‘The Social Dilemma’: A Look at Social Networks (Column 335)

With God’s help

Disclaimer: This post was translated from Hebrew using AI (ChatGPT 5 Thinking), so there may be inaccuracies or nuances lost. If something seems unclear, please refer to the Hebrew original or contact us for clarification.

Yesterday I watched the film “The Social Dilemma”, which deals with social networks and their impact on our lives. The film is built from interviews with central figures in the social-media industry (Facebook, Google, Twitter, and so on), who speak about how a few people in Silicon Valley are engineering our society, and whenever they wish they set billions of people in motion as if we were marionettes on a board. Orwell’s “Big Brother” is already here. In parallel, the film follows several specific teens who are “engineered” by three tech guys from afar (in Silicon Valley) who feed them information and prompts, thereby getting them to do and act precisely how—and when—the engineers decide.

It seems to me that the interviewees are mainly people who left the social-media world and are now active in creating more humane and conscientious technology, and as far as I understood, some of them left because of the moral and social problems described in the film. The film has been a big hit in recent days, and I received quite a few recommendations to treat it as mandatory viewing. I indeed found it thought-provoking and even scary. But in my view it also contains quite a few flaws, and—as I will try to show here— to some extent it tries to do to us exactly what it warns against.

Initial Correspondence

My interest in the film began with an email I received from Gil a few days ago:

I didn’t see that you wrote about this, but there’s an opportunity now: the mass addiction to social networks and the smartphone is sharply portrayed in a new film that just went up on Netflix, featuring interviews with developers from Facebook/Twitter and more. It’s a scary film—and it neatly illustrates the matter of fake news, the problem of lacking any yardstick for truth, and the ruin this is bringing, and will bring, to democracy and to humanity in general. I won’t go on at length; there are several talks about this on TED, and in Hebrew, Micah Goodman is currently writing a book on it and has put up two excellent YouTube lectures. I’ll attach a few links in a moment.

I think there’s a significant place to expand on this from a philosophical, human, and Jewish perspective. There’s a fairly urgent call here, since according to many, we are the last generation that still remembers another way of living, one not constantly monitored by artificial intelligence. (Sorry for the drama—I didn’t have time to make it shorter 🙂 )

He included a link to a lecture by Micah Goodman, which I’m sharing here for readers of the site (I note that I haven’t listened to it).

I replied to him:

I’ll think about it and check. At first glance it seems to me too dramatic and hysterical. We’ve grown used to many changes and will likely grow used to, and cope with, this as well.

He wrote back:

In any case, it’s worth your watching.

I hope you’re right. As a young father I’m very troubled by my children’s childhood, which could be saturated with screens and influences I have no control over and which shouldn’t even be within their conscious horizon, etc. And so on.

Regarding the claim that we’ll cope with it, they address the point that this time it’s different because the change in computing power and this technology is growing at an exponential rate—a pace that human brain evolution can’t keep up with, etc., etc.

I ended the exchange with a short response (before watching the film):

As an older father, I can tell you that children go through many trials, and they are never under our control (and good thing, too). Every generation has its own trials (exponential or not—the generation is always certain such trials have never existed), and sooner or later it develops the appropriate antibodies. Sometimes it takes time and there are troubling interim stages, but in the end there will be tools to cope. Sites that try to present systematic, sober—above all, critical—thinking in the face of the torrent of information, ignorance, and fake, are part of those tools/antibodies. Therefore, we must be careful not to be control freaks and to let go. Children and people need to live in the era they inhabit. To cope, and not to fear or flee from it. The Torah was not given to the ministering angels.

We should remember that the pre-internet, pre-screens era suffered (and still suffers, in groups not exposed to these tools) from no less serious problems: closed-mindedness toward other views and arguments, inability to critique what you’re told, control over power and information channels and censorship, and so on. Decentralization, in my eyes, is usually good—until proven otherwise. There are always disadvantages, and when you put them in focus, it looks apocalyptic, especially if you make an effort to present it that way. As the wisest of all men already said: “Do not say the former days were better than these…”. Yep, he’s right.

Today, after watching, I must say the film is rather disturbing, but my basic position remains. My feeling was that, in a certain sense, the film tries to do to its viewers what it itself warns against—namely, to move them to action based on the agenda and the presentation of information and arguments by the creators and interviewees, who are ostensibly authorities and hence the viewer accepts their judgments and assessments as objective fact. I’m fairly confident the interviewees themselves were partners in the project of the film (I have no concrete data, certainly not to what degree; but I’m convinced there was some involvement). One must remember that the people who appear in the film come from the very world of social engineering they warn against—that is their core expertise. Now they are using it for the other side, and it is still an attempt to engineer a collective social consciousness. Any critical viewer can see this isn’t journalism or objective op-ed work, but an agenda conveyed by skilled people (with good intentions, in my estimation).

