The Social Dilemma with Exposure Labs & Reset Australia

In the viral Netflix film The Social Dilemma, tech experts sound the alarm on the dangerous human impact of social networking. The film had a big opportunity to drive action on the issue of humane technology, and needed an impact campaign & action platform to scale that message.

Impact producer Exposure Labs tapped into the zeitgeist of social media attachment through their film The Social Dilemma, released on Netflix. 

The film features interviews from the silicon valley insiders who helped build these platforms, who now fear the impact on our mental health and our democracy. 

With the film landing during the pandemic, with more people than reliant on technology, Exposure Labs needed a plan to convert this growing concern around Big Tech into action.

With Purpose’s expertise in digital threats to democracy through Reset Australia, we partnered with Exposure Labs to develop a participation strategy to mobilize people who’d seen the film and drive action targeting the business models of digital platforms.

Purpose designed, developed and launched the film’s campaign website, the centre-point of their multi-year campaign around the harms of exploitative technology. We ran user testing with Reset Australia’s supporter base to ensure the website drove action among key user groups and built a flexible website that can be easily adapted as the campaign grows.

The website we created used branding and styling from key artwork from The Social Dilemma, but in a way that mimicked visual devices and attention-grabbing strategies that social media platforms use. We created the website in this way, with educational pop-ups explaining why these mechanisms work to further the idea that social media is addictive because of human-designed functions.

Since The Social Dilemma Netflix launch in September 2020, the film has gone viral and the campaign has spurred new conversations about the harms of big tech solidifying it as one of the big issues of our time. 

With the momentum from the launch of this movement, The Social Dilemma team turned to the next phase of the campaign, The Social Media Reboot, to shift the focus from building awareness to concrete ways to take back control on social media.  The Social Reboot is focusing on helping model new norms & build a future for technology that centers people over profits.