Digital Disconnect

PRESENTED BY: Wedgwood Meaningful Movies
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7:00 PM, Friday, May 10, 2019 PST
Location: Wedgwood, Seattle, WA (click for map)

This film trains its sights on the relationship between the internet and democracy in the age of fake news, filter bubbles, and Facebook security breaches. Moving from the development of the internet as a publicly funded project in the late 1960s to its full-scale commercialization today, renowned media scholar Robert McChesney traces how the democratizing potential of the internet has been radically compromised by the logic of capitalism and the unaccountable power of a handful of telecom and tech monopolies. Along the way, McChesney examines the ongoing attack on net neutrality by telecom monopolies like Comcast and Verizon; explores how internet giants like Facebook and Google have amassed huge profits by surreptitiously collecting personal data and selling it to advertisers; and shows how these companies have routinely colluded with the national security state to advance covert mass surveillance programs.

Even more urgently, the film details how the rise of social media as a leading information source is working to isolate people into ideological filter bubbles and elevate fake news at the expense of real journalism. While most debates about the internet continue to focus on issues like the personal impact of internet addiction or the questionable data-mining practices of individual companies like Facebook, “Digital Disconnect” digs deeper to show how capitalism itself is turning the internet against democracy. (from the film’s source: www.mediaed.org/digital-disconnect)

Release Year: 2018

Running Time: 63 min

Director: Jeremy Earp

2 Comments so far

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  1. djb
    #1 djb 29 April, 2019, 06:07

    It’s not the internet, it’s the narrative that Capitalism now uses to “grow” which is an adaptation of the empire-building narrative that came from a default evolutional pattern. Seems that we as a species could get past our limiting beliefs and become engaged with our “better natures.” Aka it isn’t the tool, it is the application and that is wired into the story of who, what, why and how we came to be like us in now time. There is a MORE and it really seems time to risk a leap towards a bigger, healthier big picture.

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  2. Mason
    #2 Mason 13 May, 2019, 14:01

    To protect the privacy of your web searches, try using Duck Duck Go. It’s a free app. For encryption info try Internet freedom foundation. Deutsche Velle recently interviewed (May 2019) the author of Surveillance Capitalism. Some other books: Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, 2018; Cathy O’Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction, 2016; Zeynep Tufecki, The Power and. Fragility of Networked Protest, 2018.

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