Here I wish to expand somewhat. But, in light of Gil’s query, I will preface by saying that in my opinion none of this has anything to do with Judaism. This is a universal, all-human question, and I don’t think Judaism has anything particular to say about it, any more than any atheist gentile would. At root, the question belongs to ethics and to common-sense reasoning, and in this matter Judaism has no unique statement (or any statement at all).

The Main Claims

I will summarize here several of the main points raised in the film (there are quite a few problematic claims and arguments, particularly from some of the academic experts interviewed there, but to keep things manageable I won’t delve into all that in detail here).

First, Big Brother controls all our thoughts, the information presented to us, the suggestions we receive—and through these, our actions and positions. Second, there was a very smart line there: wherever you don’t pay for the service, you are not the customer—you are the product. A person doesn’t pay to use Facebook, Twitter, or Google, precisely because he himself is the product being sold. Contrary to what people think, these platforms aren’t intended for us. We are not their customers; we are the product they sell. Their customers are the advertisers who fund the service. Therefore, the service we receive is not shaped by our interest (though it is shaped by our desires, for the goal is to capture our attention), but by the interests of the advertisers and, essentially, the owners and managers of the platform itself (who want to maximize their profits).

To understand how this works, we must know that what all these actors want comes down mainly to two things: to maximize our screen-time on their platform, and to maximize marketing success (to make the ads effective). These two interests determine all conduct vis-à-vis each of us. Thus, each person receives selective information tailored to his taste and history as learned by the algorithm, and of course woven into this is the type and style of ads and products that will work most effectively on him. He receives this as seasoning on top of the information he seeks—before, after, and within it. Sometimes the information determines the ad, and sometimes vice versa. Contrary to what many of us think, the information presented to us is not a uniform Google home page (the young people who live this stuff chuckle at an old guy like me discovering simple things). Not all of us see the same information. Even if we search for the exact same thing, we won’t get identical results. The answers are tailored to us, and of course everything is framed by the marketing interests of the advertisers and the platform managers, as decided by the Algorithm, may it live long and prosper.

The film tells us that this cult of social-network creators/managers in Silicon Valley, and the advertisers who use them, study in a special program at Stanford with “know-it-all” psychologists who teach them how to play with us and manipulate us at will. It is presented there as if this psychology is a set of solid facts and techniques by which those equipped with them can control people—and through them, the world. You are given tools by which you can do with people whatever you want, and the entire world around you automatically loses any human image and the capacity for independent decision. I must say that my trust in psychology in general is quite limited, so I don’t fully buy this part (see below on the importance of the statistical aspect of the issue). With all due respect to marketing techniques and psychology, they’re, in my eyes, quite overrated. It’s clear they have power and can influence, but the film presents it as if there’s deterministic programming of each one of us and of the masses overall. That I did not buy at all.

It’s important to note that these network managers and creators are not portrayed as evil, and they’re probably not. On the contrary, most are driven by good intentions and of course by a legitimate desire to profit. As is known, they even carry out and invest huge sums in altruistic ventures, and in my estimation a large portion is driven by good intentions. Their products were originally designed for our benefit and indeed enable a great deal of good. The film does not ignore the enormous benefit in social networks: coordinating organ transplants, public information, ridesharing groups, exchange of opinions, charities and philanthropy, accessible academic and commercial information, entertainment of varying levels, social connections, interests, and many more enormous benefits that the networks yield for us—and not by accident. That’s what they’re for, since this benefit is what draws us to them, which is their interest. Yet through all this the creators and entrepreneurs want to earn money. That’s perfectly legitimate. So where does it fail? It’s all because of the film’s hero, our master the algorithm.

From the moment they created the algorithm—that abstract demon that drives us all—it escapes the bottle and becomes a creature in its own right. The golem rises up against its creator and against all of us, and it manages them and us alike. Thus, for example, the creators of Facebook’s “Like” button (amazing how this tiny, seemingly naïve thing apparently required a large, very talented development team and seems to have been a huge, innovative tech project) thought they were bringing to the world a tool for expressing empathy, exchanging opinions, and creating more effective social ties (and of course profit for themselves—but as stated, that’s fully legitimate). But in the end a “monstrous” device emerged that makes us fake and lie, or pushes teens to undergo plastic surgery to look better and get more likes and followers—and when that doesn’t happen, there are severe reactions. In not a few cases this leads to depression and even suicide (against the backdrop of too few likes). At this stage, despite the good intentions, the Like governs much of our lives—and not necessarily for the good. The algorithm has replaced its creators, and the original intentions have been lost to oblivion. At such technological scales and such numbers of people, it’s very hard to predict what our algorithm will yield and what exactly all the direct and indirect consequences of our good intentions will be.

