2020年，Netflix的一部纪录片《The Social Dilemma》（中文译名：监视资本主义）上线。去年第一次看了这部纪录片，最近又重看了一遍。虽然我觉得自己对于社交媒体和网络世界有一定的认知，对于娱乐向的app有一定的自制力，以及对于网络上的信息有一定的辨识能力；但是当我看完这部纪录片还是有一些新的思考出现了。这期节目想聊聊关于这部纪录片的内容，以及我自己的一些思考。

Last year, I watched a documentary film named The Social Dilemma. The film features interviews with many former employees, executives, and other professionals from top tech companies and social media platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter. All of these experts talk about something we don't know about this digital world. For example, you think Google or Baidu is just a search box, and Facebook or Weibo or WeChat moment is a place to see what friends are doing. Not exactly. What you don't realize is that there is an entire group of engineers and professionals whose job is using your behavior on the Internet to track you and analyze you. That's called Big Data.
Today, I'm gonna say something about this Social Dilemma. I'm Yvonne, and welcome to BT English.

Big data, or 大数据, is a very popular concept in our daily life. Did you find something tricky here? We are not human beings any more, we are just data. Yes, we are objectified. But wait a second. Can we blame all the social medias for this objectification? I don't think so. It is we, people, that hand in our information to these social medias. Think about this. How often you are shopping in Taobao? How many things in your apartment are bought online? How long did you spend on the social media platforms everyday? "Oh, it's time to log in Tiktok and Weibo to find something new." We constantly need lots of information and interesting things to lead our life. We just cannot help scrolling cellphone to find next excitement.
Of course, there are pros and cons about the Internet. And I'm pretty sure everyone of you can list thousands of benefits we can get from the Internet. But besides these advantages, I wanna say something bad about this cyber world.

First of all, "If you are not paying for the product, you are the product." There are lots of free resources online, thanks to the Internet. But you really think all the resources are free? Let me tell you something. You paid for every single thing you got from the Internet even you didn't realize. How can it come? Maybe you would say, "I watched movies online for free, and I could download some academic materials online for free. " How did you get them? You paid attention to some ads which appeared in the middle of the movie; you register your phone number or your email for getting a free academic dissertation. You trade your attention and your private information for the movie and the dissertation. These attention and private information are invaluable products for these tech companies. That's why they could analyze and predict their consumers' psychology. Do you still think you get these resources for free? You paid much more than money.

Moreover, we are thrown into a huge competition in the social medias. In other words, the social medias are producing anxieties and depression all the time. Have you ever felt anxious about your job, your weight, your appearance, or relationship with your partner? When you're on social media, you felt unsatisfied with yourself particularly. I do remember one scenario in that movie. After more than ten times retakes, a teenage girl posts a photo on her instagram and waits for some likes. Besides lots of likes, she also got something unwanted. A comment said, "can you make your ears bigger? like an elephant?" Even though this cannot be qualified as a mean word, she still felt embarrassed immediately because of her ears. Even though the person who left the comment didn't mean to offend her, the teenage girl felt hurt actually. You would say "that's a girl issue, she's too sensitive and fragile." But could anybody guarantee that the next generation would have a healthy and holistic mental development under this competitive, anxious, depressed situation. Nobody could.

Last but not least, "fake news spread six times faster than true news." These days, I was overwhelmed by news about Russia-Ukraine war. Every morning, I wake up with updated number of how many people died and how many people get injured. Some posts in social media are often inflammatory, exaggerated and distorted. If I wanna know what is exactly happening in Ukraine, I have to pay much more efforts to distinguish truth from the false.

Of course, I am not saying these tech companies and social media platforms are all bad. They did bring us lots of convenience and benefits in our modern life. But maybe, we could keep alert to them. For example, buy what you really need, pay for products you want. Be aware of "there's no such thing as a free lunch. " Meanwhile, know who you are, don't let others' opinion influence you that easily. And improve your ability to do critical reasoning. We are not tools or data, but we are using the tools and data.

I highly recommend The Social Dilemma to you guys. If you have time to spare, this movie is a good choice.
I'm Yvonne and see you around.

BT English04: The Social Dilemma