‘Can’t Look Away’: A Puny Critique of Big Tech

In April, a new documentary, “Can’t Look Away: The Case Against Social Media,” was released online to much fanfare among sections of the left. A Bloomberg documentary, the film is anything but a case “against social media,” which turns out to be little more than a click-bait subtitle. Instead, it makes the case that Big Social Media networks should be held accountable for harms against children. Despite the film’s valid claim that BSM platforms put “profits over people,”  “Can’t Look Away” decontextualizes the issues and offers no larger vision for how social media should work. At one point, it even calls for social media surveillance tools to reduce harms against users. 

“Can’t Look Away” begins with an interview of an ex-employee at a large social media platform, who tells the audience that Big Social Media networks are not safe for children, and that the companies are “petrified of being held responsible for the death of minors.” It soon segues to the protagonist of the film, Social Media Victims Law Center (SMVLC), which is cast as an under-resourced David fighting for victimized children against the ultra-rich BSM Goliaths.

The first “case against social media” focuses on three child suicides. In one, a young teenager, Englyn Roberts, hung herself after copying a self-strangulation video posted to Instagram. In the second, a teenager named Mason Edens, who was struggling with a recent breakup, kills himself after viewing TikTok videos glorifying suicide — even though he was searching for videos of positive affirmations. In the third case, a teenager named Jordan DeMay killed himself after a sextortionist obtained nudes and threatened to post them online.

The second “case against social media” argues that Snapchat is responsible for child deaths because it offers drug dealers the means to peddle counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl to teenagers, the evidence destroyed with disappearing messages, making it exceedingly difficult for police to identify the dealers.

The stories told in  “Can’t Look Away” are indeed heartbreaking. For those sympathizing with the message, it makes perfect sense to put a human face on these tragedies. But it’s not always clear how much responsibility Big Social Media corporations hold, let alone what should be done.

A recent Oxford study found that a high degree of social media use is correlated to anxiety, depression and self-harm. But it’s less clear whether social media actually plays a causal role in creating these conditions. Other studies have found that social media use (or more broadly, time spent online) does not have negative effects on teen mental health. Simply put, studies are conflicting, and it’s not clear how social media impacts teenagers, on average.

The reality is that social media platforms play a negative, positive and neutral role in the lives of their user base. This is a problem for the SMVLC because it wants to hold social media liable for harms to minors for technologies that can cut in many different directions.

This problem is even more acute for the SMVLC’s take on Snapchat and illicit drugs. Prefacing the segment on Snap, the film states, “Internal emails show Snap was aware of illegal dealers on Snapchat as early as 2019. From 2019 to 2020, the teen overdose rate in the U.S. almost doubled. Many of those deaths have been linked to counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl bought from dealers on social media.” Yet the filmmakers erase the fact that 2020 was the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, which provoked spikes in drug overdoses and other social problems.

According to the SMVLC, Snap should be held accountable because it offers disappearing messages. If Snap were to remove that feature and share data with police, then “90% of this drug dealing on Snap would disappear overnight,” says one SMVLC member. On its own website, the SMVLC blames privacy for drug dealing on Snap. “Unlike Instagram and TikTok, Snapchat provides privacy between parties as they communicate,” according to the group. “Drug dealers can erase any evidence of communication and avoid responsibility when things go wrong.” 

In other words, users shouldn’t have privacy from platform surveillance because privacy enables illicit activities.

It’s here where we can begin to see that the overarching message underlying the  “Can’t Look Away” — that Big Social Media platforms are responsible for harms to children — lacks thoughtful consideration. Let’s consider a few critical points.

For starters, the vision of the SMVLC is often too coarse-grained. Yes, it is true that privacy tools like disappearing messages are used for illegal and often atrocious activities. Yet the idea that users shouldn’t have privacy because there are bad actors is akin to saying we should all be under surveillance all the time. That’s the tradeoff. But if surveillance is the norm it wants to establish, the SMVLC should state it clearly: the public should be under constant surveillance. That message, it’s safe to say, would have many critics across the political spectrum.

The case for regulating algorithms that may cause harm to users is more reasonable. One might want to see governments force large platforms to minimize or shadow ban the glorification of suicide, do more to ban sextortionists from their networks, and so on. Yet if we think it through, this position, too, has flaws. For instance, why stop at algorithms that spread pro-suicide material when there is even more harmful content pushed to millions of users every day? Consider posts about climate science denial, anti-vax conspiracy theories or U.S.-Israeli propaganda flooding news feeds — all content that, if we extend the logic of the film, can be said to cause environmental destruction, the spread of viruses and genocide. Having the state step in and play God with what legal content people see in their news feeds is playing with fire.

And this is where “Can’t Look Away” really suffers from a lack of awareness, consistency and imagination. “The Case Against Social Media” part of the title was never actually presented in the film. Instead of doing away with the corporate platforms and democratizing social media, the protagonists merely want to regulate the likes of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat by reinterpreting (or rewriting) a law called Section 230 that provides immunity to platform owners for the content users post — so long as they make a reasonable effort to remove illegal content. That’s a case for humane social media mega-corporations, not a case against them.

The idea that Big Social Media platforms can be made “good” is a pipe dream. Toward the end of the film, an ex-Meta employee who turned against the networks, Arturo Béjar, states, “Until they get compelled, it’s not going to change, because of the hubris of the people who run these companies, who really feel that they are doing a good enough job. But there’s all of these kids that prove that they are not.”

But the problem isn’t the hubris of the individuals running the platforms. Rather, it is the capitalist system that produces mega-corporations who place “profit over people” in the first place. Of course, a sponsor like Bloomberg, whose journalist Olivia Carville co-produced the film, won’t go there. It’s no mistake that socialist-oriented alternatives like the Fediverse are off the table.

In the end, there is little reason to doubt that the people suing the Big Social Media platforms have good intentions. Yet they fail to make a coherent case or offer a better vision for how to build a social media landscape by and for the people. That documentary is still waiting to be made, and the sooner the better.