Tech companies make profits from bombarding young people with harmful content
Molly Russell was 14 years old when she took her own life.
For months, she had been bombarded with content related to anorexia, self harm and suicide on social media.
The inquest into her death was the first to directly blame social media and tech companies for someone’s death.
The new film, Molly vs the Machines, directed by Marc Silver, parallels Molly’s life and the inquest into her death with the rise of surveillance capitalism.
Silver weaves the story told by Ian Russell, Molly’s dad, and her friends with the politics laid out in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff.
At points, the film takes the point of view of social media or the computer. Silver used AI, feeding it prompts such as “Tell me the story of Molly Russell”. This humanises the AI while dehumanising users.
Taking the role of antagonist, the computer embodies the now incredibly familiar names in tech—Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel.
Starting with Bill Clinton’s Internet Global Free Trade Zone, we’re shown how the unregulated power of tech and social media companies profit from experimenting on us.
The film follows the rise of sites such as Facebook and talks to whistleblowers. By doing this, it carefully examines the vast, unchecked power we give big tech.
It shows how tech is inextricably tangled in our lives. In a chilling moment, we’re told how in the minutes before she took her own life, Molly’s phone was tracking the distance of her steps around her bedroom.
The restaging of the inquest and emails exposed by legal cases show the brazen confidence of the tech companies.
Lotte Rubaek is a psychologist who quit Meta after it refused to take on board any of her opinions on social media and its impact on mental health.
She said, “They want to believe they can be part of the solution without ever being part of the problem.”
The film doesn’t just focus on Molly’s story. It also emphasises how social media companies are lining their pockets.
Though the verdict of the inquest into Molly’s death was a landmark victory, the film explores the limits of this kind of justice.
In the words of one of Molly’s friends, the gavel goes down but nothing changes.
Molly vs the Machines is an incredible film made possible by the phenomenal bravery of Ian Russell. It is a message to fight against these companies for our privacy, autonomy and perhaps our lives.
Remembering is an a act of resistance in Brazil
The Secret Agent it is a historical thriller which follows Armando as he flees from persecution and resists dictatorship.
The film is different from most, if not all, films about the Brazilian military dictatorship that lasted from 1964 to 1985.
The plot of the film is not focused on the regime itself, or on a single “great person”.
The Secret Agent is the story of a man who is trying to recover memories of his mum and reunite with his son.
It’s the story of the common people who, because of political repression, had to flee their cities and change their names to survive.
Through this people’s history, the film shows us how deep the scars left in Brazilian society are.
The scars come from a time when all the news outlets had to tell fantastical stories because they couldn’t tell the truth.
From a time when names were lost and families’ histories were forgotten.
The way that writer and director Kleber Mendonca develops the plot reveals what’s happening and what causes revolt.
Other films on the topic would make sure to state that the regime committed crimes against humanity. The regime tortured, kidnaped and murdered people.
But this film makes sure to also show that the military dictatorship in Brazil committed crimes of “lesa patria”–crimes against the sovereignty of a nation.
The regime claimed to represent the nation and waved the Brazilian flag. But at the same time it operated the state apparatus to benefit foreign companies.
The regime made enemies of all of those that could endanger the profit making of the big international companies that supported the regime.
The Secret Agent is a beautiful film. It is a film about memory. The memory of the city of Recife in north east Brazil. And how the histories of families last or fade.
By Luis Humberto Vargas Velasques