The Results

Indeed, there are several problematic outcomes to a situation in which networks and algorithms rule us all. First, depressions and suicides—and of course the frustrations underlying them. The network creates, for many of us, unreal models of beauty and intelligence and thus generates envy and unreasonable competition. The network exposes the private sphere to all eyes and severely harms unmediated human relationships (everyone is in front of a screen instead of talking and meeting, and for children—instead of playing). It creates rampant shaming and brings artificiality into our lives and expressions, fakery and lies (to look good and impressive), various frauds and swindles, crimes that are very accessible and on scales unknown in the past, and above all (which, according to the film’s creators, underlies everything) the loss of our yardsticks for truth. This is the much-spoken-of “fake” phenomenon (incidentally, spoken about mostly on the networks themselves—but there’s no way to know whether the talk about fake isn’t fake itself. Your guarantor needs a guarantor).

Already here I’ll say that I don’t agree that the loss of yardsticks for truth and facts is the root of everything, but I do agree that it is one of our age’s main problems. By the way, it started even before the age of networks. Postmodernism built a cognitive and cultural platform that powerfully fosters these phenomena, since it does not, in principle, recognize the distinction between truth and falsehood, between fact and fake. On that ground it’s very easy for social networks to grow the current chaos. These two mechanisms—the technological and the cultural-intellectual—feed each other and greatly amplify the familiar effects that existed even beforehand.

It’s important to understand that precisely because of the flood of information, there is no avoiding a selective approach to it. You can’t read everything, consume everything, and believe everything. The items also contradict one another. Therefore, a person must filter the information and form positions regarding it. But the one who usually does the selection for us is the Algorithm, may it live long, and not always we ourselves. Furthermore, most of us aren’t aware that we are nourished by selective information, because it’s presented as if it were objective journalism, uniform for all. There are pictures and documentation and crushing arguments and quotes (true or not)—and what could be more certain than what the eyes see?! Thus, people lose the ability to form an independent position. The algorithm helps us filter information and chooses, in our stead, what information we’re exposed to.

The result is that each person lives in a bubble always tailored to his positions, society, and culture—and that strengthens them in a crazy process of positive feedback. In engineering terms, positive feedback is a self-reinforcing mechanism that loops over and over and eventually leads to an explosion. Thus, if someone searches for conspiracies and tends to believe them, he will always be served conspiracy sites (the film has amusing demonstrations about flat-earth, and about a center that spreads extreme opinions and suspicions of conspiracy). With time, that person becomes more and more convinced that everything around him is a conspiracy (except for the information he himself gets about conspiracies). Try explaining to him that this itself is the conspiracy of the algorithm manipulating him. Of course, conspiracies do exist in the world, and it’s clear that it’s very important to be aware of them and to be critical and suspicious about information and claims presented to me. But positive feedback creates a situation in which everything that doesn’t fit our a priori assumptions is taken as a conspiracy. The person loses healthy, constructive suspicion and becomes an obsessive conspiracist who can’t believe anything. You can’t talk to him, certainly not change his mind. He becomes more and more convinced—since all the information presented to him supports his position—and if anything slips through that doesn’t fit, it’s presented as a biased conspiracy. The ultimate righteousness is found with each one of us—and there’s no one to talk to.

If the algorithm identifies a person as having a right-wing worldview, he will receive only articles, information, or opinions (and conspiracy theories too) that broadcast on that wavelength. He will blissfully hear how the Supreme Court persecutes “our people” and is always for the Arabs; how leftists are evil and traitors—and stupid, of course—and so on. And if he’s a leftist, he will hear how Bibi and Bennett once again lashed out at the judicial system for no reason, and why settlers murder and burn all the Arabs and steal their lands with government help. In such a situation, even if every item of information a person receives were true (and it isn’t), the selectivity by itself causes us to hold rigid, unlistening, biased, unbalanced positions. Thus the world is divided, in each of our eyes, into righteous and wicked; to positions with absolute justice versus foolish, baseless positions; what fits all the facts and arguments versus what contradicts them all. Needless to say, the list is fixed and unchanging. There is no sensible argument or fact that supports a leftist position if you’re right-wing—or the reverse. Just look it up on Google and see I’m right: the whole world is against us/for us.

