I watched this the other day. It was interesting to know how much more these companies are storing of my information than I actually realized they were. It makes sense to think about Facebook “selling” your information or ads, but creating a psych profile and then using that to predict your purchasing habits is somewhat nefarious. I suppose it’s fine, until the A.I takes over and completely ruins your life. The points in the doc seemed very legitimate, until you take a second to think.

We, as Americans, have been playing this destabilization game for a pretty long time on our own. The term “banana republic” actually meant something before it was a trendy clothing store. That was waay before social media, and it’s a problem that we still haven’t fully addressed. Are any of the conspiracy theories that are ACTUALLY true ever been addressed in a way? I mean, we have a long history of doing pretty nefarious things in the name of our government, economy and way of life. Freaking out now because it’s “social media” seems a bit hypocritical. It’s also a sideshow to the real problem.

Martin Luther King, Jr was spied upon by the CIA. There’s no doubt there. He was assassinated, that’s true. But many people don’t know that one of the reasons he was targeted was not only because of race, but also because he spoke about wealth inequality, as well as the political war machine. Promoting a ideology about having a guaranteed income or more money is not in the cards. Money makes the world go round, and people realizing how injust their lives are due to the wealth gap is definitely something those in power would prefer the “poors” not know. They’re actually still doing it right now.

We’re seeing riots over police-which are probably justified and true but not the real issue. Meanwhile, we, as the richest country in the world, STILL don’t have universal health care, STILL don’t have universal basic income, and ONLY received $1200 as a one time payment. Canada has given it’s residents $10,000 so far, and probably will give more. Oh, and it has universal health care. We’re giving people $1 million dollar bills from the hospital to recover from COVID and those insurance agencies are playing it off like they don’t have COVID but some other “really bad sickness”. What do you think will happen when we get A.I and robots that can finally do those menial jobs that humans currently do?

So, saying Facebook is bad, a dopamine addiction, ruining our children, is true. It’s true that technology is a wonderful thing that simultaneously brings good and bad into the world. However, it’s false to raise the fear that it’s something that’s “worse than ever”. It’s hypocritical that they mention how much news thrives on selling fear, but the documentary does it itself. Or the fact that we’ve destabilized countless governments for companies, profits, oil, secrets and more, and when it finally happens to our own society, we cry about how fragile we are.

Seems like the pot calling the kettle black to me. Black pots matter.