Netflix’s “Zero Day” misses the point on Big Tech’s true nature

While Zero Day discusses many important social issues, including the rise of political polarisation, the spread of disinformation, media manipulation, and the public’s growing distrust in institutions, it notably downplays one of the primary drivers behind these problems: the role of social media and the unchecked power of those who control it. 

It's now well documented that social media algorithms amplify disinformation and hate speech. Disinformation travels six times faster than facts on social media, because the business model relies on algorithms designed to amplify what creates engagement and triggers us: anger, outrage, fear, greed. The toll this is taking on people’s lives, especially women and girls, is too important to ignore.

Consider the following:

1. Online violence impacts the vast majority of women and girls, causing them to feel physically unsafe. This fear is often justified. For instance, half of the Arab women who were targeted online reported that the violence extended into the real world. 
2. Big Tech corporations often fail to act when women report abuse. In Kenya, for example, Facebook failed to respond to two thirds of the women who reported abuse to the platform.   
3. By amplifying extreme, misogynistic content, social media is giving rise to the “manosphere,” a network of strongly anti-feminist online communities that promote and circulate harmful, often violent, views about women and girls. In Kenya, researchers discovered that as men spend more time online, their attitudes and behaviours toward women became more hostile. This trend was especially evident among younger men, highlighting concerning implications for the future of gender equality. 
4. The constant abuse, now turbocharged with generative AI, inhibits women from expressing themselves – from civic participation, and from assuming leadership roles. Around 90% of women globally who have encountered online gender-based violence chose to limit their online presence as a result. As digital technologies permeate all aspects of life, this retreat from the digital world further entrenches gender inequality both online and in the real world.

Courageous organisations all over the world are challenging the unchecked power that perpetuates this problem. Given their work, and against the backdrop of a problem affecting so many women and girls, *spoiler alert*, it’s hard to reconcile the approach Zero Day’s writers chose to take. If Zero Day’s character, Big Tech CEO Monica Kidder, wanted to reduce toxic polarisation and unite the country, all she had to do was to simply fix her own company’s products. This starts with redesigning algorithms to prioritise meaningful interactions over outrage, increased transparency, and the protection of people’s data privacy.  Such changes would help Big Tech finally deliver on its false promise of "connecting people" rather than seeding division and hate, which result in real life consequences, mostly for marginalised communities.

While Robert de Niro’s new show does attempt to address how women are largely excluded from the tech industry where men hold three-quarters of all jobs, it does so by casting a woman—a masculine-looking character—as the Big Tech billionaire villain. This reinforces the idea that if you are a woman in a powerful position in tech, you must assimilate into a culture of “masculine energy,” presenting and behaving according to standards of hegemonic masculinity. But, once again, women cannot win: if they are perceived as “too feminine,” they are not taken seriously; and when they move away from these standards and become (or naturally are) more “masculine,” then they are punished for it, as suggested by the show’s plot.

As gender expert Juliana Martinez told me: “So often we see flat characters reproducing tropes that falsely link women who do not conform to traditional femininity - and who are often queer-coded - with social and moral danger. Across the board, we see a recurring trope with these queer-presenting characters: they disproportionately suffer tragic, exemplary deaths, just as Kidder does." Dr. Martinez is part of a group of gender experts assembled by the Boston Center for Latin America’s Otros Ojos project, which connects screenwriters with experts and people with lived experience, to workshops scripts and storylines. 

Another problematic narrative embedded in the show relates to the idea that to achieve security, people must surrender their rights. It’s even more dangerous to suggest that the individual in charge of holding that level of power will use it responsibly. We’re living in a time when far-right and authoritarian movements are on the rise globally with both Big Tech’s financial and in-kind support, for instance, in Germany, social media platforms like X and TikTok showed a biased towards far-right political content in the most recent elections. These movements are having a real-world impact on the rights of women and LGBT+ people (and many other marginalised communities and issues) across the globe.

The stories that we tell have an impact on audiences: this is a time to double down on narratives that advance democracy, not the other way around. 

Our work with organisations such as Storyline Partners has shown us that when screenwriters replace stereotypes and harmful narratives, not only does this have a positive effect in the world, but it also improves the storytelling. Zero Day presented a real opportunity to tell a different kind of story, one that more accurately assigns responsibility for today's harms where it belongs: inside Big Tech corporations. These techno-authoritarian forces will have us believe that finding solutions amounts to a large-scale crisis, but the solutions are within reach, and they are grounded in human rights and social justice.

Every single industry has been regulated in the past, and we should reform Big Tech too. The story of how we get there is already full of drama, with plot twists, whistleblowers, activist heroes, corrupt politicians, and billionaire villains. Now this is a far more interesting and urgent story worth telling.

Photo credit: Netflix