Metacritic reviews

Miraculously, it manages to unpack this perplexing issue with precision and intelligence but without any moral panic-mongering, condescension or dumbing down the complexity of the science stuff.

Jeff Orlowski’s The Social Dilemma may be the most important documentary you see this year.

Social Dilemma is a good film, probably too little too late to play a role in saving democracy or healing a nation so divided half of it won’t do the most basic things to stop a pandemic. But there you are, and there we are.

While the film covers — and somehow manages to contain — a staggering breadth of topics and ramifications, one little sentence is all it takes to lay out the means and ends of the crisis at hand: Russia didn’t hack Facebook, Russia used Facebook.

The most important lesson from The Social Dilemma is that we should question everything we read online, especially if it is presented to us in a way that reflects a detailed understanding of our inclinations and preferences.

The Social Dilemma should be mandatory viewing for everyone who has a social media account. After seeing it, you may look at your phone differently, as something that isn’t really your friend.

Densely packed yet lively and entertaining documentary, whose accessibility is heightened by some narrative play-acting.

The Social Dilemma is remarkably effective in sounding the alarm about the incursion of data mining and manipulative technology into our social lives and beyond.

The most urgent question posed by The Social Dilemma is whether democracy can survive the social networks’ blurring of fact and fiction. “Imagine a world where no one believes what’s true,” Mr. Harris says. It’s possible, of course, that the film itself is a conspiracy cooked up by chronic malcontents, but it has the ringtone of truth.