that show was really, really dumb and unrealistic and I couldn't sit through it.

3 engineers (notably: cringey white dudes) are never following one single user and controlling his interactions like that and it did more harm than good by pretending it works that way.

This implies someone is directly accountable, showing up to work every day and fucking with people's attention regularly, when in reality, it's soulless machines programmed to do this while the engineers are several degrees away from inflicting harm like this.

That's what makes it so dangerous -- not that tech companies have unlimited money to build situation rooms dedicated to following single users around.

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Engineers are controlling interactions of single users, even though they are not sitting there as it happens and making decision after decision. The algorithm however, acts as an extended mind of the actual engineers that effects the engineer's choices and decisions. This dynamic is hard to communicate and I think the visual chosen by the show works quite well.

Why bring up the skin color of the people in the show? What relevance does it have? And I am brown Incase you were wondering as I know skin color is important to you

Diversity in tech is a problem and this show was reinforcing that.

What are you on about? The show is about how Apps are made addicitve regardless of race, why are you pulling the race card when the tech is indiscriminant? Its like saying I shouldn't watch a documentary on the NBA cause the documentary is not diverse enough, where are all the brown, white, yellow people at? xD

>when the tech is indiscriminant

It sometimes isn't, but why did they put 3 white dudes in charge of messing with someone's life when they know that's the prevailing stereotype of SV engineers?

Could it be that they were trying to capitalize on that stereotype for shock value? I'd think so.

> why did they put 3 white dudes in charge of messing with someone's life

Maybe because they earnt their position through merit? Maybe because white males are still a majority of the work force in Google, Facebook, and may more? The probability of picking 3 random senior people who are white are not that slim.

I as an Asian man take issue that just because you see white people in the show and automatically assume what the show has to say is not representative of whats happening in the Ad-industry. You could literally replace any color of race and claim it is not representative and disregard the bigger message here. This is a classic reverse-racism.

>Maybe because they earnt their position through merit?

They earned the position of representing a wildly exaggerated view of how tech companies influence their users?

Give me a break, this show was just dumb. It added no value to the conversation around tech companies.

They weren't engineers. It was shows attempt to humanize the algorithm.

I agree it was cringy but the shows intent wasn't bad.

We don't humanize statistical methods or other math formulas in similar fashions, we (should) blame the people that wield them irresponsibly.

The show, up until I stopped watching, felt like slow-rolling click bait.

I think you might benefit from learning about literary devices like allegories and metaphors. You are taking that way too literally. The show is trying to explain complicated things to regular people.

The 3 engineers are just a representation of the user-tailored AI algorithms, that are trying to optimize user engagement and session duration.

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