Since the rise of online communities, marketplaces and social media, er are often told: “if you are not the customer, you’re the product”. Director Peter Porta sets out to show how much of that rings true. He reveals how a freak accident – the discovery of the financial goldmine that is the placement of online ads on random websites – has changed our reality. Digital and analogue. He dissects the algorithms, the data mining, the selling of our private information, the bubbles and echo chambers. We are bombarded with custom ads, tailored to our interests and demographics.

He does not stop there. The field is too vast, and the damage done by tech giants like Google, Meta and X (formerly known as Twitter), is too severe. Moving the gaze away from the individual alone, the movie laments the death of quality journalism and information, since online traffic on conspiracy sites is bigger, therefore gathering more ad power. With the companies commissioning the ads often in the dark about where their ads pop up, and with the Tech Gants unwilling to apply stricter regulations to where they distribute these ads or censor hate speech, a toxic online landscape has formed. A world in which even the most profound media literacy can’t compete with the fast-shifting, ever-changing landscape. Nobody understands where all the ads and the money are going, the British NGO worker and advocate against digital hate Imran Ahmed says at one point. It’s a man-made machine, long lost in its algorithmic self-propelling functionality.

While many of these facts have been propagated repeatedly over the past few years in the media and have gained some international attention, Porta still manages to dive even further into the specifics of how companies of questionable reputation, scammers and right-wing conspiracy media have taken advantage of the simple fact that people are online. The expectation of the internet as a merit good leads to running ads to sustain free access. A vicious cycle. Porta does not reinvent the wheel in his set-up when telling this story. There is the fast-paced cutting from location to location. An assembly of talking heads, ranging from NGO workers to former Google employees and journalists to politicians. Archive footage shows the unrest in Myanmar and the January 6 insurrection, which was partly enticed by online hate campaigns.

This documentary chooses to walk a well-known beaten narrative. Eventually, the information becomes repetitive, and the movie goes around in a circle. Porta wants to cover everything, and he is in a rush to do so. Some fine-tuning, a more specific focuswould have created a more complex final product.

But when it comes to alerting its viewers, making the technical noob more aware of what is happening in their browser or his social media, The Click Trap achieves what it set out to do: warning people about the manipulative energy of their online environment. After all, Facebook’s competition may not be another online platform, Ahmed explains. “life is spending time with your kids, spending time with your wife, reading a book”. Use your online media, but don’t lose a grasp of reality.

The Click Trap premieres at the 32nd edition of Raindance, which takes place between April 19th and 28th.