Inside Rage Machine Review – We’re All Doomed, Totally Doomed | TV and radio

SSometimes it is a real problem to not be able to take an oath without reservation in a national newspaper. I mean, I understand social conventions and propriety and all that has to be maintained, and that, in general, as our parents and teachers tell us, swearing is just a sign of poor vocabulary. But not always. Sometimes — and increasingly, I think, as I look at the burning world around us — it may represent swearing Fair phrases. It may be the only fair response. Under certain circumstances, everything else begins to seem like a blur, a veil covering unpleasant things. We would be much better off if, to reorganize Mrs. Patrick Campbell’s Notes to George Bernard Shaw to fit this more brutal era, someone had asked Trump early on, for example, to get rid of it, just once.

But rules are rules and so I have to carefully craft my response to Inside the Rage Machine, a documentary about how to manage social media. The shortest, most honest and accurate review I can give is this: “We’re doomed. We’re all doomed,” before advising you to start setting up a bunker now – use your last moments before pulling the plug online to order supplies or buy an insulated house in Montana, then pack a go bag and… go, people. He goes.

That’s not to say we don’t know a lot about what the film, presented by the BBC’s social media investigative correspondent Marianna Spring, tells us. No matter how much we bury our heads in the sand when confronted with the mounting evidence of the harm that online life does to us (and to younger generations, who have fewer defenses against it because they don’t know a different way to live), we realize that Meta is not running Facebook or Instagram to uplift the human spirit. Elon Musk didn’t buy Twitter to spark a renaissance. The handful of billionaires who own these platforms and continue to get richer (and build bunkers in New Zealand, by the way) while the rest of the world gets poorer, are probably not working on secret wealth redistribution programs.

But seeing their machinations unfold in less than an hour, often by people who worked inside Zuckerberg’s factory or in the shift from Twitter to

Matt Motyl, a senior researcher at Facebook and Meta from 2019 to 2023, appears to be the most affected. “I know some of the issues more than I wish I knew,” he says. He is not the only one among the commentators who wished he were still living in ignorant bliss. He and others show how the algorithms behind the companies that now dominate our free time, our attention, and our lives feed on anger. Extremist content, misinformation, and anything that sparks disbelief or anger drives engagement, which means more ads can be sold, more revenue can be sold, and more stock price increases – to hell with anything else.

Most former Meta insiders talk about a slight shift in Zuckerberg’s stance after he appeared before Congress in 2018 to answer questions related to Facebook’s apparent unwillingness to restrict hate speech after unleashing internet-sparked violence on Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. They also talk about how it won’t continue, even though the Meta statement that appears at the end of the program says they have strict policies and invested in safety and security to protect users on their platforms. We move through the Southport riots and other events fueled by online hate, all the way to the assassination of US right-wing activist Charlie Kirk last year.

Spring is examining documents provided to her by multiple whistleblowers that show a profit motive trumping any nuanced feelings about this or any other matter (especially once rival platform TikTok arrived on the scene and started cannibalizing the audience). Safety teams and fact-checking departments have been cut to the bone. When Musk took over Twitter, he fired 80% of its workforce – not a priority for the man who brought back Trump, Tommy Robinson and others – and began treating the platform like a mouthpiece for his political views.

Thus, we live in a world where nuance and damned detail are worthless, where the most controversial statements and speakers are rewarded, and the idea that a lie has traveled halfway around the world before the truth puts on its boots — and which still suggests that the truth has a chance to catch up — seems like an aphorism from a lost golden age.

The hour ends with just a gesture toward solutions. “It’s a management problem,” says one commentator. “We have to make transparency legally required,” says another. Which I think is documentary talk about: “We are doomed to fail. We are all doomed to fail.”