We see that the algorithm determines the information, opinions, experiences, advertisements—everything—presented to us, according to our taste. So the claim arises that, in fact, I and my positions do underlie it all: I am the one who chooses the direction—right or left, conspiracy or not—not the algorithm. That is of course true in principle, but the ability to change position and taste hardly exists in such a situation. The algorithm locks me into my initial stance and causes it to strengthen artificially and inauthentically, and prevents me from being receptive to any opposing argument or fact.

Think for a moment about the situation around us. No one is willing to be convinced that Bibi is a criminal, if he’s one of his supporters, or that he has good traits and positive aims, if he’s one of his opponents. Bibi is either the ultimate victim or the absolute ultimate villain. All the facts and arguments point in the same direction—but that direction, of course, depends on who you are and which site you read. The right and the Republicans don’t believe in global warming because they are nourished by selective information directed their way. But the left also isn’t willing to hear counter-arguments pointing out that these predictions are speculative and agenda-driven and not very well grounded. Each side scorns the counter-arguments since it is convinced all the facts show it’s right. And so it is on every aspect of our lives. Each of us is ostensibly open to the whole world but actually closed in a bubble. It’s a bubble of taste, a bubble of ideology and social milieu, a bubble of fashion and consumption, and more. Each such bubble is fixed, solid, and unchangeable. Moreover, because of the algorithm, there’s linkage between the bubbles: the left believes scientific facts about sexual orientation and climate change and the right and the religious don’t. Why? Just because. It’s always a conspiracy of leftists—or the stupidity of disconnected right-wingers. These bubble(s) touch every plane of our lives: from our consumption, to the information we receive (which always strengthens our positions), to our taste in beauty and art, role models, political views, values, and more. Thus are formed our positions about LGBT phenomena and religious or secular coercion. Each person entrenches himself in a bubble fueled by selective information, which becomes more and more impenetrable.

Frustratingly, in such a state discourse becomes impossible. You can’t publish negative information about the judicial system among left-wing circles, nor positive information about it among right-wing circles. Every bit of information or argument either way is accompanied by millions of conspiracy theories, and by claims that there are many facts that prove it—or the opposite—with signs and wonders. You can’t persuade or be persuaded, because facts no longer play a role. You feel like you’re talking to a wall.

Thus, when you see who signed the op-ed, or the article, or the comment—you already know exactly what will appear in it. There are very few surprises in today’s discourse. Almost no substantive engagement—everything is agenda-driven. Again, because facts don’t exist (they’re fake), and what’s left is only “the agenda.” I thought to demonstrate this via the varied and utterly predictable reactions to Kalman Liebskind’s article arguing—most cogently, as is his wont—to grant Bibi a pass on condition that he resign. Needless to say, Liebskind is getting hammered from right and left, with no engagement with his arguments (tell me who wrote it and I’ll tell you what’s written there). But I decided that’s superfluous. Just open the networks at random; there isn’t a column or comment that doesn’t suffer from this, most of them in a very severe, substantive way. With so many opinions and columns, discourse has utterly evaporated.

It is very hard today to distinguish fake from real information, which allows manipulators and interested parties to play with us and with the society we live in. The algorithm—sometimes with the help of such manipulators who know how to use it—triggers revolutions and social struggles in various countries. These are driven by a great deal of popular certainty in the justice of the cause (and in the wickedness of the manipulative mechanism, the deep state), and all this may rest on pure manipulation and fake. On this, very intelligent people fall, including those fully aware of the role of social networks (the interviewees describe how they themselves—those who helped create the algorithm and understand it well—keep falling for it). Thus the algorithm, with or without manipulators using it, also influences election results in foreign countries and our political fate.

In this sense, the film did succeed in defining for me feelings that have accompanied me very strongly in recent years. For some time I’ve felt frustration and helplessness about what is happening around me. Discourse has been lost. Facts stopped playing a role since there are always opposing “facts,” suspicions, and conspiracies (some justified), and a range of interpretations (some truly idiotic yet presented with certainty and by “experts” who only spread an agenda). You can never really know who’s right and who’s wrong; what information is reliable and what isn’t. Not to mention analytical abilities and independent thinking, which seem to have vanished. People present utterly foolish arguments with absolute confidence—since all the facts point that way. And besides, this or that genius or expert said so explicitly. Why is he a genius or expert? Because he tells the truth—that is, he thinks like me. Is his genius relevant to the discussion? Surely yes. Why? Because—that’s why; he has a doctorate. It reminds me of Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) arguments like: “All the great rabbis think/say X,” which likewise typify people who grow up in a bubble. Now we’re all Haredim.

