Our most recent ADFS film was The Social Dilemma by Jeff Orlowski, a documentary that describes the serious, wide ranging damage being done by the algorithms used in most popular internet platforms.
May thirteenth Berkeley Law Professor Rebecca Wexler spoke with ADFS’s Anita Stapen specifically about the threats those algorithms already pose to democracy in America, and what might be done remedy them.
If you missed the webinar, you can view it here: ADFS conversation about The Social Dilemma with Rebecca Wexler.
For more information about the issues raised by The Social Dilemma, see the websites for both The Social Dilemma and the Center for Humane Technology, the organization that is deeply involved in working for remedies to the problems raised by the film.
Professor Wexler also made a number of specific suggestions for follow up:
Their conversation touched on many topics, from explaining algorithms — which Professor Wexler analogized to a recipe for bread making that has now become the bread making machine, where just what’s happening is invisible — to ways of thinking about privacy, company’s responsibility to their customers, even antitrust. If you missed their conversation, you can view a recording of it here
- With regard to increasing your own privacy, you could use a private browser window if you don’t want to be tracked when you’re searching for something on the web. In Chrome, you can find that window under the File>New Incognito Window dropdown link. In Safari, it’s under File>New Private Window.
- To learn more about the pros and cons of the privacy laws that are being considered by Congress, and even in California, check out the Brookings report on federal privacy legislation.
- And to find out about Lena Kahn’s “Hipster Antitrust” check out this article about her ideas, and an Atlantic article about her. Now this amazing classmate of Rebecca Wexler’s is in Biden’s FTC
Documentary Films & Community Conversation FREE 