The Social Dilemma

“The Social Dilemma may finally convince you that we’re being watched, manipulated, and misled by unscrupulous platforms and attention-harvesting algorithms.”

— Vanity Fair

Emmy Award Winning: 7 nominations and 2 awards in 2021

Technology wizards have masterminded a new form of capitalism, and humanity is now the raw resource feeding the machine. Powerful, hidden artificial intelligence tasked with hijacking our attention is tearing apart social norms, jeopardizing truth and democracy, and putting civilization on a programmed path toward self-destruction.

Set in the dark underbelly of Silicon Valley, The Social Dilemma fuses investigative documentary with enlightening narrative drama—think An Inconvenient Truth meets The Matrix. Expert testimony from tech whistle-blowers exposes our disturbing predicament: the services Big Tech provides—search engines, networks, instant information, et cetera—are merely the candy that lures us to bite. Once we’re hooked and coming back for more, the real commodity they sell is their prowess to influence and manipulate us.

Award-winning filmmaker and environmentalist Jeff Orlowski (Chasing Ice, 2012; Chasing Coral, 2017) disrupts the disrupters by uncorking the invisible story purring from that mobile phone hidden in your pocket. Cunningly entertaining, The Social Dilemma sounds the alarm on surveillance capitalism in hopes of preserving the very fabric of our society before it’s too late.

Read the Vanity Fair interview with filmmaker Jeff Orlowski