If You Liked ‘the Social Dilemma’ Here Are 4 Podcasts to Listen to

Find out how technology is subtly manipulating you without you even being aware of it through the discussions in these podcasts

Last year, Netflix released a documentary called the The Social Dilemma.

It shines a light on how social media apps and services are tuned in a way to ensure you are always hooked on to these platforms. The documentary has insights from several Silicon Valley veteran engineers who worked on these very products and how they have now come to regret it.

Be it the founder of infinite scrolling or a former Google Ethicist or the growth directors at Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and so on, everyone pulls the curtain to tell you what goes on behind the scenes.

If you liked that documentary and would like to continue to learn more about the ill-effects of how social media and technology manipulation works, here are a list of four podcasts that you must bookmark.

Your Undivided Attention

This podcast is hosted by Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin — both of them feature in The Social Dilemma.

They are also founders of the ‘Centre for Humane Technology’ and are proponents of mindful use of technology. In Your Undivided Attention, Harris and Raskin, interview experts who demystify how technology is being weaponised to maximise our attention.

In the inaugural episode of the podcast, an author of a book on casino interior design draws analogies with how social media products are designed in the same manner. Every episode is full of insights and you get a ringside view from the experts on topics as vast as YouTube algorithms recommending dangerous content to Russian involvement in US elections to our drastically reduced attention spans to how Facebook news was weaponised to how Cambridge Analytica unfolded and much more.

Raskin and Harris also give some tips on how one can use technology mindfully and overcome those persuasive technologies inherent in social media products. The idea is not to wean you off social media completely but to make you use it in a way that you have more control than the invisible engineers working behind the scenes on an app or service.

Rabbit Hole

The internet in 2020 is vastly different from just a decade ago. When social media websites had started in the late noughts, no one thought they would manipulate democratic functioning and lead to law and order problems.

This podcast by The New York Times is an interesting look at how the internet has changed and how it is changing us as people.

It looks at this through the lens of one of the most influential video streaming sites around — YouTube. Not only does it demonstrate how a regular person can go down the YouTube algorithm rabbit hole, but also has interviews with YouTube boss Susan Wojcicki on what she’s doing to clean up the platform; interaction with PewDiePie — the second most subscribed-to YouTuber.

The last two episodes focus on the evolution of QAnon from being on the fringes a few years ago, to gaining mainstream acceptance in the US and many other countries.

This podcast can get a bit too nerdy if you are not into following technology news and its intersection with pop-culture.

Land of the Giants

How did Amazon and Netflix get so big? How are their products so addictive? What was competition up to when these two came on to the scene and how did they overcome it?

This podcast does a brilliant investigative deep dive into two companies that have redefined how we do certain things, namely shop online and stream movies.

The current season which trains its eyes on Google has just begun and promises to be equally intriguing.

The podcast isn’t in the same thread as Your Undivided Attention and The Rabbit Hole, but gives insights into companies that have influenced the zeitgeist, so to speak. Think of this podcast as though you’re reading an investigative journalism book on Amazon and Netflix. Highly recommended.

In Real Life

This is a podcast that is now in its fifth season and does a great job of demystifying internet phenomena. The episodes are structured in a way that you don’t have to be a digital geek to understand what is being discussed.

There are plenty of real-life examples to explain things such as online trolling, data privacy, surveillance capitalism, the perils of online dating, attention economy, online bullying, the internet’s carbon footprint, decentralising internet and much more.

I hope you liked these three podcast episode recommendations.

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