Facebook and Google are collecting vast troves of data on us and using that information not only to sell us ads, but to addict us to their platforms, separate us from our friends and family, and fill our minds with damaging conspiracy theories. At least that’s what a new documentary wants us to believe.

The Social Dilemma was released on Netflix on September 9 and immediately rocketed into its top ten list. The film interviews people who used to work at the big tech companies and have now seen the light, along with researchers in other fields who back the idea that “surveillance capitalism” is an existential threat to our societies.

Yet this techno-deterministic narrative vastly inflates the capabilities of data capture and algorithms, and, in so doing, blames a whole range of problems on technology that have their root in more fundamental social and economic conditions of modern society. It is important to understand what effects these technologies are having on us, both personally and collectively, but failing to recognize the longer history of these problems and the broader structures that contribute to them will lead us to solutions that don’t actually get to the root causes.