You know what? Who’s to say that everything I’ve written here isn’t part of a conspiracy that was run on me (by means of the film itself) against social networks? Maybe all this information is wrong and someone decided to stuff me with it, along with the frightening interpretations and assessments that go with it?! And maybe I am now running a conspiracy on you…

Well, that’s enough of a not-very-systematic description of the state of affairs and the problems flooding us. We all know this, but it’s important to lay it out on the table for discussion and try to define and understand it.

Between Personal Programming and Mass Engineering

Very clearly in the film’s background are a few clear precedents for this genre. The prominent films are The Truman Show and The Matrix (the editing explicitly hints at them), and no less than those—the book that was probably first in the genre: 1984 by George Orwell. I mean especially the frightening concept he coined there, “Big Brother.” This is the person or entity who controls every individual (like Truman’s director) and programs him from afar at will. The film’s description and discourse push us brutally in those directions, and thus the filmmakers are plucking strings that are wired into all of us (as I said, they specialize in social engineering—they learned from the best). Hence my claim above that this film, despite its good intentions and the truth in parts of it, conducts a kind of manipulation on us, of the very kind it speaks about. One of the main manifestations of that is the blurring between the personal and the statistical, as I’ll now explain.

Throughout, the film is accompanied by personal scenes that follow several teens and their parents trying, unsuccessfully, to cope with addiction to screens and their influence. In a secret, computer- and monitor-filled bunker in Silicon Valley stand three young “villains,” Ashkenazi (WASPs), who control everything the screens show those teens. When one of them reacts in a way that doesn’t satisfy them, they remotely push to his screen a message from a friend, or a notice that his ex is dating someone else, and of course various advertisements; thereby they make him act, react, and consume according to their will. If that doesn’t work, the next tool will surely do the job. These teens are shown as zombies driven by that small group controlling their thoughts and actions—like puppets in a theater.

The feeling one gets watching the film is of absolute, deterministic control by Big Brother over each of us. But in my opinion, this theme, which accompanies the film throughout, reflects one of its chief flaws. The control at hand, in the case of social networks, is statistical. No one can program me or decide for me. The algorithm can influence me—or rather, my reference group—but that influence is statistical, not deterministic. It doesn’t intervene inside my head, contrary to what they try to sell us; rather, it tries to shape an environment that will drive me to act and think in certain ways. That’s a very important difference, as I’ll explain in a moment.

First, a note about Orwell: it’s more complex there. He indeed speaks about the Communist regime, and there control over the masses was exercised through continuous propaganda and the closing of information channels, but there was also suppression of the individual (through monstrous secret services, threats, informers, etc.). Therefore, the film’s use—even if not explicit—of Orwellian concepts is an unfair presentation of the problem and an unfair influence on the viewer. Likewise in The Matrix and Truman, control is over a specific person and not merely a statistical matter; it’s therefore not similar to what happens here. Social engineering is not the same as remote control over a single person, and it is neither correct nor honest to conflate the two. This comparison is a manipulation the filmmakers deploy.

I’ve often illustrated this phenomenon via the dispute between Maimonides and Raavad in Laws of Repentance, ch. 6. Maimonides asks there (halakha 5):

“But is it not written in the Torah, ‘They will enslave them and afflict them’?—behold, He decreed upon the Egyptians to do evil. And it is written, ‘This people will rise up and stray after the gods of the strangers of the land’—behold, He decreed upon Israel to worship idolatry. So why exact punishment from them?”

Why punish the Egyptians or the people who worship idolatry if God decreed and predetermined that this would happen?

Maimonides answers:

“Because He did not decree upon a specific known individual that he would be the one who strays. Rather, each and every one of those who stray to idolatry—if he had not wanted to worship, he would not have worshiped. The Creator merely informed [Moses] of the way of the world. To what is this comparable? To one who says: this people will include righteous and wicked. It is not for that reason that the wicked person can say, ‘It has already been decreed upon me to be wicked,’ because He informed Moses that there would be wicked people in Israel—as it is said, ‘For the poor will never cease from the land.’ So too the Egyptians: each and every one of those who afflicted and harmed Israel—if he had not wanted to harm them, he had it within his power not to. He did not decree upon a specific individual; He only let it be known that the fate of his progeny would be to be enslaved in a land not theirs.”

He distinguishes between a divine decree upon the public, as a whole, and the conduct of the individual. Even if there is a decree upon the public, it is statistical, and therefore it does not necessarily impinge upon the individual’s freedom to choose as he understands and wills. Each individual acts according to his understanding and decision, though the public distribution is set out in general.

