ABUEL, NEILL ANTONIO S.

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DOCUMENTARY REVIEW
THE SOCIAL DILEMMA

Jeff Orlowski's The Social Dilemma is a 2020 American docudrama film. The documentary
investigates how the architecture of social media fosters addiction, manipulates people's opinions,
emotions, and behavior, and spreads conspiracy theories and falsehoods. The video also investigates the
impact of social media on mental health, namely the rising teen suicide rates. Many former employees,
executives, and other professionals from leading tech companies such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, and
Mozilla are interviewed in the video. These interviews are shown alongside fictional dramatizations of a
teen's addiction to social media. Some respondents argue that social media platforms and large tech
businesses have also contributed to constructive societal development. The film investigates the
psychological underpinnings and manipulation techniques used by social media firms to addict people.
Ben, a teen (played by Skyler Gisondo), gradually succumbs to these persuasion techniques and spirals
deeper into a social media addiction. The risks of artificial intelligence and fake news are discussed.
According to Tristan Harris, this is a "disinformation-for-profit business model."

THE CLEANERS

We live in a cultural period in which the impact of social media is more than just something we
notice when we find ourselves staring down at our phones or computers. It's something reinforced by
practically daily news headlines, with each new discovery appearing to be more sinister than the last. It's
so pervasive that it's easy to tune out, which is why the Sundance documentary The Cleaners packs such
a powerful punch. Moritz Riesewieck and Hans Block created a documentary on the people who work on
major internet businesses' content moderation teams. The video examines what they view as a real-
time global disaster, in which digital firms refuse to understand how their platforms are inciting hatred,
dissension, and violence. The documentary follows a group of people in Manila who spend their days
watching terrorist films, political propaganda, self-harm movies, and child pornography. They categorize
them into two groups: "ignore," where they leave the post alone, and "delete," where they remove the
post for breaking community rules. One porn purifier says she knew nothing about porn before starting
her work, making her an unlikely subject matter expert. Another porn cleaner is instructed by her
supervisor to be particularly cautious about anything related to ISIS because it is associated with the
terrorist organization. It's an epiphany for everyone who's ever wondered why seemingly innocuous
content sometimes vanishes from social media, but the narrative of the cleaners — and the devastating,
long-term impact of witnessing such horrific material day in and day out — is simply a vehicle for the
film's greater objectives. The film investigates how social networking sites have created a feedback loop
that is irreversibly destroying our real-world social fabric. Riesewieck and Block enlist the help of
journalists, ethicists, and former workers of major digital businesses to provide a macro view on how the
platforms were built. The filmmakers intercut footage from last year's Senate hearings with top legal
executives from Facebook, Google, and Twitter. The Cleaners follows the growth of social media from a
shared vision of a global village to a deadly network of fake news, extremism, and radicalization. The
Cleaners is a cyberpunk thriller told in the dark style of a cyberpunk thriller. It tackles the function of
content moderators who are paid to search through and remove what they believe to be unsuitable
content on the internet.