The Creepy Line

The documentary argues that large search and social media companies steer society by deciding what people see. According to the film that steering is effective precisely because it goes unnoticed; even small changes in ranking can affect decisions. The case rests on the accounts of a few people the film speaks with and on the studies they present; the scope of those studies and how they are read are matters of dispute. Reporting what the film says and saying that what it says has been confirmed are therefore two different things; the work proceeds less as an investigation than as an argument for a position. The account does not test the people it speaks with against opposing views; it runs in one direction, and that is the weakest part of the film. M.A. Taylor’s eighty minute American documentary was completed in 2018.