Raavad objects strongly:

“These are long words without seasoning, and by my life I almost say they are childish talk. Will the Creator say to the ones who stray, ‘Why did you stray?’—and they will answer, ‘We were not mentioned by name so that we could say the decree was upon us.’ The strayers will say to Him, ‘Upon whom, then, did Your decree fall—upon those who did not stray? See, Your decree was not fulfilled.’”

If you fix the statistics in advance, you have thereby restricted the individual. Suppose there are a thousand Egyptians and 999 choose the good (not to enslave Israel). Does the last one have freedom to choose?

I think Raavad is wrong. We’re speaking of influence, not of determination. Clearly, many things influence our decisions; does that mean we lack choice? To say something about public behavior—does that mean the individual’s behavior is determined in a deterministic manner? Certainly not.

But for our purposes the claim is even weaker. Raavad is right that if 999 Egyptians choose the good, the last will have no choice (otherwise God is wrong). God will cause him to choose evil so that His decree will be fulfilled. But in our case even Raavad’s point is irrelevant. In a divine decree the statistics are fixed in advance, and the individuals behave so that the statistical decree is realized (because God is not mistaken, and He apparently fixed the statistical outcome beforehand). But in the social engineering described in our film, the situation is the opposite. Nothing is predetermined. The statistical outcome (say, that 900 out of 1,000 people will buy shoes made by X) is not fixed in advance; it is the product of the decisions of the individuals. Therefore, here there is no restriction on anyone’s freedom. Each person can decide how to treat the information and the ads presented to him, and the total yields some statistical outcome. Here, even if 999 people choose not to buy, there is no necessity that the last one will buy. De facto, in the end the statistics “work,” but that is not the result of a deterministic dictate.[1] To see this as programming human beings is demagoguery and manipulation.

True, the networks and the biased information they present to us influence our decisions and our ways of thinking—but what doesn’t influence us? Is other information not influential? Do our circumstances and surroundings not influence us? Without the networks, are all our decisions pure? Does our education not influence us? Does society not influence us? Are all these in our hands? Yes, the networks’ influence is stronger and it operates on much larger populations, but in essence it’s the same matter. Human freedom is the autonomy to decide how to act within given constraints and circumstances. The mere existence of circumstances does not contradict human freedom to decide. I’m not saying everything is fine and the networks behave properly and there’s no problem. Moreover, sometimes quantity turns into quality—that is, statistical influence becomes problematic when it is too intense and too broad. Here I am only claiming that the portrayal as if we’re in Orwell’s “Big Brother,” and as if there’s deterministic programming of our consciousness and thinking, is a highly skewed and exaggerated framing.

Incidentally, much of the evidence offered for the “Big Brother” thesis about social networks hangs on the precision of statistical predictions. The person steering the market can tell you that using a certain tool will yield an 8% rise in consumption of some product, or in voting for Democrats or Republicans. That precision engenders an atmosphere of deterministic control over our fate and thoughts—i.e., a Big Brother feeling. But this is an error born of statistical misunderstanding. By definition, the larger the sampled population, the closer the outcomes will converge to the statistical prediction (the expectation). If you flip a coin 10 times, the chance of getting the expected result (5 heads and 5 tails) is very small. But if you flip it a million times, you’ll be very close to 50% on each side. This is the “law of large numbers” in statistics. Since modern social networks operate on billions of human beings, it’s no wonder that predictions about the results of their activity are more accurate than in the past. But that in no way testifies to tighter, deterministic programming.

I reiterate: this propaganda likely stems from real concern and good intentions, and there is truth to the speakers’ claims. But the exaggerated description they use is still not straight. In my opinion it stems from the interviewees’ own outlook, which sees the human being as a statistical cog within a programmed crowd. In that sense, their old view remains—the one apparently adopted when they worked on the other side of the barricade, namely inside the social networks themselves. That view now boomerangs in the opposite direction, but it’s still the same infuriating determinism. As I noted, the creators’ capabilities and methods likely come from there as well.

Are These Really New Problems?

Think for a moment about the situation before social networks. Readers of Haaretz were a closed bubble that didn’t acknowledge the existence of other opinions—exactly like readers of Makor Rishon. Discourse between these groups barely existed and hardly could. I remember when my book Two Wagons came out, I was sure it would reach broad segments of the public, for what young person isn’t interested in questions of truth and certainty? The book is not religious in any sense; I would have expected its reach to be independent of social and ideological groups. Of course, I was wrong. The book was read almost exclusively in the shtiebel. Life in ideological bubbles was not invented in the era of social networks. On the contrary, networks open up many diverse possibilities to burst out of the shtieblach (the bubbles), though many don’t use them. Ultimately, then and now, it depends on the person. Those seeking engagement and exposure to other views will do so—only that most people prefer to entrench in their bubble and remain right and conformist with their surroundings. That is human nature, not a product of social networks.

