囚徒困境困境_社会困境的有害叙述

I heard about The Social Dilemma for the first time last January, and got curious about it. Last week I finally took some time to enjoy an evening on my couch and watched it. I have to say that at first, I was excited about the idea of a movie shedding lights on the implications of technology in our society, as I believe we don’t talk enough about such aspects.

去年1月，我第一次听说了社会困境，对此感到好奇。 上周，我终于花了一些时间在沙发上度过一个夜晚，看着它。 我不得不说，起初，我为电影启发人们对技术对社会的影响感到兴奋，因为我认为我们对这些方面的讨论还不够。

As I started watching it, I got a feeling of unease. Don’t get me wrong: being a keen user of social media myself, I could easily relate with many of the concerns the documentary was talking about. Still, I had the impression that they tried to manipulate people and play with their fears (yes, exactly what they accuse social media of doing).

当我开始观看它时，我感到不安。 不要误会我的意思：我自己是社交媒体的敏锐用户，因此我可以轻松地与纪录片所谈论的许多担忧联系起来。 不过，我仍然给他们留下了印象，他们试图操纵人们并发挥他们的恐惧感(是的，正是他们指责社交媒体的所作所为)。

The more I watched it, the more this feeling became overwhelming. So I decided to watch it again, pay more attention to its narrative and analyse it.

我看的越多，这种感觉就越发不可收拾。 因此，我决定再次观看它，更多地关注它的叙述并对其进行分析。

1.许多活动家，研究人员和未从事技术工作但一直在向公众通报这些话题的人。 (1. There are plenty of activists, researchers and people who haven’t worked in tech but have been informing the public on these topics.)

In the past decade, social scientists and legal experts have entered the dialogue on the use of algorithms and big data to offer a more comprehensive interpretation of the consequences of technology in our society. They have shared their expertise on the theoretical foundations of critical algorithm studies to highlight the need for an emancipatory agenda for law, policy reform, and international development.

在过去的十年中，社会科学家和法律专家开始就算法和大数据的使用进行对话，以提供对技术对我们社会的影响的更全面的解释。 他们在关键算法研究的理论基础上分享了他们的专业知识，以强调法律，政策改革和国际发展的解放议程的必要性。

Despite the innovative and influential research coming from scholars, activists and many others who don’t have an “ex-Facebook” background but worked extremely hard to shed light on those problems, the documentary mentions none of them.

尽管来自学者，活动家和许多其他人的创新和影响力研究都没有“前Facebook”背景，但是他们为解决这些问题付出了极大的努力，但该纪录片却没有提及任何问题。

As a result, people are given just a partial and sometimes inaccurate perspective of the current issues. A missed opportunity to enrich the conversation with valuable voices, and show how the debate had been out there long before Tristan Harris joined Google.

结果，人们对当前问题的看法只是局部的，有时是不准确的。 一个错失良机，可以用有价值的声音丰富对话，并展示在Tristan Harris加入Google之前很久进行的辩论。

2.对社交媒体的使用进行病理检查并将其简化为成瘾性叙述是不准确和危险的。 (2. Pathologizing social media use and reducing it to an addiction narrative is inaccurate and dangerous.)

In 2018 Vladan Starcevic, Joël Billieux and Adriano Schimmenti published a paper on “Selfitis and Twitteritis” in which they challenge the addiction narrative around pathologizing social media, stressing on the need to step away from the medicalisation of people’s problematic relationship with technology. As stated in their paper:

在2018年，Vladan Starcevic，JoëlBillieux和Adriano Schimmenti发表了一篇关于“自发性疾病和推特炎”的论文，他们在社交媒体病态化方面挑战了成瘾性叙述，强调必须摆脱人们对与技术有问题的关系的医学化。 如他们的论文所述：

“Unusual and reward-driven human behaviours do not necessarily denote psychopathology and should not always be construed as disorders with a medical name, diagnostic instructions and suggestions for treatment.” (Vladan Starcevic et al., 2018)

“异常和奖励驱动的人类行为不一定表示精神病理学，也不应总是被解释为具有医学名称，诊断说明和治疗建议的疾病。” (Vladan Starcevic et al。，2018)

Shaping the narrative of social media through the lens of the “addiction narrative” implies that the only viable and “healthy” alternative is abstaining from using those platforms. Such dichotomy is way too simplistic and deliberately excludes the idea that moderate social media use can be beneficial, especially for young people. Other studies (see video below) have explored how social media can help develop social skills and provide youngsters with greater support especially those who experience exclusion, have disabilities or chronic illnesses.

