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Show A-6 The Park Record Wed/Thurs/Fri, January 29-31, 2020 Sundance doc delves into dangers of social media Experts warn sites are taking reams of personal data NAN CHALAT NOAKER Park Record contributor “The Social Dilemma,” a documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Sunday, opens with an ominous quote: “Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse.” The phrase may have been coined by an ancient philosopher, but it aptly describes what the film’s director, Jeff Orlowski, deems one of humanity’s most dire existential threats — the incursion of social media into our daily lives. And, judging by the standing ovation the film received in Park City over the weekend, the message hit home. The film taps an all-star team of experts, several of whom helped to unleash the powerful social media tools they are now trying to tame. Together, former Goggle, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook designers and marketing executives issue a bone-chilling warning about the intentionally addictive nature of the social media tools that are being used to amass reams of personal data. The data presented in the film is guaranteed to make audiences squirm — from a cellphone’s ability to track users’ movements to the increase in teen depression and suicide rates attributed to social media pressure. The film also highlights Google and Facebook executives’ refusal to shoulder responsibility for misuse of their platforms and their resistance to any form of outside regulation. But Orlowski and his team, including producers Larissa Rhodes and Daniel Wright, have already proven their prowess at tackling documentaries about global crises that might otherwise be considered beyond movie-goers’ comprehension. Orlowski and Rhodes previous award-winning films “Chasing Ice” (2012) and “Chasing Coral” (2017) and Wright’s “The Cove” were all audience fa- COME MEET US AT THE CORNER RESTAURANT GOURMET HOMESTYLE DISHES 195 W Main St Midway, UT 84049 435-657-5494 COURTESY OF SUNDANCE INSTITUTE | PHOTO BY SIERRA VOSS Sundance veteran Jeff Orlowski, who also directed “Chasing Ice” and “Chasing Coral,” has returned to Sundance with another compelling documentary. vorites at Sundance and beyond. Still, Orlowski admits, this film was “orders of magnitude” more difficult. Part of the challenge, Orlowski said, was helping audiences visualize how their data is being vacuumed up and sold to advertisers, and how those companies are trying to accelerate user consumption with seemingly innocuous reinforcements like emojis and “like” buttons. They crossed that hurdle by weaving in a story about a fictional family facing those all-too-familiar conflicts over cellphone use: a fragile pre-teen obsessed with her image on Instagram, an older teen lured into a viral political group, and a mom trying to hold her fractured family together by banning cellphone use at the dinner table. Each actor credibly portrays issues that play out on a daily basis in homes across the country. The subject matter is made even more poignant by the remorse offered in interviews with the platforms’ actual creators, many of whom now limit their own screen time and forbid their younger children from using social media. In the film, they recount the high hopes they once shared, that the platforms would be used to unify rather than divide communities — and their subsequent dismay over how they have been hijacked by greedy corporations and extreme political interests. The most compelling warn- ing in “The Social Dilemma” comes from Tristan Harris, one of the tech industry’s earliest whistleblowers. Harris once worked for Google as a design ethicist, but when the company turned a deaf ear to his concerns, he went to the media to raise public awareness and then to Congress to plead for regulation. He has since founded The Center for Humane Technology and cohosts a podcast about the issue. While in Park City, Orlowski said he hopes the film will gain wide attention and spur people to take action. Specifically, he is encouraging audience members to carefully monitor their own social media consumption and to implore their representatives in Congress to regulate how their personal data is used. For more information about the film, go to: TheSocialDilemma.com. “The Social Dilemma” is screening in the Documentary Premieres section of the Sundance Film Festival at the following times and locations: • Thursday, Jan. 30, 9:45 p.m., Broadway Centre Cinema 3 in Salt Lake City • Saturday, Feb. 1, 4 p.m., Redstone Cinema 2 ‘Influence’ tells of info war The rise and fall of a global PR firm depicted in doc ALEXANDER CRAMER The Park Record The client list of Lord Timothy Bell’s reputation management firm Bell Pottinger reads like a who’s who of morally dubious late 20th-century world players, from the would-be successor to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to the wife of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad to the Bahraini regime. But Bell, whose career is the subject of the film “Influence,” an entrant in the Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Documentary Competition, disputes in the film charges of immorality, admitting instead to at most incidents of amorality. The South African journalists Diana Neille and Richard Poplak said they decided to make the film after receiving a trove of nearly 200,000 emails linking the firm to a campaign to distract South American citizens from the corruption that mired President Jacob Zuma’s government. “Maybe we should just (film) this for posterity,” Neille recalled thinking when they received the leak. “It was a super hot potato batch of emails.” That instinct bore out, as Bell Pottinger collapsed after criticism that it had started a racist campaign in South Africa that turned deadly. The idea, Poplak said, was to turn the country toward its racial divisions and keep attention away from those who were stealing from the top. “They were being paid 120,000 (pounds) a month to orchestrate this racially divisive campaign using terms to pit black people against white people,” said Poplak, who covered the issue as a journalist. “We had been getting cease-and-desist letters from them since February of that year. When we realized we had them semi on the run, we smelled blood.” “Influence” includes interviews with Bell, who died in COURTESY OF SUNDANCE INSTITUTE | PHOTO BY MARK BUGYRA Lord Timothy Bell and his PR firm Bell Pottinger are featured in the Sundance doc ‘Influence,’ which chronicles the firm’s 2017 collapse after their information campaign turned deadly in South Africa. August, and tracks his work from early days working to elect former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to his globe-hopping forays into Africa, the Middle East and South America. The filmmakers hope it spurs a conversation about the information people ingest and who makes it, as well as a renewed sense of civic engagement. “As a citizen you have a responsibility to be vigilant about what you’re learning and where it’s coming from,” Neille said. “I’m really hoping this film will open a conversation and dialogue and not just people shouting at each other over the huge (divide).” One chilling anecdote Bell recounts in the film is a conversation in which a newspaper titan tells him he’ll print whatever Bell wants. “We treat it as a throwaway (in the film) because we wanted to show that’s the daily bread of how they operated,” Poplak said. “It was their daily bread, man, they embedded news.” The film also includes interviews with Nigel Oakes, the founder of the British firm that oversaw Cambridge Analytica, which featured prominently in pro-Trump information manipulation during the 2016 presidential election. Oakes describes himself as a weapons manufacturer, referring to information warfare, which he claims he’s reduced to a science. Poplak and Neille worry the U.S. is several years behind South Africa in dealing with misinformation. Unlike the British press, which Poplak claimed was more sympathetic to pro-business interests, South African journalists drew a line in the sand. “There was never the sense in the South African press (that it was) ‘just a bunch of good old dudes trying to have a good old time telling us how good mining is.’ There was always a sense of malevolence,” Poplak said about reaction to the PR campaign. “Their reputation was so bad, there wasn’t anyone outside the British press credulous enough to buy their (garbage) after 2016. I think we did a very good job here.” Bell Pottinger collapsed in 2017. Zuma stepped down in 2018 and is on trial for corruption. “Influence,” an entry in the Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Documentary Competition, is set to screen at the following times and locations: • Wednesday, Jan. 29, 9 a.m., Temple Theatre • Friday, Jan. 31., 9:15 p.m., Holiday Village Cinema 2 • Saturday, Feb. 1, 11:30 a.m., Holiday Village Cinema 1 |