It’s true that today everything is magnified tenfold—both the possibility to open up and the bubble-ness. Beyond that, today the feeling that I know everything and nothing can surprise me is much stronger, which greatly boosts the confidence in the absolute justice of “my bubble.” But as noted, the possibility for thinking, open, less-conformist people to open up has likewise increased tenfold.

Indeed, the deluge of information has created a problem of a wholly different magnitude in the loss of yardsticks for truth. As I described above, today anyone can entrench in his position more easily, because he will always find data and conspiratorial theories to explain why he’s right and why the opposing facts and arguments are “position” and manipulation. In this sense there is a feeling—as I described—that it’s truly harder to conduct discourse. Once, they simply wouldn’t hear me. Today they hear me, but usually don’t listen and aren’t willing to weigh. What happens today is that even if you meet someone with an opposite position (and the likelihood of that has greatly risen in the age of networks), the likelihood of convincing him and effecting change may be smaller.

Still, it seems to me that in the previous era—the era of print and broadcast journalism—the same distortions existed. Then, too, most people were conformist and unthinking, and the few were those willing to listen and weigh other positions and facts. But then there were far fewer options to correct and overcome these failures, whereas the networks actually enable this much more easily.

Concerns and Outlook: What Should We Do?

From the descriptions so far you can understand that I don’t belittle the problems or the warnings. The state of discourse today is quite frustrating for me, and the loss of yardsticks for factual truth and logical argument is very troubling and worrying. But if we remember the state of discourse in the past, we see it wasn’t better. The frustration also stems from the fact that today there is the possibility to conduct discourse and be exposed to facts, arguments, and groups I could never have encountered before. Therefore, when this doesn’t happen—or not enough—it naturally creates great frustration.

As I wrote to Gil (see above), I don’t panic over these phenomena, though they certainly worry me. We survived Pharaoh; I’m sure we’ll survive this as well. Humanity has coped with many difficulties and overcome them, and I see no reason we can’t cope with this reality, which contains not only the problems but also the most powerful tools to solve them. Evolution teaches that humanity adapts, and our ability to survive crises of various kinds is far greater than we realize. I’m not very old, but I certainly remember several points in my life when I despaired entirely of the direction reality was taking. It was clear to me more than once that the right was disappearing; it was clear to me more than once that religion was disappearing. So too with Torah-centricity versus slackness, and more. I matured and understood that what you see in real time doesn’t say much about what will happen in a few years (in our era the pace only grows faster, and so our forecasting horizon shortens). In my experience, our era is not the golden hour of the prophets of doom, even though there are many among us. I am, in fact, very optimistic (though that itself is a kind of prediction, and so it should be treated).

The film itself addresses this claim. They explain that today progress and the rate of change are exponential, so evolutionary adaptation can’t catch up and cope. They give an example: the car doubled its speed over several decades, whereas our computing power grew in the same period by millions. I don’t buy this demagoguery for many reasons. First, computing power is not proportional to the power to manipulate (the relation isn’t linear). Second, this computing power also works for us and not only against us. It is not only the tool creating the problems; it is also the tool by which we will overcome them (see below). There are other reasons why this example is manipulative, but these two suffice. I’ve often remarked on the manipulative use people make of numbers today, and this is a fine example.

In my view, the solution is definitely not to shut down networks, and not necessarily to increase regulation over them (though that is indeed desirable at times). Exactly as I don’t believe in Haredi solutions of closing society and youth off from other ideas and populations. That also distances us from truth, and at least in the long run it works less well. Naively, I think the solution to the problems the film points out is not top-down but bottom-up. Instead of regulation and top-down constraints, it’s more important to educate the public toward critical thinking and exposure to several information channels (and in the age of networks this is no problem at all). We must develop in people critical thinking and analytic skills, and of course skills in finding and processing relevant data. If one is educated not to be enslaved to the same channels and to the same social-engineering mechanisms, that can open up options we didn’t have before. If a person learns how to treat the flood of information, facts, positions, and arguments—and to form a position of his own critically—then the flood is primarily a blessing. I also think this is happening and will happen more. Evolution and adaptation do their work; we’re only mid-process.