通过“成瘾叙事”的镜头来塑造社交媒体的叙事意味着，唯一可行和“健康”的选择就是放弃使用这些平台。 这种二分法过于简单化，故意排除了适度使用社交媒体可能有益的想法，特别是对于年轻人。 其他研究(见下面的视频)探索了社交媒体如何帮助发展社交技能并为年轻人提供更大的支持，尤其是那些遭受排斥，残疾或慢性病的年轻人。

Besides, the documentary stresses on the surge of mobile social media in 2011 and it casually relates it to an increase in mental health conditions. Again, this account is too simplistic. Multiple other factors could and probably had played a role in the rise of mental health issues after 2011.

此外，该纪录片着重强调了2011年移动社交媒体的兴起，并将其与心理健康状况的增加随意联系在一起。 同样，此帐户过于简单。 2011年以后，其他多种因素可能也可能在精神健康问题的上升中发挥了作用。

3.再次缺少全局上下文。(3. Once again, the global context is missing.)

While watching the documentary I couldn’t help but notice that the majority of the people speaking were white, Western men who worked for tech companies always hoping and intending to do well. With more than half of the online world being from the Global South and nearly 50% of the global female population being online too, having some non-Western, non-male, perspectives would have been probably more accurate. A nice opportunity missed.

在观看纪录片时，我不禁注意到讲的大多数人都是白人，为科技公司工作的西方人总是希望并打算做得好。 由于超过一半的网络世界来自全球南方，全球将近50％的女性人口也都在线，因此，拥有一些非西方，非男性的观点可能会更加准确。 错失良机。

Also, as the major focus of the documentary is the idea of dystopian nightmare/ damages to wellbeing that social media creates, I was surprised to see there was no mention of practices such as doxing and the effects this has especially on marginalised communities. Inclusion matters, and the documentary misses the chance to create a conversation which actively includes marginalised and BAME communities, therefore failing to explore the systemic ways in which technology and social media can be, and have been, weaponised against such communities.

另外，由于纪录片的主要焦点是反乌托邦梦m /社交媒体造成的福祉损害观念，令我惊讶的是，没有提及诸如消遣等习俗及其对边缘化社区的影响。 包容性很重要，这部纪录片错过了建立对话的机会，该对话积极地包括了边缘化社区和BAME社区，因此未能探索系统的方式来利用技术和社交媒体来对付这些社区。

Finally, the documentary also fails to advocate the anti-Blackness of the Big Tech industry that has been proved to have a problem with inclusion and diversity — this would have contributed to expanding the issues beyond the Western lens, for once.

最后，这部纪录片也未能提倡已被证明存在包容性和多样性问题的大技术行业的反黑现象-这将有助于一次将问题扩展到西方之外。

I’m wondering if anyone would even bother listening to privacy advocates unless they are white men? I’m not sure about it, but maybe I’m just too cynical.

我想知道除非有人是白人，否则是否有人会不愿意去听取隐私权倡导者的声音？ 我不确定，但也许我太愤世嫉俗了。

4.许多公司不仅可以使用社交媒体平台，还可以访问我们的数据并加以利用。 (4. Plenty of companies have access to our data and exploit it, not only social media platforms.)

From the documentary, it seems that the systematic manipulation of human behaviour for profit is something that relates only to social media platforms. Unfortunately, there are plenty of companies that exploit data mining practices and manipulative technology. This is not even mentioned once. The problem with not bringing into the conversation companies such as Palantir for example, is that the audience is not given a more comprehensive picture on the real harms of who can access your data and what this is used for.

从这部纪录片看来，为牟利而对人类行为的系统操纵仅与社交媒体平台有关。 不幸的是，许多公司都在利用数据挖掘实践和操纵技术。 甚至没有提到过。 没有与对话公司(例如Palantir)进行对话的问题是，听众无法获得关于谁可以访问您的数据及其用途的真正危害的更全面的了解。

Since I mentioned Palantir, I want to quickly explain what I mean when I say that the harm extends far beyond your social media presence. Palantir is a private Silicon Valley company that essentially builds surveillance software. Its software has been developed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, aimed (mostly but not exclusively) at increasingly automated intelligence officers’ work. It didn’t take too long for them to extend beyond the national security and intelligence sector and sell their service into the commercial world to companies such as J.P. Morgan. Only a few months ago the British Government was in conversation with Palantir to give them access to UK residents’ health data.

自从我提到Palantir以来，我想快速解释一下当我说危害远远超出您的社交媒体影响时的意思。 Palantir是一家硅谷私人公司，主要生产监视软件。 它的软件是在9/11攻击后开发的，旨在(大多数但不是唯一地)针对日益自动化的情报人员的工作。 他们花了很短的时间扩展到了国家安全和情报部门，并将其服务出售给商业世界，例如JP Morgan。 仅在几个月前，英国政府正在与Palantir进行对话，以使他们能够访问英国居民的健康数据。

Creepy right? It’s not just social media.

令人毛骨悚然吧？ 不只是社交媒体。

5.主角对技术决定论的幼稚想法还不足以令人信服。 (5. Protagonists’ naive idea of technological determinism is not convincing enough.)

Towards the end of the documentary, there seems to be a general agreement among speakers that is the capitalist logic that moves social media. The emancipatory potential of such new information technologies is highlighted throughout the documentary stressing on how creations such as the Like button were primarily meant as tools to “spread positivity”. Then, for these TechBros, there was a sort of religious awakening.

纪录片快要结束时，演讲者之间似乎达成了一个普遍共识，那就是资本主义逻辑推动着社交媒体的发展。 在整个纪录片中，都着重强调了这种新信息技术的解放潜力，并着重强调了诸如“赞”按钮之类的创作主要是作为“传播积极性”的工具。 然后，对于这些TechBros来说，是一种宗教上的觉醒。

Such optimistic vision of the future, which conveys in the well-known Californian Ideology, seems to ignore the key role of taxpayers’ dollars in the creation of such technology and the effects of the exclusion of public institutions from the construction of cyberspace. This results in an increase in the fragmentation of the American society into adverse, hostile and racially-determined classes (Barbrook and Cameron, 1995). To be more specific: the Californian Ideology is mostly based on the idea of self-correcting technological systems which require no intervention by the Governments.

这种对未来的乐观看法传达了著名的加利福尼亚意识形态，似乎无视纳税人的钱在创造这种技术中的关键作用以及将公共机构排除在网络空间建设之外的影响。 这导致美国社会分裂为不利，敌对和种族决定的阶级的情况有所增加(Barbrook and Cameron，1995)。 更具体地说：加利福尼亚意识形态主要基于自我校正技术系统的思想，不需要政府干预。

Unfortunately, the documentary has none or little mention of the debate around regulating social media, regulatory paths such as GDPR and CCPA and the benefits those brought in terms of data protection to citizens.

不幸的是，这部纪录片没有或几乎没有提及有关监管社交媒体，GDPR和CCPA等监管途径以及为公民提供数据保护带来的好处的辩论。

Instead of insisting on holding someone accountable and regulating a system that has an impact on people’s lives, the focus keeps being on absenteeism from social platforms and on the need for changing individual behaviour (while being unable to due to the asymmetric knowledge in place).

与其坚持要求某人承担责任并规范对人们生活有影响的系统，不如将注意力集中在社交平台上的缺勤以及改变个人行为的需要上(尽管由于知识不对称而无法做到)。

纪录片的危险叙事 (The documentary’s dangerous narrative)

There would be so much more to analyse around the narrative in The Social Dilemma. For example, the stress on the rising of polarisation levels which is mentioned without referring to the partisanship and polarisation shifts which occurred before the advent of social media.

关于《社会困境》中的叙述，还有很多要分析的东西。 例如，提到的两极分化水平上升的压力没有提到社交媒体出现之前发生的党派关系和两极分化。

Undoubtedly, some points mentioned in the movie are valid and interesting: the way the engagement on social media works, the filter bubbles we are trapped in, the rise of fake news and the power of algorithms.

毫无疑问，电影中提到的一些观点是有效和有趣的：社交媒体参与的工作方式，我们被困的过滤器气泡，虚假新闻的兴起以及算法的力量。

But as much as I appreciate the effort in trying to warn people about privacy issues and the importance of data protection, The Social Dilemma also seems to perpetuate a harmful narrative which misses out important aspects, and which may result in reinforcing itself due to the popularity documentary is gaining.

但是，尽管我很欣赏为警告人们有关隐私问题和数据保护的重要性所做的努力，但社会困境似乎也使有害的叙述永久存在，这种叙述遗漏了重要方面，并且由于受欢迎而可能导致自我增强纪录片在增加。

参考书目和进一步阅读： (Bibliography and further readings:)

Barbrook, R. and Cameron, A., 1995. The Californian Ideology. [online] Mute. Available at: https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/californian-ideology

Barbrook，R.和Cameron，A.，1995年。 《加利福尼亚意识形态》 。 [在线]静音。 可在以下网址获得： https ： //www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/californian-ideology

Starcevic, V., Billieux, J. and Schimmenti, A., 2018. Selfitis, selfie addiction, Twitteritis: Irresistible appeal of medical terminology for problematic behaviours in the digital age. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 52(5), pp.408–409.

Starcevic，V.，Billieux，J.和Schimmenti，A.，2018年。自发性疾病，自拍照成瘾，Twitteritis：医学术语对数字时代有问题的行为具有不可抗拒的吸引力。 澳大利亚和新西兰精神病学杂志，52(5)，第408–409页。

More on Palantir and the NHS data: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/we-must-be-told-what-cummings-and-palantir-are-doing-nhs-data/

有关Palantir和NHS数据的更多信息： https : //www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/we-must-be-told-what-c​​ummings-and-palantir-are-doing-nhs-data/

More on technological determinism: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/technological-determinism

有关技术确定性的更多信息： https : //www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/technologic-determinism