The alternative that prevailed until a few years ago (and still, in diminishing doses) is authoritarian regimes that control a few information channels and perform manipulations far stronger than those described in the film—only then we had no way to overcome them. See what happens in the Haredi world and in countries with totalitarian regimes. See how much they try to fight social networks and the internet—and that’s because of what these have done to them. The Haredim tend to focus on the harms of the net and on a total war against it; but I’ve written more than once that, in my opinion, that war actually stems from its advantages. They fear critical thinking and the loss of control over information channels far more than pornography, violence, and gossip prohibitions. But that is less comfortable to say, of course, so the pretexts are pornography and halakhic prohibitions. The truth is that this war is rooted in fear of an open marketplace of ideas. That is precisely the indicator of the immense value of social networks and their ability to fight any totalitarian thought.

The clearest example is the “Arab Spring,” which erupted thanks to—and with the help of—social networks. Many now lament what became of it in the end, but again, I wouldn’t mourn it too early. We’re still in process and directions can change. In any case, I don’t think this is the networks’ fault, but rather the fault of the primitive societies within which these processes took place. In my estimation, the networks’ contribution to those processes is primarily positive.

Of course, there are shadows too. ISIS and al-Qaeda also use networks very successfully, but those are collateral damages (which I do not belittle). Moreover, I noted above that sometimes revolt and protest can break out without a real cause, thanks to the networks (I think the Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S. are not a bad example of this, though there is some cause there; it isn’t entirely detached from reality). But again, people who will use information wisely will reach better results than those not exposed to it. The intensities are indeed worrying, and the amplification that networks give these processes is not simple. In our era, a mistake can cost us immense sums and tremendous loss of life—unlike the mistakes we made fifty years ago. Yet in my view the benefits of networks outweigh the harms by far. I refuse to accept the apocalyptic worldview the film tries to convey.

Remember that the film itself uses the network to spread its ideas—and good that it does. With all my criticism of its messages and of how they’re delivered, it’s clear the voices of the filmmakers should be heard and weighed. On the network itself, not a few sites operate in such directions. A site like “Not Relevant,” which goes through viral messages and warns us of manipulations, is very important for intelligent, prudent information consumption. Guy Zohar’s program, The Other Side, is truly a television model for educating toward intelligent media consumption (and of course it makes great use of social networks and the internet). So too the journal The Seventh Eye for media criticism. And, if I may, this site as well, where I try to promote critical, unbiased thinking and a balanced engagement with opinions, arguments, and facts, contributes its part to that goal. In my view, this is the better way to grapple with the flaws the film points out. One must understand that sites advocating ideas are usually biased—but it’s very important that they be in the air and accessible to us all. The way to treat bias is not to suppress biases but to balance them. That can be done in two ways: by using sites that try to educate for thinking (less tied to ideology), and by educating people to consume opposing information channels in parallel. It’s very important not to become imprisoned in any bubble, as positive as it may be. A person who trains himself to consume information from several channels working in different directions will reach a better outcome than a person living in a world with a single central channel that controls information “more responsibly” (journalistic ethics) but without our ability to critique it. All this, of course, would not be possible without the internet and social networks.

In general, I’m not opposed to careful additions of regulation, though a priori I’m very wary of it. Who will regulate the regulator? We see every day that networks censor opinions and facts, and naturally some groups are happy about it and others are furious. The question is: which way does the regulator himself lean? Therefore, my default is: no regulator. Complete openness. Any regulation requires justification and grounding before I’ll agree to it. I believe more in the invisible hand than in social engineering and regulation—even if it happens to move in my direction. Also because the winds can change—but even if they don’t—I prefer thinking people who arrive at positions different from mine, over engineered people who arrive at my positions. The big, noisy polyphony we live in—with all its economic, ideological, and social power centers—is, in my eyes, far better than a calm, quiet world controlled by some central power. In short, in my opinion we are far better off today than in the past—and mainly thanks to social networks.

There’s always the concern about those not endowed with critical thinking and more subject to manipulation (this is probably the great majority—your average comment-writer). But such people always existed and likely always will, and I don’t think there’s much to do about them. Our task is to try to ensure their percentage in the population is as low as possible, and to educate people to consume information and arguments intelligently and responsibly. In my opinion this is this generation’s mission, and it’s the main reason I invest so much time in this site. The site isn’t meant to bring people back to religious observance (though I’d like to), nor to promote a particular ideology (though of course I have one, and it is reflected in what I write here). My chief aim here is to advance critical thinking and to encourage people to think for themselves, to examine arguments and facts, and to consume information critically and intelligently.

[1] I explained this at length in my book The Sciences of Freedom, when I explained how statistical analysis of human behavior is possible even though there are no random components there.